Sports Talk Radio

This blog post is meant to touch on the subject of sports talk radio as we did in class and how it is an influential source of information.  Sports, in general, have become a huge part of our society today and are only continuing to grow.  Although sports talk radio is not the only or even the most popular source of sports media, it still plays a big role in the sports world.  I sort of view sports talk radio as politics because there are many different radio hosts out there and it seems as though a particular person who follows sports tends to favor one radio host much more than all the others.  Sports talk radio hosts take the latest news and they implant their opinions into the matter.  Nothing that the radio hosts say have any influence on what news they are talking about; however, they all tend to have a certain way of connecting to specific audiences who feel the same way as the host does.  Much like political parties, people tend to agree on the views and beliefs of one particular radio host than any other.  An example we talked about in class of this was the "clones", who are extreme followers of Jim Rome.  These people are heavily influenced by the views and stances that Jim takes on any particular subject matter and as a result adopt those same views and beliefs as their own.  To further my point, in class this past Monday, Dr. Spencer asked the class if they had a specific sports talk radio host they preferred most and pretty much every student had one.  Not only did we as students talk about what we liked about our favorite radio host, but we also expressed our dislike for competing radio hosts.

So while Sportscenter and sports news on television or sports news in the newspaper or on the internet is most likely a more popular media form to obtain the current news in sports, sports talk radio appeals to the sports fans who like to go more in-depth on the matter.  Sports talk radio appeals to those who have a strong passion for sports and have certain views and beliefs that they want discussed.  I almost view sports talk radio as a form of psychology or like we said in class therapy, where people turn to their personal radio host they connect to best in order to deal with a certain event that is going on in the sports world.  Ultimately, sports talk radio brings personality and a connection with the fans to the world of sports.


Blog post by Nathan Wahle

The RUIMUS Accident

The RUIMUS Accident

Author: Brady Munger

On April 4th, 2007 Don Imus stirred up one of the largest race related and gender related controversies in recent history.  During his radio show, Imus made multiple remarks about the Rutgers University women's basketball team that shocked the nation.  The show full of "A list" politicians and all white crew as the article by  Gill explained, made some racy and gender fueled remarks that insulted the Rutgers women's basketball team, as well as women athletes all over (Gill pg. 119, 2011).  Between Imus, and Buddy McGuirk the executive producer, there were multiple different remarks made directed towards the players.  They included the players being called "Nappy headed ho's", "Jigaboos" and "some hard core ho's" (pg. 119).  When these were said on the air to a national audience it created a huge controversy, that included both social and civil activists, as well as many other groups.  Their was an outcry and a back lash directly from what he said, which led to many people demanding many things from the incident.  As a result of this, Imus was fired and was held out of his job for 8 months before being rehired.  

There were multiple things in this incident that I found sickening.  Other than the obvious things like the comments he made, there were other things that bothered me very much.  The first thing was how it was handled as a whole.  Although Imus was initially fired, he now has his job back and is back on the air which I feel should never have been allowed.  Secondly, when he was let go he got a very large settlement of money, while the lady's on the basketball team that had to go through the incident received nothing. I find this awful, Imus was able to say these terrible things, and then walk away with money because he was let go. It should have happened much differently.  Imus should have been fired with no settlement, and never allowed back on the air again.  Those are the ignorant things that happen in society that need to be taken care of and stopped immediately before they spread.

A large discussion point in class about this incident was what do we determine as wrong in today's society.  Someone brought up the point of the Chappelle show, and how they use certain terms such as this routinely. But with these two things, I believe there is a huge difference.  The first, is that the show is a complete form of entertainment.  It is not an attack on real life things, and is solely made to entertain people.  With the RUIMUS incident, it was not a form of entertainment, but an attack on something real in life.  He attacked the AMATEUR basketball players, and embarrassed them and shamed them in front of the entire nation.  Second, with the Chappelle show, it rarely attacks specific individuals.  But with the RUIMUS case, Imus attacked specific individual people in the Rutgers Team.  He called out the team, and slandered them with racial and gender slurs that were very offending and not meant in any way "entertaining" or joking.  Overall, I found this incident very offending and hurtful.  It regressed all of the progress society had made on gender and racial equality in one quick segment.  It shows how disrespectful some people truly can be, and shows that there still is a sense of racism and gender inequality in this nation and that it still exists. 

Indianapolis Grand Prix Experience

Written by Mark Chipperfield

           

            In the year 2005 I had the unfortunate experience of seeing an event unfold similar to the one that happened at Indian Wells in 2001. I was attending the United States Grand Prix with my father and older brother for the third consecutive year. My dad had always been a huge fan of Formula one racing and he instilled that passion into us. We would and still do watch every race of the formula one season even though the majority require being up at odd hours in the morning. So when the series starting having a race in the United States we jumped at the chance to attend. It also helped that the race usually took place during the summer.

            The weekend started like any other with teams having multiple practice sessions on Friday and Saturday leading up to the race on Sunday. However there were a couple cars that kept spinning out on the last corner of the racetrack that led to the cars slamming into the wall at a very high speed. It was noticeable to me as one of the cars that this repeatedly happened to belonged to my favorite driver at the time. But it wasn’t really viewed as anything out of the ordinary in the media and things were going normally as they would on any race weekend. The day of the race came and there was excitement in the air due to the possibility of Formula one becoming more popular in the United States with an exciting race. Then things took a dramatic turn for the worse. After the cars were finished taking their warm up lap the vast majority of them pulled into the pits and did not lineup on the starting grid like the usually did. And all the cars that pulled into the pits drove straight into their respective garages and the drivers climbed out of their cars. It was a sure sign that they were not going to be participating in the race. Amid all the confusion the remaining six cars started the race as if nothing happened and the crowd started to get upset. The following video is the beginning of the US broadcast of the race and some of the shock expressed by the analysts’ sort of captures it all. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhgnc6VruQs . This experience does differ from the Indian Wells event because it the dislike wasn’t really expressed towards individual people as it was against the Williams Sisters.