Past The 'Keeper

Julie Ward was the assistant sports editor at USA Today from 1989-2007 and is a past president of an organization called A.W.E.S.O.M.E.

After

Women make up 51% of the American population, yet there are such an extremely low amount of women writers.

Why are there so few women in leadership positions?

There is a very small amount in the pool to begin with.

The day after the 2011 Super Bowl there were no women’s bylines in 22 pages of the USA Today newspaper!

A lot ofo women do not choose the sports writing profession because it is tough. If they do get into it, they will need to get out of it soon after.

• They carry a bigger burden. They must be the caregivers to their family.
• Hours are awful (work weekends, etc.)
• When men get into sports writing, there is a large amount of them who stay until the end until they move up to the highest position they can. Therefore, there is limited high positions for women.

There needs to be more diversity.

When she would go into a meeting at USA Today, the first question they would ask was, “How much diversity do we have on our staff?”

As her career continued, she would find that she was the only woman in the meeting and felt that she was only invited to the meeting to be the “token woman.”

Mary Garber, a legendary and credentialed sports writer in the 1950’s, was not allowed to be in the press box. Shocking.

There are probably more women covering the White House than men (or at least 50-50) and there may be more women covering the business side of reporting, but other than those there most likely isn’t anything else that women reporters are near the same amount as men.

Photo courtesy of Hoopedia

In Playing for Keeps, David Halberstam takes the first full measure of Michael Jordan‘s epic career, one of the great American stories of our time. A narrative of astonishing power and human drama, brimming with revealing anecdotes and penetrating insights, the book chronicles the forces in Jordan’s life that have shaped him into history’s greatest basketball player, and the larger forces that have converged to make him the most famous living human being in the world.

From The Breaks of the Game to Summer of ’49, David Halberstam has brought the perspective of a great historian, the inside knowledge of a dogged sportswriter, and the love of a fan to bear on some of the most mythic players and teams in the annals of American sport. With Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls he has given himself his greatest challenge, and produced his greatest triumph. The book is rich with Halberstam’s professional signature: incisive, carefully woven human portraits of the major figures. We see the various players and teams the Bulls must overcome on their long, hard journey to six world championships, including Larry Bird and the Celtics, Isiah Thomas and the Pistons, and Magic Johnson and the Lakers. We get a rare insider’s view of the dynamics between Jordan, the star, and the others who played critical roles in the championship seasons, including the shrewd, thoughtful Phil Jackson, the enigmatic Scottie Pippen, and the curiously shy Dennis Rodman. In addition, we see the bitter divisions between players and management on the Bulls, and the NBA’s interior pressures and conflicts as basketball grows during Jordan’s reign into a phenomenally successful big-time celebrity sport. This book is, as well, about fame in America, the forces that create it and its consequences. Among other things, we see how David Falk and Nike launched the campaign that sold Jordan to the world, abetted by a small Oregon ad agency, Wieden and Kennedy, and a struggling young Brooklyn filmmaker named Spike Lee.

The product of tireless on-the-ground reporting suffused with the wisdom and imagination of one of our greatest writers, Playing for Keeps is a book that, in defining Michael Jordan, also helps to define America in the Jordan Era.

Photo courtesy of Steve Klein

Tom O’Connor, the athletic director at GMU talked about what it takes to be involved with a division I athletics program and what he expects out of his student-athletes.

What should intercollegiate athletics be about?

• Quality and balance. Be the best, meaning not only on the playing field but also in the classroom.
• Sportsmanship — the core value of intercollegiate athletics.

Sportsmanship involves yelling at the refs, getting a technical foul, etc.

• Have fun. The athletics department is similar to the “toys and games department” at a retail store.

Why?

Because it’s fun. Everybody enjoys going into the toys and games department and O’Connor wants everybody to feel the same involving athletics.

He referenced sports as a “side door” rather than the “main door” of the university. He truly believes that learning in the classroom is the main door and the most important aspect of being in a university.

The memorable 2006 Final Four run helped bring visibility to GMU and brought indirect marketing to the university with around $1 billion in free marketing and advertisement.

At first the criticism and attention that GMU had was negative from the media and as they had success, it turned into positive attention.

