Suspensions After A High School Football Brawl

            The athletic management website writes and article on how a Mississippi high school football team loses most of its players in a brawl during a game. This causes a lot of suspensions for the team which makes them ineligible for the playoffs and also leaves them with not enough players to play the rest of the season. The athletic director at the high school was very upset with the situation and had couldn’t do anything about it except for forfeit the rest of the season and give out suspension to the students that deserved it.

            This is a horrible situation. I don’t know why any student would fight during a game. I know some times things may get heated on the field and you may not like the other team. But there is a way to take care of that situation on the field. The team handled this situation in the very worst way that they could of.

            I feel bad for the athletic director and coaches that were put in this situation. They had nothing they could do about this except for suspend the kids and forfeit the rest of the season. It really sucks that they had to give up their season because of a few players causing an all-out brawl at their football game. They did handle this the right way though, but no one wants to be put in this situation.

Team, Athletic Management. "Brawl Aftermath." 2nd October 2012. Athletic Management. 3 December 2012 <http://www.athleticmanagement.com/headlines.php>.

ECU Deals With Vandalism At Their Field

In the article "ECU student charged with “unacceptable and disappointing” Dowdy-Ficklen vandalism." Friedlander talks about how the ECU field was tore apart by a freshman at their school. The student broke in and stole some equipment and started doing donuts on the field, causing a lot of damage to the field and making a lot of holes in the field. The way they caught the student was by finding his phone on the field that he left while he was vandalizing it. Also they had video evidence of him doing it. This got the student arrested for vandalizing personal property and trespassing. All of this caused the university to go into panic because they had a game that was going to be played in the stadium that week. So they had to get some money they had put away for a crises and insurance which helped get the field up to shape to make it playable by game day.    

            This is a horrible situation that they were put in and I don’t know why a student would do this to their university, just to have fun. I think the situation was handled well and the student got the punishment that he deserved. Also I think the athletic department did a great job in getting the field up to shape for game day. That was the most important situation, and they handled it well. These types of situations happens a lot and you need to have some type of plan that will get things back to normal in a short period of time and ECU did a great job in doing this.

Friedlander, Brett. "ECU student charged with “unacceptable and disappointing” Dowdy-Ficklen vandalism." 23 October 2012. Star News Online. 3 December 2012 <http://acc.blogs.starnewsonline.com/32719/ecu-student-charged-with-unacceptable-and-disappointing-dowdy-ficklen-vandalism/?tc=ar>.

Coach Suspended for Outburst

          In the article “Wyoming suspends football coach, fines him $50K for outburst” Ben Frederickson talks about the action the athletic director at Wyoming has to take for his football coaches outburst. The football coach at Wyoming lost a game against Air Force on October 14 and after the game he went up to the Air Force coach and used profanity and acted out of line towards him. This was caught on video tape then was eventually uploaded to the internet in the next couple of days. This put the athletic director in a bad situation. So the first steps he had to make were looking up the contract the coach had with him. While looking this up he looked at the code of conduct that was put on paper. He then saw that these rules were broken. After this he then had to make a decision on what kind of punishment he was going to give the coach. He then did research and found out a usually punishment for this was some type of fine between 40k and 100k, with some type of suspension. So he gave his coach a 50k fine and suspended him for 2 games. The coach was informed by the athletic director 2 days after the incident and was fine with the punishment he got and apologized to everyone he needed to.

            This is a situation that happens a lot in athletics. I think the athletic director handled this very well and settled everything in the right way. He brought up a contract that the coach signed so there would be no reason why the coach could be mad about his fine and suspension. This is a situation that ended up being taking care of very well and smoothly. I think the Wyoming athletic department did a good job on this and should be applauded the way they handled this situation.

Frederickson, Ben. "Wyoming suspends football coach, fines him $50K for outburst." 22 October 2012. Trib Sports. 3 December 2012 <http://trib.com/sports/college/wyoming/wyoming-suspends-football-coach-fines-him-k-for-outburst/article_76c79275-339e-55f8-b335-29b4d0f4e7fe.html>.

