American League Championship Series

Youth are learning lessons about sports and life from watching famous athletes on and off the field. Everything a professional athlete does is being watched, especially by children who love to copy. In 1993, Charles Barkley who retired from the Phoenix Suns produced a commercial in which he stated, “I am not a role model and just because I can dunk a basketball doesn’t mean I should raise your kids.” Players break laws, and behave poorly, but are forgiven due to their talents. Riddick Bowe,…

Burke’s dramatistic theory to analyze the rhetoric of NASCAR drivers in comparison to athletes in other popular professional sports in the United States. This analysis shows how “rhetorical norms in NASCAR differ from those norms of other major American sports, and that this distinction could possibly play a role in the marketing success of NASCAR” (Williams). They contend that in virtually all traditional sports, athletes represent themselves as agents in post-game interviews. However, in…

That 's right, these tournaments often pull a much larger than sports competitions such as the World Series, the Super Bowl, and the NBA Finals, often competing for prize pools of millions of dollars. Little to everyone 's knowledge, this is also an industry that has existed since the 1970s and has silently been on the rise through decades. This boasting…

discredited, is now recognized as one reason that children whose families come from India (where memorization is still prized) are creaming their peers in the National Spelling Bee Championship. This cultural difference also helps to explain why students in China (and Chinese families in the U.S.) are better at math. Meanwhile, American students struggle with complex math problems because, as research makes abundantly clear, they lack fluency in basic addition and subtraction—and few of them…

The game of basketball would not be around today if it wasn’t for one man, his name was James Naismith. James was born on November 6, 1861 in Ontario, Canada. He was born to the parents of John and Margaret Naismith. When James was only nine years old both of his parents had died, leaving James an orphan. This was a very rough time in James’ life. After becoming an orphan, he was raised by his very strict grandmother for a little bit, and then his bachelor uncle. While growing up James enjoyed…

cries of “Coward” and “Commie” during games (Hirsch p. 144). However, before the end of the season, all seemed to be forgiven by the public as Mantle blossomed into one of the best players in the game. After leading the Yankees to a World Series championship in 1951, 1952, and 1953- while also being named an all-star in every one of those seasons- everyone seemed to forgive Mantle for not serving and it was hardly ever brought up again. Mantle went on to be named the Associated Press Male…

Since the birth of the NCAA, college athletes have been battling the fight of whether they should be able to receive a salary when they play a sport at the Division One level in college. Universities on average earn millions of dollars of revenue from these athletes, but the athletes that make this revenue possible do not earn any money. College athletes should be compensated for their skills and for the attention and revenue that they bring to their college during the years that the athlete…

Hip hop artist and basketball players are both performers, who have a rich connection and similar persona, showcasing style, swagger, urbanism, bravado, and coolness. This rich bond was established in 1979; from 1984 to 2009, a new era was conceived, known as “The Dunkadelic Era.” In 1979, the first mainstream explicit connection between hip-hop and basketball was established. The Sugarhill Gang’s hit song “Rapper’s Delight,” which is commonly referred to as the first mainstream hip-hop song,…

A common topic in high schools of late has been the use of drugs and steroid use among athletes. High schools have the ability to test athletes for the safety of the students. Although some parents and students believe that drug testing students in high school causes problems that can be avoided by not testing them. In high school athletics, people have proposed to drug test athletes for the safety of the athletes; however, other people believe that they should not be drug tested because it…

Unfortunately, some companies have mismanaged their greatest asset—their brands. This is what befell the popular Snapple brand almost as soon as Quaker Oats bought the beverage marketer for $1.7 billion in 1994. Snapple had become a hit through powerful grassroots marketing and distribution through small outlets and convenience stores. Analysts said that because Quaker did not understand the brand’s appeal, it made the mistake of changing the ads and the distribution. Snapple lost so much…