Schooldays

I remember the 2008 football season at Milton high school like it was yesterday. It was our first winning season in nine years and eight wins was the most since 1993.

I went to all 11 games and when reading the article by the Milton herald, it brought back good memories of watching Toney Williams run the ball to the tune of 27 touchdowns and over 2,000 rushing yards.

The article was a reflection of a 8-3 season and why it wasn’t an anomaly — because to many people including myself, it was a surprise. Milton hosted a playoff game for the first time in 25 years and ended a seven game losing streak to rival Roswell.

The 2008 Milton season was a compilation of years of youth football actually paying off. The same group of players were together from the time they were in fifth grade to the time they graduated high school.

Age Regulation Questions

The topic of age regulations for professional leagues has been debated for years. In order to develop a feature on age regulation, it is important to discuss both the philosophical ideals behind the regulations, as well as the facts of their impact.

Many of these questions would require extensive research and talking to multiple sources, but I would look to answer these general questions in my feature.

When did NBA and NFL age regulations begin? Who was the driving force behind them?
What is the main idea behind these regulations?
How many athletes would be ready for professional play out of high school?
How does leaving early for professional leagues effect graduation rates at premier college programs?
Which NCAA school has the most players utilizing the “one and done” protocol?
How many players in the NFL and NBA have college degrees?
What percentage of players go back to college during or after their playing career?
How do top high school and collegiate athletes feel about age regulations? Do they generally want to get a college degree?
What are the other options for players to wait out the age regulations if they do not go to college?
How would eliminating age regulations effect the quality of college sports?
What does the typical NFL or NBA player do for a living after their career? Is a college degree usually necessary?
How do other sports, like baseball, handle age regulations and draft restrictions?

More #LochMess

While Ryan Lochte is the easy culprit to target in this incident, in my previous post I made an emphasis on the media that surrounded him blowing over the story once the truth came out.

Sticking with that theme, I think there is a story in how the coverage was handled. Some journalists inserted their own opinion whether it be via Twitter, a column, or on broadcast coverage. I am interested in, in this case, how journalists chose what to report and if their personal opinion effected their coverage once the REAL truth came out.

Here are some questions:

What did your coverage of the Ryan Lochte include?
Did you have a personal opinion on what the consequences should be?
Did you voice your opinion? To whom?
What is your opinion?
Did you read the apologies and statements from all four swimmers?
What were your thoughts?
Did you watch Ryan Lochte’s interview with Matt Lauer?
Why did you or did you not choose to bring Conger and Bentz’s innocence to light?
If not, were you simply tired of reporting on the story? Or did you feel a certain way about how clicks would come to your site?
Did you continue Olympic coverage post- Lochte story or did you simply end there?

I think so many of the questions depend on how these are answered, but this is a starting point.

NBA L2M Report – Question

When the NBA started its Last 2 Minute Review program in February 2015, the goal was to increase transparency in officiating. The reports tell you what calls the referees missed in the last two minutes of a close game. In essence, they retroactively assess what should’ve happened without actually righting any wrongs.

Here are some questions the league should consider before the start the 2016/17 season regarding the practice:

Why not let the referees talk to the media after the game? If the goal is transparency, why not let the refs speak up for themselves over controversial calls.
Would you consider retroactively changing the outcome of a game decided at the buzzer?
How is this improving the quality of the NBA product?
Can the refs appeal any call deemed incorrect after the reports are handed out?
Who are the individuals reviewing and editing report ? Do they have extensive officiating experience, like Steve Javey?

Questions about Lacrosse

What makes people, especially kids, want to play lacrosse?
When did the change of kids playing lacrosse happen? Is there a pinpoint time that we can see a large shift in kids to the lacrosse field? Or was it a very gradual change?
If we can pinpoint a time, what was the event that caused kids to switch to lacrosse? Did anyone lead the charge?
How is this affecting other sports? What sports is lacrosse taking kids away from? Why would kids want to play lacrosse over these other sports? Is lacrosse safer than football, which has had many concussion problems in recent years?
Why can high schools suddenly take on all these lacrosse programs? Is it a title IX issue or are they complying with the increased interest in the sport?
How are schools dealing with the added interest in lacrosse? How much more money do they have to spend for accommodations?
Will this trend continue or is lacrosse just a long fad?
Lacrosse is known as a country club sport so how is it expanding to low-income areas around Atlanta?

Lochte questions

1. Who is Ryan Lochte?
2. How does Lochte’s demeanor help explain what happened in Rio?
3. What is Lochte’s relationship with the other swimmers he was with?
4. Why did he feel the need to initally embellish his story, regardless of the extent?
5. Does Lochte have a history of this type of behavior?
6. What is Lochte’s relationship like with USA Swimming, and are there prior examples that might help illuminate this?
7. Are there other examples of the American public turning on an athlete as quickly as this?
8. What was Brazil’s role in perpetuating this story?
9. What were the problems coming into the Games in Brazil?
10. Was the incident involving Lochte seen as a way by Brazil to distract from some of the problems of the Games?
11. Lochte and Michael Phelps are often compared in the pool together — how are they different off it? Similar?
12. What has been the fallout from this story, and what other stories have emerged from the initial incident?
13. Might the fleeting nature of the Olympics aid Lochte in helping this story go away?
14. What is Dancing with the Stars?
15. Why does Lochte feel the need to stay in the spotlight by appearing on television so soon after the incident?

Surprising-Lochte

Al Roker gets into heated argument on 'Today' show over Ryan Lochte

http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/olympics/rio-2016/2016/08/24/ryan-lochte-dancing-with-the-stars-dwts-cast/89306932/

This Ryan Lochte story continues to fascinate me. It very much was an international incident, and the legs that it has and continues to have is remarkable.

There are so many facets and angles that have emerged from this story that have expanded well beyond the second day. We are now into the celebrity and outside source part of it, from Al Roker garnering praise and then admonishment from the public and his bosses respectively to Ryan Lochte now, for lack of a better word, capitalizing on his spotlight by joining Dancing With the Stars.

This was by far the biggest non-athletic story to come out of Rio, and the fact that it is still something that is being talked about and debated a week later is wild. It has down likely irreparable damage to Lochte’s reputation and but a scab on an otherwise extremely successful Olympics for USA Swimming.

Surprising – Age Regulations

For anyone who pays attention to sports, this may sound like beating a dead horse. But, I have always been fascinated with the age regulations for professional leagues, namely the NFL and NBA.

For basketball, the rules for the draft stating that players must be 19 years old and have at least one season between high school and NBA play have created the notorious “one and done” phenomenon. As a college basketball fan, this is a point of contention for me. On one hand, I root for these athletes and respect their decision to move on to professional play, but at the same time it is frustrating to see so many players leaving programs and not graduating. This story discusses the continuous back and forth on this rule.

For the NFL, college football is more of a necessity because of the three years out of high school rule. Still, many athletes choose to declare for the draft before graduation. I can vividly recall the national reaction when Johnny Manziel declared for the draft as soon as possible. And look how that turned out… I don’t know the best solution or if these regulations do their job, but it is a big sacrifice of education and athletes foregoing a college degree to pursue a professional career.

NBA Last 2-Minute reports

Over the summer, The National Basketball Referees Association asked the NBA to stop releasing its Last Two Minute Reports. The Last Two-Minute Reports which tell everyone accurate and inaccurate calls and non-calls in all games within five points in the final two minutes of regulation and during overtime. The fact that the NBA tried out at all is surprising.

I bring this up for 2 reasons. First, as we all know, nothing will change retroactively, and I think the playoffs have shown that the refs aren’t exactly improving because of it. We don’t need a report to tell us a call was wrong (most of the time the 6-10 angles and slow-mo replays tell us that) and most of the calls they review are either innocuous or things that are never called (travels, illegal screens) anyway.

Second, I am a firm believer that a foul call in the first quarter can have just as much of an impact as a foul call in the final minute. So rather than do a L2M report of every little thing (we don’t need a report telling us that an intentional foul to stop the clock was a foul), why not do a report of just the controversial or borderline calls in a game? 95-98% of the average game is not controversial, so just break down the remaining calls and non-calls and let us know if they were right.

#LochMess

Yes, I realize that probably everyone is writing about the same thing here, but I feel as if I offer a unique perspective to the situation, being so close to the UGA swim team and being at the Olympics.

We all know the story, Ryan Lochte and friends celebrate a little too much after the swimming portion of the Olympics conclude, Lochte rips down a poster at a gas station, lies about the situation….and here we are: http://edition.cnn.com/2016/08/20/sport/us-olympics-swimmers-reported-robbery-future/?sr=twnewday082216us-olympics-swimmers-reported-robbery-future1104AMVODtopLink&linkId=27902532.

I am by no means surprised by how this whole story spiraled out of control. Michael Phelps’ 23rd gold medal and retirement might as well have been a year ago and who is Lilly King again? The drunk actions of a few American swimmers absolutely took over all Olympic news feed. Everything.

Journalists were lacking anything juicy at the Olympic Games. Personally, I didn’t see a single mosquito during my time in Rio. Nobody really saw any mosquitoes. And what about the water? Yeah, that was fine too. The Lochte story was the first REAL thing that journalists had to cling to to prove themselves right about all the predictions they made about the Games. But that’s still not the surprising part.

What did shock me is how quiet nearly all media members became as the TRUE facts came out. Gunnar Bentz and Jack Conger both released statements giving their versions of the story, which have held up to be true. People who were calling for the swimmer’s heads all of a sudden fell silent. Christine Brennan led the charge for a lifetime Lochte suspension, but made NO mention of either of the swimmers statements once the truth came out.

To me, this just proves that journalism is moving more and more towards clicks. I worry that the profession is losing its integrity and journalists are spending more time presenting their own commentary, as either absurd or accurate as it may be, than chasing facts. And that’s what is surprising.