What About Sports?

What is it with sports? Why is there so much excitement for this special games taken place in a certain area? There is something about sports that makes them very important. To many people, they are just silly games that have no importance what so ever on the way we live or the problems society faces; as a matter of fact, sports have a lot to do with some of the problems in our society. Sports have a lot of negative and positive factors that I'am going to write about. For example, did you ever notice that sports can unify many people in one place and make them shout the same word and hug each other in victory, but as a downside the loser team and fans may take very personally and end with violence. People may lose the true importance of this called "games". Sports are about passion, glory, grace, competitiveness, and most of all respect. It's is not about showing how much you can "rock" at it, is about who well yo handle it. Of course we all like to celebrate for the good things, there is nothing bad with it, but is important to do it with respect.

I think that is what sports are about. They were created for a better purpose than violence and agression, we as sports fans must act responsible and respectful. We must just enjoy the game. Isn't that what is all about?

Borregos en Acción

On last week (April 6-8) was on curse “Borregos en Acción” an event which consists of several sports being played at the same time by different teams. Teams are formed according the grade of students, and in the case of Professional, their teams depends in which career they are, for example, carrera’s teams are Arquitecture, Licenciado en Creacion de Empresas, ITICS (Ing. En Tecnologia de Informacion y Comunicacion) among others.
I decided to make my post of this because is really cool playing against people maybe you did not know, and now you have the chance to interact with people that you maybe never saw ever before. Even though our team, fourth semester, the best team, we did well in some games, we all have a great time by cheering to our friends and classmates and playing those sports that we liked and we were happy to play in.
I think that Tec makes a wonderful job making this kind of activities, it help us to do physical and social exercises, to call it someway. It also feels good to interact in sports with the people you are most of the time in a classroom under a class, a bit quiet and calm. It may sound a little strange but is the truth; you don’t see a classmate the same as in a team competing on sports.
In our growth, these kind of activities help us develop cognitive (knowledge acquisition), affective (emotions and feelings) and psychomotor (muscle activity associated with mental processes) abilities which are interrelated in between and are very important. And for me, it is important because they remove my stress and clears my mind a couple of hours, aside that is a different kind of activity that breaks with the monotonous activities that we have during the semester.
I hope this kind of activities continue, Tec knows how to make students have a good time once in a while.

Baseball player gets megacontract (8 years/ 184 million USD)

It is not rare now day that the best athletes get contracts that involves a scandalous amount of money. Tiger Woods, the best golfer in the world earns more than 100 million per year, but this amount of money is also because of the publicity, not only earnings from tournaments.

But what did impress me during the weekend was the contract that a 26 years old baseball player got in the middle of an economic crisis that is still going on around the world. This contract was a 8 year and 184 million dollars deal, this means that the player will earn 23 million dollars a year, about 22.5 million more than the United States President.

Then I asked myself: "did crisis never hit sports?" How is possible that banks are running out of money and they must be supported by money and that it is being very hard to give loans meanwhile a baseball organization gives almost 200 million to a single person (well, 10% goes to the player's agent).

It is true that sports teams earn a lot of money from publicity and TV rights, also by ticket sales obviously, but market is in a hard situation now, attendance in baseball parks are decreasing because of the economic situation, really, what Joe Mauer just signed do not make sense to me, even that he was the Most Valuable Player in the American League, the best hitter, and guess what, he is a catcher! For those who don't know about baseball, catchers are known for being bad hitters.

It is true that Mauer is a phenomenon, he is one of the best players in the game right now, and fortunately for him, the Minnesota Twins, the team he supported since he was a little kid (Joe Mauer born in Minneapolis, Minnesota where he plays professional baseball now) the team for whom he has played in the past 6 years, apparently, has not been tackled by the economic crisis.

Invictus: a movie that give us a lesson

This movie leave a message in all of us: we all are the same, no matter our skin color is. Based on true life history, Invictus show us how Nelson Mandela become president of South Africa and tries to unite his country, I mean, to destroy the walls of society between black and white people through the National Rugby Team, a very interesting plot.

In the movie it is seen how when "Madiba" (Mandela's nickname) arrives to presidency, people from different societies in the president offices are struggling to have a good communication between them. And of course that complaints came right away to president Mandela. When a black officer questioned his boss about why there was a white working in the same office than him Mandela responded: "Reconciliation starts here. The Rainbow Nation starts here".

