Movie Review of 'The Program'

In his article “The Shame of College Sports,” Taylor Branch (2011) describes how universities are focused on advancing and receiving money from major athletics and having star athletes, but how the universities are not caring for the “student athlete.” The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) has made college sports into an unmerited business. However, as years progress more athletes are getting smart and are taking the NCAA to court. The more students that challenges the rules by the NCAA and take them to court, the secrets and undermining values of the NCAA come out and the closer the NCAA comes to an end.

Within sports, pressure is always there; you have to learn to deal with it. H. G. Bissinger’s book, Friday Night Lights, hones in on the football team the Permian Panthers of Odessa. Through this focus on the team, one can see how football is an integral part of the town thriving, maintaining its hopes and dreams. Despite the racial and social divide within the community, those Friday night games become a place where dreams may be made possible. In this way, sports, specifically football, not only have an impact on the players but the community as well.

In 1995, several years after he stepped down as the NCAA’s executive director of 36 years, Walter Byers published Unsportsmanlike Conduct: Exploiting College Athletes. The title didn’t belie the book’s content. Among Byers’ confessions was the deception he sought in coining the well-worn phrase “student-athlete” to describe college athletes.

“College Athletes for Hire, The Evolution and Legacy of the NCAA’s Amateur Myth” written by Allen L. Sack and Ellen J. Staurowsky. In their book, the authors enlighten the reader on such issues as athletic scholarships, professionalism in college sports, and favoritism for athletes as well as many more important legal, and ethical issues that we as a country need to address. In this paper I will not do a standard book report by simply regurgitating the information I read in their book.

With the universities pulling in more than twelve billion dollars, the rate of growth for college athletics surpasses companies like McDonalds and Chevron (Finkel, 2013). The athletes claim they are making all the money, but do not see a dime of this revenue. The age-old notion that the collegiate athletes are amateurs and students, binds them into not being paid by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). This pay for play discussion has been talked about since the early 1900s but recently large steps are being made to actually make a change. There are many perspectives on the payment of collegiate student athletes coming from the NCAA, the athletes themselves, and the university officials.

The ugly truth behind the money machine that is college sports is that, every year, college athletes are deceived by the institutions the compete for into making them millions of dollars, with relatively little in return. Athletes are said to be given a chance to attend college and to attain a free college degree. However, research has shown that this is not completely true for two reasons. For one, the student athlete will spend most of their time in preparation for competition. Secondly, what education the student athlete does receive hardly serves them outside of maintaining eligibility just so

For a lot of kids, it’s not until it’s all said and done, and they look back on it several years later, that they realize the difference the sport made in their lives. They are proud of playing the game. Have you ever met anybody who accomplished playing four years of high school football, and at the end of that run said, ‘Man, I wish I wouldn’t have played’? It doesn’t get said. Football players aren’t perfect. Nobody is. But millions of former players, one by one, can recount the life-altering principles they learned from football. They know the value of football is the values in football.That’s why high school football – and particularly high school coaches – play such a vital role in our society. Our football coaches are on the front lines of the battle for the hearts and minds of the boys in our society.

Bennett, Dashiell. “Only 22 Of 120 Division I Athletic Programs Made Money Last Year.” Business Insider. Business Insider, Inc., 15 Jun. 2011. Web. 28 Oct 2014.This supports Frank Crumley’s claim that most athletic programs “work in the red.” The author also shows how football is the big money maker. Not all departments can pay their players. Therefore, it would be unfair for departments that can pay their players to do so. The figures come from the NCAA annual report of revenue and expenses for Division I sports. This is one of my main arguments against paying football players.

In the op-ed “College Athletes Should Not Be Paid,” written by Warren Hartenstine analyzes the issue on college football players being paid for their performance on the field. This op-ed article was published in The Baltimore Sun, which is a major newspaper in Maryland. Warren Hartenstine was an assistant dean at a large East Coast school and was playing Division I football while attending one of the Big Ten institutions. While playing football he was also very involved in extracurricular activities with school, such as being in a fraternity, Kappa Sigma. Warren Hartenstine was involved in his school and the schooling system majorly, he believes in having self discipline and dual success in a student’s favorite institution and their higher education.