Benches And Coaches Are Now Watched In NCAA Basketball

In the article “NCAA Cleaning Up Bench Behavior” by the Athletic Management team they talk about a new rule being put into place for the NCAA basketball teams. The NCAA Basketball committee has put a new rule into effect which can earn a team a technical if the coach or the team’s bench is acting out of line. The athletic management team states that the following rules are being put into place, which will all create a technical foul for the team:

•Comments directed at or referring to any game official that question the integrity of an official (repeated references to the number of fouls called against each team; suggesting an official is "cheating" a team, etc.).

•Profane, vulgar, threatening, or derogatory remarks or personal comments relating to race, ethnicity, religion, gender or sexual orientation directed at or referring to any game official or opposing player/bench personnel.

•Prolonged, negative responses to a call/no-call that are disrespectful or unprofessional, including waving or thrashing the arms in disgust, dramatizing contact by re-enacting the play, or running or jumping "in disbelief" over a call/non-call.

•A negative response to a call/no-call that includes approaching/charging an official in a hostile, aggressive or otherwise threatening manner, emphatically removing one's coat in response to a call/no-call, or throwing equipment or clothing on to the floor.

•Continual criticism during a game regarding the same incident after being warned by an official.

            I think this is a great rule that the NCAA has put into their rule book. These types of incidents happen all the time in the games, and make the coach and team look bad. Also many of the these games are being played on television which makes the team look even worse and the college look bad as well. So this type of rule may help clean up all of this mess. Also the referees don’t deserve all of the verbal punishment they get from the coaches; they are just doing their jobs and calling the best game that they possibly can. I hope this rule helps clean the game up because no one likes seeing the bench and coach acting a fool out on the court.

Team, Athletic Management. "NCAA Cleaning Up Bench Behavior ." 2 November 2012. Athletic Management. 1 December 2012 <http://www.athleticmanagement.com/2012/11/09/sideline_behavior_crack_down/index.php>.

MLB Rule Keeps Athletes In College

The Athletic Management writers wrote a great article recently, explaining the new rule the MLB has put into place to keep college kids in college longer. The rule that was created only allowed a certain amount of money that teams have to offer as bonuses to their first 10 round draft picks. Then everyone after the first 10 rounds was only able to be offered a bonus of 100 thousand or less. They think this will keep the athletes in college longer. Which will benefit the college teams by not losing as many players each year, and it will benefit the players by staying in college and getting their college degrees.

This rule that is being put into place will keep kids in college longer, but it may be taking away from the amount of money that they deserve for all the hard work they have been putting in. Almost every college athlete’s dreams are to make it to the big leagues and make money. So why are they taking this away from them?

I don’t like this rule as much. I have a lot of friends who are college baseball players and not one of them was happy with this rule. The only thing this benefits is the college teams. They will keep players longer and they will be better, but so will the other college baseball teams. So the only thing that is becoming better is the overall play of college baseball. I understand that a degree is important in getting a good job and everything. But isn’t MLB baseball one of the highest paying jobs out there. The reason kids leave college early to go play in the pros is determined on how much money they are offered. It is up to the athletes and families to decide whether the amount of money they are offered are good enough for them to leave college or not.

I think this rule is needs to be justified a little bit. The athletes don’t need to be taking advantaged of and have money taking away from them just because they want to raise the overall level of completion of college baseball.

Team, Athletic Management. "New MLB Rules May Help Colleges." 16 November 2012. Athletic Management. 2012 December 2012 <New MLB Rules May Help Colleges>.

The Student Section

                In every sports contest there are plenty of fans that come and watch. Then there is the student section. They are very loud, rowdy, and are screaming at the top of their lungs the whole entire game. Some of the things they do are just to support their team, and some of it is to get into the heads of the other team. Laura Ulrich writes an article on dealing with the students at high schools harassing other teams with body paint or signs, and talks about how alcohol may be the cause of this.