That quote put me to think a lot. How many times do we stop doing something because no one out there is doing it. If we want to make a change, why not starting us? Why most of people wait until an entire society is doing something to make that change we want.

Personally, I am tired of people who respond me "Oh come on! nobody does it, why should I?" when I ask that person about why he/she don't throw garbage in it's place.

It is our choice to make an impact of society, to make a change for good in our neighborhood or in out city. If we are strong people, good leaders, we will be able to do more. There is no doubt that Mandela was more than a leader, more than a president.

Invictus is a very inspirational movie that motivates all of us to have an impact on society, to stop with racism, to be good humans every time, that even with sports we can unite a city, a region, in the case of Mandela, an entire nation.

"I am the master of my fate. I am the captain of my soul". Nelson Mandela

Racism in American basketball

I read this article about racism in basketball, especially about NBA. This article said that through the years of 1991 and 2004 every foul called by white, and black officials against all players of both racial heritages. It said that it was more likely than a black referee called a foul to a white player or a white referee to call a foul to a black player.
This is very sad because even in sports racism is present. But in the other side I think that in this kind of events (competition) racism is over-rated. With this I mean that every little aspect or disrespectfull action is seen as a racist action. Maybe it should not be always clasiffied as racsim, maybe is sometimes just a disrespectful action.

An International Movement: the Superbowl

As every time it happens, the super bowl is a phenomenon in the United States, Canada, and in Mexico. This time the final was Colts vs Saints and it caused a total revolution in these countries.

Sports are part of the culture of the countries, as in Mexico we are fanatic of soccer, in the US the main sport is football. It is so significant that in Hollywood there are more movies about football than any other sport.

My point is that there are certain factors in culture such as sports that influence a lot in what identify us and the way we relate. Competitiveness and rivalry are affect the way people interact. Sometimes they are so extreme that brake up friendships and it causes problems with your partners. I really believe that is good to have a team to support and show your passion to sports, but it is not normal to have problems because of that.

I consider very funny the fact that, even the super bowl is in the United States, many other countries such Mexico and Canada feel the passion of football and feel really interested in watching the game.

I guess that shows pretty clear that religion is not the only aspect of culture that unifies countries. Sports, even it looks like an insignificant part of our lives, are really important for many of us and they play an important roll in culture.

Football

These days football is almost all you can hear of, forget about Haití the Super Bowl is coming!! I´m not very interested in american football, if you ask me of teams maybe I know 1 maximum and don´t ask me about players unless they are with a famous actress. But the interesting thing about american football, footbal or soccer and almost any other sport is that they are their own little world.

It doesn´t matter your skin color, unless is basketball in which they will automaticaly consider you better, or where you come from the only thing that matters is that you better play good and make your team win. These players, if you are good and in a good team, are paid huge amounts of money, some people think they are paid too much, and they also have money from advertaising.

They even have clubs of fans with millions of items of them, they are considered idols just like in a religion. In politics, well... some say that some games are paid, like they pay the other team to lose in purpose. I like normal football and when they say that I just can´t believe it and I can´t even think of my favorite team doing that (RM) but if you think it over, why not? In the end, football is about business, they want to earn money so it could be that one or two games are bought. What I think is often bougth its the arbrit.

But what I really want to say is that is awesome how many countries forget of racism and come together. This types of events promote turism and good relationships among countries, they are also a stress reliver, well not always because sometimes they get very exicted and if their team loses they get sad. But in the end the thing I like the most about sports in general is how they unite people.

The Super Bowl, more than a game

When we talk about the Super Bowl, we imagine an american football game with 22 players on the field tackling each other trying to reach the end zone to score a touchdown. But, have anyone think in the economic gain created but this game.

Every year, advertising is becoming bigger. If a company wants to announce it's product during the Super Bowl for 30 seconds, it will have to pay almost three million dollars! Miami is hosting this year's championship for a record 10th time, good news for the locals; America’s biggest sporting event brings in approximately $400 million to the host city. Tickets are sold out since October, and the event is tomorrow. There are tickets that are sold in "re-venta", more than three times the price of the original ticket. Some tickets have been sold in more than 5,000 dollars.

There's no doubt, talking in economics the Super Bowl is one of the biggest events in the world. And is not necessary to tell that is the TV program most watched in United States every year.
Fans should be ready for some fireworks on the field and for some hot parties in beautiful Miami. For those fans who have made the trip down to Southern Florida, this year's Super Bowl festivities could prove to be the best yet.