There is a reality to college athletes participating in men's basketball and football. The reality is these athletes are being exploited, and as argued by Stanley Eitzen, they are being exploited much like slaves during the years of the plantation system. It is an idea created by Eitzen that seams overdrawn, but makes significant parallels to that of the plantation system. The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) preserves the plantation system, providing the rules that protect the interests of the individual plantation overseers. The plantations are football and men's basketball factories within the universities with big-time programs. The plantation overseers are college coaches who receive hard labor from their workers. The workers on the plantation are owned by the plantation, they produce riches for their masters while receiving a meager amount of return on the profits of the plantation. Being exploited for their physical abilities is not the only injustice hindering these athletes. They are controlled, managed, and dominated by their superiors. They are restricted in their rights to freedom, and in some cases mistreated physically and mentally (Eitzen).

Sports are a significant part of society and spectators enjoy particular events regardless of the type. However, there are many players who develop special working and social relationships with whom they are participating regardless of the type of sport. The relationship and how people interact with one another can be the determination of how successful a team can be. The particular film based on a true story that I chose is titled When the Game Stands Tall. This film consists of a high performing football team of De La Salle High School in the state of California. Jim Caviezel portrays the head coach (Bob Ladouceur) as a man with such vision and passion that goes beyond the fundamental principles of coaching the game of football. The football team had won 151 games without being defeated which is the highest winning record a team has had in the game of football. The film shows the internal struggles of the players in their lives as people, and how they perform on the field. It also shows the external tragic difficulties that they face while they attend and play for De Le Salle High School. In the movie, the head coach helps the students/players by not only coaching them but also showing them how to live a flourishing life by committing to endure difficult life situations and the way to overcome them. He helps teach the principles of brotherhood and companionship with the team that they build. In the movie, the head coach and the staff had taught the players

The “contradiction at the heart of big-time college football,” as Michael Oriard describes it, is the competing demands of marketing and education. The 1890s proved to university administrators that there was an enormous market for collegiate football, which postulated opportunities for university building. Since this ubiquitous realization, there has coincided this blatant, yet unchanging contradiction that academic institutions are permitted to profit off of the services provided by its student-athletes while the athletes must idly accept that they are amateurs, donating their efforts to their respective schools. The schools then direct this revenue toward strengthening their athletic departments, and thus continues this seemingly endless growth of big-time college sports, all while athletes remain uncompensated and academics continue to take a backseat.

The term “student-athlete,” coined by Walter Byers and the National Collegiate Athletic Association, has been frequently mentioned and used in intense arguments between the NCAA and former and current students (Nocera, 1). Today’s student-athletes are expected to be students first and athletes second, but when these athletes are forced to undergo countless hours of preparation for the big lights on Saturday in order to retain their scholarships, they often must ignore their studies. These athletes do not have the time to maintain jobs and make money because of their stressful schedules. The NCAA, an organization that the federal government qualifies as non-profit, makes nearly $1 billion a year and gives absolutely none of that money to the true makers of revenue, the athletes (primarily those in Division I football and men’s basketball). The only compensation that athletes receive for their work is scholarship money, which may be deemed priceless for one’s future but is really only worth $25,000 a year. Universities, television networks, and the NCAA are ignoring that college athletics is a real business (Jackson, 1). The educational benefits do not provide these athletes with food for their tables, money for their families, or even beds to sleep in. Student-athletes are commonly forced to take benefits from alumni, fans who have money, and their own coaches, despite it being an NCAA violation. Because college sports serve as one of America’s most profitable

Salaries, wages, and compensations have always been major and generally controversial topics in democratic America. And, with the rising popularity of college athletics, particularly football, compensation (or lack thereof) for college athletes has recently been a hot topic in American sports. While some of the debate stems from the similarity between responsibilities college athletes have to their programs and those of professionals, most of the issue involves the principles of amateurism. Recent “scandals” involving college athletes such as Terrelle Pryor, Johnny Manziel, and Todd Gurley have raised questions about the ethics of amateurism, particularly with regard to the NCAA organization. The issue is found in a very gray area, where there is most likely no definitive one-size-fits-all solution, but the resolution of this issue is one that will change and shape the future of college athletics across the national landscape.

Collegiate football is not only a very lucrative and rapidly growing “business” but it also has a “tremendous impact on our culture, influencing the values of millions of participants and spectators”. Because of this, it is vey important to ensure that the NCAA ensure that all teams not only follow the rules and interpretations of the game, but also hold themselves to a higher standard with an established code of ethics. These days, there are concerns about moral