                This is a big problem that high school administrators and athletic directors have to deal with at their games. Many schools have policies that the students must abide by or they will be kicked out of the game. They also have a drinking policy which is not allowed at the tailgates.

                I think this problem is something that can be solved very easily. The first thing you need to deal with is the drinking at the tailgates of high school games.  No student in high school is 21 and old enough to drink, so it shouldn’t happen, but it does. All high school facilities should have a policy where there is absolutely no alcohol allowed on its grounds. Even the parents shouldn’t be allowed to drink either. It should be treated just like school. You don’t want a parent visiting the school to bring a beer inside, so why allow it at the high school sporting events. Next is you need to have administrators  all around the student section and if anything inappropriate is being said that person should be taken out and the other students will see there is strict policy.

                I don’t think the student section should be any quieter or not be as excited as they are, but there is an appropriate and right way to do it, which can still be fun.

 

Ulrich, Laura. “Battling Booze and Body Paint.” Athletic Management (2007)

http://www.athleticmanagement.com/2007/10/29/battling_booze_and_body_paint/index.php

Facilities Expand Throughout Neighborhoods

            Many schools these days want to expand and upgrade their athletic facilities. There are many of repercussions to doing this though. First it is going to cost a lot of money. The second thing is you have to choose where in your county or city you are going to build the new facilities.

            When getting the money to build a new facility, it has to come from someone. It can come from your boosters. It can come from the people of the town. Or it can come from an outside source. When trying to pass a proposal of a new facility to the people, the town there usually has some type of vote that the city has to have to decide. That way they have a say if they want this to happen and know what will happen to the town if it goes through. They also will know how much money they will be spending if any at all.

            This brings me to my second point on where will the facility be built in the city. Some facilities move into the neighborhoods and people may lose their homes. So the vote that they have may help them have a say in people losing their houses or not.

            This is a great topic that athletic facility supervisors or any facility supervisors may want to think about when wanting to build a new facility. I would also recommend to them to read an article by Kelley Povero called “There Goes the Neighborhood?” which has a lot of interesting situations on this topic.

Kelley, Povero. “There Goes the Neighborhood?” Athletic Management (2007).

http://www.athleticmanagement.com/2007/07/26/there_goes_the_neighborhood/index.php

Athletes and Social Media

          In the article “Twitter Gone Bad”, the Athletic Management website informs the public on an issue with student athletes using Twitter inappropriately. In this article they describe how 6 football players from a high school in Oregon, were suspended for tweeting inappropriate and racist comments about a player that recently transferred to another school. They received the suspension for cyber bullying which was a state law that was put into place for the schools. Their coach was interviewed for the article and basically said it was a bunch of stupid comments that his athletes made, and the problem was that in this day in age the way that people communicate is viewable for the whole public to see.

            First off I would like to say that the students should have never made these comments to the player that transferred. Next the students need to understand that communication via Twitter is viewable for all of the public to see. The final thing I would like to say on this issue is all schools should talk to their students about this issue. I don’t know if the coach ever had a talk or if the school ever had a talk to their students about social media harassing. I know that my high school did and it was very clear, that you need to watch what is on your social media sites. But I would recommend any coaches or school to make sure that this talk or a meeting about this situation is put into place so their students understand.

            I think this a great article and a great lesson that not only student athletes can read and learn about but also any student can read and learn about. This is a type of bullying that a lot of schools have issues on, and is something that can be prevented.

 

“Twitter Gone Bad” Athletic Management (2012)

http://www.athleticmanagement.com/2012/03/09/twitter_gone_bad/index.php

Should Pre Workout Drinks Cause Suspensions?