The sports budget — which I was apparently confused about — is frozen, not cut. All the money that the athletics has comes from people who pay to watch and also from outside donations. The coaches salaries and scholarship money was not cut. It stayed the same. But rather than flying to Dallas to play a team, they will just go to Baltimore to play someone else instead. O’Connor wants to focus on getting the basic human needs fulfilled first and foremost before anything else.

These are:

• Clothing
• Shelter
• Food
• Good equipment to play with

For GMU to have a football team, the money would come from student fee’s rather than tuition. But at this point in time, O’Connor hasn’t received the necessary funding from alumni to begin a football program at Mason. And if it does, he wants it to be big-time.

Let’s not think small. Think big.

Tom O'Connor speaking at GMU (Photo courtesy of Steve Klein

When the jerseys are put on and the games begin, George Mason University student-athletes become performers — but their lives beyond the sport are very similar to the typical college student.

A university-wide phenomenon has the typical student believing that student-athletes are spoiled with benefits.

Though for the most part, the truth is quite the opposite.

“We hold our student-athletes to high standards,” said GMU’s assistant vice president and athletics director Tom O’Connor. “Many people don’t know this but on average, student-athletes at Mason have a higher overall GPA than our non-athletes on campus. They aren’t spoiled.”

O’Connor, who spoke at GMU Thursday, defended the notion that student-athletes receive more benefits in the classroom than the typical Mason student.

In addition to being held to similar high standards in the classroom, GMU student-athletes also use the same facilities on campus as every other student.

Student-athletes are most notably seen working out next to the typical Mason student at GMU’s gym facilities, including the RAC, the Aquatic and Fitness Center, and Skyline.

“I live in the Student Apartments, which is right by the RAC, and I love working out in that place,” said Chase Miller, a sophomore on Mason’s soccer team. “The facilities on campus are awesome and I have no problem running on the treadmill next to a non-athlete.”

In addition to sharing the same facilities, student-athletes go through the same housing registration process as every other student on campus.

“We don’t get benefits when it comes to housing,” said Dustin Butcher, a junior on the GMU soccer team. “We have our scheduled time that we have to register just like everyone else and if we don’t get it done, we are stuck with the same issues as them.”

That schedule caused problems this semester that every student was worrying about — including the student-athletes.

“There was a glitch in the system with the high amount of people registering at the same time,” Butcher said. “My roommates and I all had to wait and wonder if we would get the room we wanted, just like the other people on my floor who don’t play sports. And it turned out that we didn’t get it.”

While nearly all student-athletes and non-athletes had to deal with those same housing issues, the players on Mason’s basketball team didn’t have the same worries as the rest of their fellow students.

“I will admit that the basketball team gets some extra benefits that the typical student and student-athlete doesn’t receive,” said O’Connor. “And to be honest, it comes from a business and recruiting standpoint so we can bring better players into the program and get more revenue at games if we do well.”

Vince Papale’s football career ended in stardom but it was a long road that took him to that point in his life.

Actor Mark Wahlberg portrays Papale’s journey through the film Invincible. Based in Papale’s hometown of Philadelphia, Pa. he was working as a supply manager two days a week until budget cuts eliminated his job completely.

Nothing was going well for him.

His wife divorced him, believing Papale would never amount to anything in life, but when then-Philadelphia Eagles coach Dick Vermeil announces that he will hold an open tryout to spice things up for the team, Papale tries out — reluctantly.

With so much trouble in his life up to this point, most people would have give up and never taken the tryout seriously, but Papale didn’t just go — he went there to prove he could play with the big boys of the NFL.

Day after day, his teammates never gave him a chance, always trying their hardest to put him down, hurt him, and prove this 30-year old didn’t deserve a shot to play with them.

But Papale was used to this kind of treatment his whole life and it never stopped him from doing what he wanted to do — and doing it to his best ability.

A true die-hard fan, Papale was being covered by the local news station throughout his tryout and eventually shocks the world and actually makes the team.

The team had been so bad in recent years that a win was rare. But in just his second professional game, Papale recovers a fumbled football and runs it all the way back for a touchdown with his best friends in the stands watching and cheering him on.

This is a story that truly shows what passion, a love for the game, and commitment can get you. I could watch this movie over and over again, yet I will never stop getting chills down my spine.

A true never-give-up movie is a must-see not only for sports fans, but for anyone who has ever been told they couldn’t make it.

In case you haven’t seen or heard of the movie, here’s a trailer: