Is any of this for real, or just a fantasy?

                Fantasy football is the reason I am so into football today, and know more about it than I do any other sport.  I played just about every other sport in schools besides football, but thanks to fantasy football I follow it the most.  Now I want to pursue a career in sports analyzing and get my own show on NFL Network or ESPN to state my opinions on all the current things going on in the NFL.  I bring up my history with fantasy football because the motives mentioned to participate in fantasy sports in chapter fourteen of Sports and Communication are the exact motived that got me started and drove me to the part of my life I’m at today.  The first concept is camaraderie, which is joining into something because people at some sort of social place (work, school, etc.) are partaking in the fantasy sports and the participant wants to be part of the group.  My soccer team all got together to play fantasy football, and invited me.  I agreed to it, although I had no idea of anything about football then.  Fantasy football is also the reason I’m a huge fan of Chad “Ochocinco” Johnson.  We still get together to play fantasy football every year.  The next motive is called enhanced enjoyment.  I felt a connection to my team and it motivated me to watch football every Sunday.  Enhanced enjoyment is giving meaning to watching the particular sport your fantasy player is in.  It gives you more to root for than just your favorite team.  The third motive describes me perfectly.  It is called autonomy.  This is the fantasy player’s false sense that he could run his/her favorite team better than the current coach or management.  However, I am 99.9% sure that nobody is going to tell me I couldn’t run the Lions better than Jim Schwarts.  The last motive is called addiction. This is pretty self-explanatory, but it means the person feels a need to play his/her fantasy sports every year.  I personally partake in more than one fantasy football league every year, because I feel the season would not be as entertaining without doing it, and I like winning every week.

                Fantasy sports have not only affected me and the fans, but it also affected the sports/media complex in a major way.  It’s rare to be able to watch a full sport without the stats coming across the screen with not only the players’ main stats, but how many points they scored in a default league game in their fantasy sport.  ESPN has a show every Sunday before the regular season that starts two hours before the first kickoff, then reports injuries, favorable matchups, and who’s on hot and cold streaks to help fantasy sport players set their final lineup before the games start.  There is a lot of Synergy between sports and fantasy sports to put it simply.  Some analysts would say that fantasy sports just exist as a form of accumulation, however.   It would appear as there are many more jobs collecting money because of fantasy sports, but fantasy sports just seem to be a form of a spectacle if I can put in my own opinion.  It almost seems as if, as explained in chapter 14, that it is more of a ritual for fans to set up a fantasy sports team then watch shows that would help them with their lineups because it has become more of a norm. 

                I feel as time goes on fantasy sports will become more and more popular and almost every sports fan will be participating in them.  They appear to becoming more and more of the norm.  Fantasy sports don’t only make their own special shows more popular, but I believe they bring more popularity to things such as NFL Redzone, because fans can instantly know when their players score.  I mostly follow football which is why I focus on it the most, but I’m sure the same goes for every other sport, as well.

The Pledge

 

            Performance enhancing drugs, drunk driving, sexual harassment, murder, and dog fighting, all are things that the person I am about to discuss the apology of did not do.  All Tim Tebow did was simply be part of a team that was upset by Ole Miss in a college football game.  Yet, this has led to one of the most heartfelt apology that may have been publically announced by any athlete in history.  All Tebow wanted to was have an undefeated season, because the Florida Gators have never done this before in history.  Tebow’s apology speech is known as one of the top ten apologies by any athlete, and it happened during a press conference after the loss.

            Tebow has used two main strategies in this apology, and he didn’t even really think them through.  His apology was a spur of the moment apology that was announce through emotion.  The first strategy that I believe he used was mortification.  He was embarrassed that the Florida Gators couldn’t beat Ole Miss.  He said at one point he didn’t have complete faith in his teammates or himself to get the job done, and that he was embarrassed by it.  His voice was weak during this part of the speech and his eyes were bloodshot, as if trying to hold back tears.  It was obvious that he clearly did feel sorry about this loss.  He felt that he let the Florida Gator fan base down, which leads to the next strategy in the apology.

            The next strategy that was used by Tebow was the corrective action strategy.  Tebow said he could promise a lot of good would come out of that loss.  ”I promise you one thing, a lot of good will come out of this.”  He was promising to make things right.  He promised that the fans would never see anyone work harder than he would ever again.  He would push the team harder than anyone else will push their teams in the future.  Tebow kept this promise, as he finished the rest of the season without a loss and wins a national championship.  Tebow finishes his college career with a record of 23-1.

            What I am trying to show is that the issue doesn’t always have to be serious for an athlete to come out and apologize for.  Tebow’s apology became one of the most famous and has been written on a plague at Florida University and is now known as “The Pledge.”  It has been hung as inspiration to every future athlete at Florida University to be the best they can be, and to always have faith.