          The Athletic Management website wrote an article describing how Wisconsin high school athletes were suspended for using energy drinks/ pre workout drinks. In this article they explain how 10 athletes were using legal energy drinks, and pre workout drinks that they bought at the local GNC. The drink that they were using was a Creatine Nitrate product called C4 Extreme that contained Synephrine, a substance banned by the Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association. The students explained how they were just buying a pre workout drink like any other athlete would for their workouts, and had no idea that it contained Synephrine. They then said if they would have read the label and saw that it was banned, or their coaches would have reminded them that it was banned they would have never used it.

            So the real questions I am getting from this are, Should the students really be suspended for this? Is it their fault, the coach’s fault, or GNC’s fault? I honestly think that it is not the students fault at all. The first thing that the Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association, should have done is inform the coaches on the banned substances that they have and make sure that they inform their athletes. This way the athletes know when going to buy a pre workout what they are limited to buying. Also the GNC store is at fault too. They should have bold letters on their products that say “contains Synephrine and is banned in some states.” This would have prevented the situation from happening at all.

            I think this article was great and all student athletes should read this, so they know that they are limited on pre workout products that they put in their body, and if they are unsure they should contact their coach and find out what is banned.

 

“Energy Drink Leads to Suspensions” Athletic Management (2012).

http://www.athleticmanagement.com/2012/07/16/according_to_the_eau_claire/index.php

Athletic Departments Turning the Corner

            To address all of the types of situations that athletic departments go through to keep their programs alive, Laura Ulrich published an article named “Turning the Corner” for Athletic Management in the fall of 2008. Laura Ulrich is currently a contributing writer for Athletic Management. This article describes how athletic departments had to deal with all types of issues that made them look bad, but they find a way to overcome them. Ulrich wrote this article to explain what athletic departments have to go through just to keep their program afloat.

            In this article, Ulrich used 6 different types of situations that have happened to explain how athletic programs have overcome some type of crisis, and how it is possible to overcome a crisis. I will be explaining 3 of them I was really interested in.

 She first uses a situation at Montana State. In this situation student athletes were being charged of a violent crime and also being charged of drug dealing.  This caused the school and athletic program with have a very bad reputation.  Ulrich then explains how the athletic director at Montana State gets a group together to get this situation solved. They use a SWOT analysis, which stands for "Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats," to solve this situation. It only took two years for the program to turn this situation around and have a good reputation again. Which I think was a good strategy, because you need to get everyone together and find some solution to bring the program back to where it needs to be.

 The second story involves a high school having to deal with one of their student athletes being photographed drinking and doing drugs at a party, then the images being uploaded on Facebook. The school doesn’t know what to do about this situation because they never had any rules against it, but they were getting a lot of negative media about it. This situation ended up making the school have a policy on social media sites and pictures, which eventually spread throughout other school’s policies too. I think this is a big problem that happens in a lot of schools these days, and I know social media can cause a lot of trouble for people. So there needs to be some type of policy for student athletes and their social media.

 The last story I’m going to talk about involves a Title IX problem, where a female student athlete felt like she was being mistreated compared to the male athletes. So the school ended up asking her what she felt wasn’t fair, and came up with a solution were the women athletes were getting the same opportunity as male athletes. This is an issue that all schools must take into consideration, because Title IX can cause a lot of issues and a may cause a bad reputation for your school if you don’t watch it carefully.

            Ulrich explains these situations very well in this article. Her argument on how athletic programs have to deal with a lot is explained great by all of the situations and stories that she explained.  I really enjoyed reading this article, the stories that she provided were great and I honestly couldn’t stop reading until I found out what they did to fix the situations. I would recommend this article to basically anyone that likes sports or are involved in some type of sport. This deals with the crisis that programs have to go through sometimes, and there is always some type of problem that comes up. This article would be a great reference for people to read and try and deal with problems they may have in their sports.

 

Ulrich, Laura. "Turning the Corner." Athletic Management (2008).

http://www.athleticmanagement.com/2008/08/24/turning_the_corner/index.php