TOW #26: "Team Spirit"

College sports, like professional sports, are televised, but college athletes, unlike professional athletes, are not paid. 

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2014/05/12/140512taco_talk_gopnik

   Throughout history, there has been extensive debate over who should receive more money: the overseer or the worker? This same debate has arisen regarding college sports, particularly college football, bringing with it even more issues to consider with college sports. In his article "Team Spirit," Adam Gopnik proposes a couple of changes in the world of college sports. The purpose of "Team Spirit" is to convince readers, athletes, coaches, and colleges to consider changing how athletes transition from the high school sports career to the major league sports career without the need for college, which he argues is pointless anyway since "academic departments... offer non-courses to student athletes who may not even be fully literate" just to allow them to play at their college. To accomplish his purpose, Gopnik uses various examples, rhetorical questions, and analogies. 
     Gopnik references Northwestern University to explain the inequity between the players and the coaches. He cities that Northwestern made two hundred and thirty-five million dollars between 2003 and 2012 from their football program alone; however, players are still not given concussion-testing and inclusive medical coverage. Readers are likely to feel empathy for the football players at Northwestern University because this example generates pathos. This example illustrates how truly unfair the world of college sports, thus supporting Gopnik's idea of reforming college sports. 

     Additionally, Gopnik lets his readers come to his same conclusion by strategically using rhetorical questions. After mentioning the seven million dollar per season paycheck of the coach of the University of Alabama's football team, Gopnik asks "Shouldn’t those who do the work share the wealth?" The result is a dramatic contrast: wealth against poverty, health against illness, the one percent against the ninety-nine percent, all of which Gopnik's readers already have more than likely already thought about, just not yet in relation to college football. 

     By using analogies, Gopnik appeals to readers, such as myself, who do not entirely understand the world of college sports. Gopnik compares college football to a drama program. If the drama program's musical earned a lot of money, enough to pay the teachers involved quite well, it would seem reasonable to pay the student actors involved, although then it wouldn't just be a school drama program. I, at least, can say that this analogy helped me to understand the real conflict with college sports. Overall, Gopnik effectively accomplished his purpose in my opinion.