Billion Dollar Ball lot 1/3

On March 5th Gilbert M. Gaul is visiting our school to talk about his book "Billion Dollar Ball" at Cinnaminson High School. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting for writing this book.  The Billion Dollar Ball is a persuasive book through the big money culture of college football.  He references colleges such as Michigan State, Notre Dame, and almost all of the Texas schools.     Also, he talks about the big money profit that Texas University profits every year from just its football team, as well as the big money stadium they are putting in that fits over 100,000 people.  I found reading this book very influential and it was a great book to read for our sports and society class.

Questions for Mr. Gaul

1. Why did you decide to write this book?
2.  What inspired you to write this book?
3.  Did you play any college sports?
4.  How did you get a passion for sports?
5.  How much money did you make off of this book alone?
6.  What college did you attend?
7.  How many colleges did you visit while writing this book beforehand?
8.  Why did you focus on the University of Texas?

Experts on the NCAA

http://www.usnews.com/debate-club/should-ncaa-athletes-be-paid

http://ww2.kqed.org/education/2015/03/27/college-athletes-get-paid/

Sole Man

In our sports and society class we watched an ESPN 30 for 30 film called "Sole Man".  This film shows the remarkable journey a man of the name of Sonny Vaccaro went to to fulfill his dreams.  His ultimate dream was to spread his shoe company that happened to be Nike, and have people wear the brand all around the world.  He began by finding the best high school basketball players in the nation.  He would then provide the coaches of these athletes with Nike gear, and money.  The coaches then told their players to wear their products, and people who would see the players play in the shoes would want to wear the same.  But what made Sonny famous for who he is to this day, was the way he got big athletes to wear his Nike gear.  When Michael Jordan was a huge star in college Sonny noticed and told Michael that he would have his own signature shoe if he signed a contract with Nike.  After this deal was made, and Michael was soon led to his NBA stardom, Nike's companies sales sky rocketed.  The brand of the name of Jordan was known all around the world and Sonny was not done yet.  He found other big names in sports such as Kobe Bryant and Tracy McGrady and gave them their own signature shoe.

 But a few years later Sonny was fired of his job, because of leaving a bad reputation with Nike.  Sonny swore for revenge and began to work with the company Adidas.  It could be believed that his being fired from Nike had to do with Sonny not being able to convince Ed O'Bannon, a top high school prospect to the University of USC which was where his best friend George Raveling was the head coach at.  In later years O'Bannon and Sonny became very close and have been working on getting college athletes paid.  The two took this case to court and took on the NCAA,  and eventually won.  To this day student athletes are still not allowed to be paid but that will most likely be changed in the future.

NCAA Controversy

Throughout March and April the NCAA tournament is in full go.  Everyone is talking about it, and everyone is making bets on their brackets.  But with all of this excitement, there is also a little bit of controversy.  The NCAA is trying to find out new ways to make money, and one way is to expand the arena during the final four to an NFL stadium.  The NCAA is almost doubling their profit of ticket sales, because of how much bigger the NFL stadium is than a regular basketball gym.  But with this happening there is also a lot of people complaining about not being able to see the game.  With the seats being so expanded and so far away from the court fans have little to no visibility of what is happening during the game.

Not only this, but people are considering why the NCAA did not allow Louisville to play in the tournament but did allow UNC and Syracuse to play. All three of these teams were involved with cheating and the NCAA punished them accordingly.  The NCAA allowed Syracuse to play in the tournament but punished them by taking off 12 scholarships in their program.  On the other hand, UNC did just as much cheating as Syracuse but did not get any punishments.  People are saying the NCAA is doing this because UNC brings so much profit and without them in the tournament it would be a huge loss of profit, and the competition would not be the same.