Hello, Classmates! My name is Neil
Jenkins; I am a junior here at BGSU, majoring in Sport Management with a specialization
in General Business and a minor in Food/Nutrition on the side. As a passionate
follower of hockey for my entire life, I choose to stay in Sport Management
because it will best lead me towards achieving my ultimate career goal of one
day becoming the General Manager of an NHL team.
Originally
from Washington, D.C., my father first began to involve me in Capitals hockey
at the ripe age of 5, and we have held season tickets with the team ever since
(a total of 17 consecutive years). Because of this, I am a Caps fan first and
foremost (as diehard as they come, in fact), but constant exposure to the sport
throughout my life has also led me to be a general aficionado of hockey
overall.
On
the first day of class, the male and female athletes that I chose were Wayne
Gretzky (hockey) and either of the Williams sisters (tennis). The reason why I
would pay to see these athletes out of any is because at their prime, they were
the most dominant players for their respective sport of their generation, and their
accomplishments will always be remembered as something special. The enthusiasm,
skill, and passion with which they performed were exceptional bar none, and it
would be thrilling to watch two of the most gifted players to ever play their
sport in action.
My
expectations upon taking this course are to make valid connections between
topics discussed by Dr. Spencer, and how they relate to the sport of hockey at
both a youth and professional level. I wish to leave this class with
information that is meaningful for my ideal career in professional hockey, and
more overall knowledge that I can add to my Sport Management repertoire here at
BGSU.
Lastly, I hope to provide interesting information through my blog posts throughout this course, and hope they provide a good read to those who do!
See you in class,
Neil Jenkins
neilj@bgsu.edu
Hi Neil,
ReplyDeleteI do seem to recall your 'interest' in hockey and look forward to how you make connections between hockey and the things we discuss in class. Here is a question for you to think about - I also posted it on Andrew's blog. Why do you think there was such a backlash against the Canadian Women's Hockey team that won the gold medal in Vancouver 2010? Do you think there would have been a comparable backlash if the Men's team had celebrated similarly? I also did not remember that you had a minor in Food/Nutrition. How did you happen to decide on that? There will probably be some discussions related to your minor that would be interesting for you to "weigh in on," since we will be reading an article about "Athletic fatness" (Sorry about the pun:-)
Of course, I can relate to the athletes you said that you would like to see. I wish I had seen Gretzky in action before he retired. But I am happy to say that I have seen both Venus and Serena--in fact they played an exhibition against one another in Cleveland. If you ever get a chance, you should definitely try to see them!
This is a nicely written introduction and I look forward to reading more of your blog entries and comments.
Dr. Spencer
Dr. Spencer,
DeleteI apologize that it has taken so long to respond to your comment.
In answering the question you posed above, it seems to me that the backlash that the Canadian Women's Hockey team received was because of their actions during the post-game celebration, which followed the winning of their third consecutive Olympic gold medal. Despite such an accomplishment, which is hard to come by in any tournament, much less the Olympics, many critics have deemed their on-ice, post-game celebration as "impromptu," and even "irresponsible." Their actions, which included celebrating their gold medal victory by "swigging beer and smoking cigars on the ice" did not raise much praise in the public eye, particularly that of the International Olympic Committe (IOC). In fact, they would later make several valid points (in my opinion) regarding areas of both publicity and sport value. Accordingly, one such spokesperson stated that, "drinking in public was 'not what we want to see' from athletes at an Olympic venue," as well as the IOC's executive director of the Olympics, Gilbert Felli, commenting, "I don't think it's a good promotion of sport values." Personally, I agree with them, and even though the arena was all but empty with the exception of some media and arena staff when they did it, I still think that it creates a negative image for both the Olypics and the sport of hockey. It is one thing to have a champagne-showering in the locker room, but it is different to do the things that they did openly on the ice. With that being said, I DO think that there would have been a comparable backlash, if not even more significant, had it been the Men's team celebrating in the same way, just because of the fact that the Men's championship most likely gets more viewers, noteriety, and media attention than does the Women's. For example, I watched the Gold medal game that year between the Canadian and American Men, in which Sidney Crosby (man, it pains me to type his name)scored a fluke, game-winning goal against Ryan Miller to win the game in overtime for the Canadians, but I had no idea about the controvery in the Women's finale for some time after the Olympic games ended. In conclusion, I do feel that the backlash is appropriate for an irresponsible action as displayed by the Canadian women, and whatever the gender, men or women, I feel that excessive ON-ICE celebrations involving alcohol and smoking (particularly smoking, which is shunned in today's society for all of the dangerous and harmful effects it causes)gives hockey a reputation of irresponsibility, immaturity, and even disrespect, and should be dealt with accordingly. Now, I emphasize "on-ice" because in writing this comment (which is more like an article now), I remembered the post-game bar tab of the Boston Bruins after winning the Stanley Cup last year in Vancouver, which is linked at the end of this post and came to a total of $156,679.74! However, it is different because it is a) not in a hockey setting, b) 3 whole days after the victory & near their home city, and c) not publicly displayed (even though the picture got out somehow)! If the Canadian Women's Team had just resorted to that, they would have been much better off.
(Continued below...)
On a different note, cooking is a new-found interest of mine, and Food/Nutrition became my second minor (with my other being Business) after taking the introductory course (FN2070) 2 Fall semesters ago here at BGSU and discovering how much I enjoyed learning the material and how interesting it all was to me. Since then, I have taken 6 more classes in the department, and need just one more to reach my minor, which will appropriately be "Sports Nutrition" online in the Summer. Don't apologize for the pun, I love it! You can definitely call on me in class if needed for some nutritional insight.
DeleteI would be surprised if this is not the longest comment of the decade, but I know you generally have fun reading our posts, so I hope you enjoyed reading this one despite its length! As a matter of fact, I tried to make all of this in one, single comment, but when I hit “publish,” the blog itself rejected it due to excessive length, ha-ha! In case you were wondering, the maximum allowable characters are 4,096. Thus, I had to separate it into two separate comments. Say, can this count as two on my sheet for the first week? The total word count comes to 771…
Cheers,
Neil Jenkins
References:
http://sports.yahoo.com/olympics/blog/fourth_place_medal/post/IOC-to-investigate-Canadian-women-s-hockey-team-?urn=oly,224338
http://www.nj.com/olympics/index.ssf/2010/02/canadian_womens_hockey_celebra.html
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-04QBqCN6gSU/TgK9xUwqa_I/AAAAAAAAAHU/2w6CcBycTbo/s1600/bruins-bar-tab.jpg
http://www.boston.com/sports/columnists/wilbur/assets_c/2011/06/bruinstab-thumb-950x500-44392.gif