Matching Items (22)
Description
Abstract My documentary is about the concussion detection study with Arizona State Football, Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen), Riddell and the Barrow Neurological Institute. Football players voluntarily participate in the study that aims to identify a biomarker released from the brain to identify if a player has suffered from a concussion. The study uses blood, urine and saliva samples, along with head impact data from Riddell's Sideline Response System. The study is also focusing on the impact of sub-concussive hits and the effects. According to the Barrow Neurological Institute, 84% of respondents believe concussions are "a serious medical condition," and a third of Valley parents will not let their children play football. I interviewed an ASU football player who participated in the study and found out about his experiences with concussions. The severity of concussions has received a lot of attention in recent years, and this study hopes to mitigate concussions symptoms and the fear of concussions. According to the 2015 NFL Health and Safety Report, since 2012 the NFL reported concussions were down by 35%. I interviewed the TGen leaders of the study and the neurologist at the Barrow Concussion and Brain Injury center involved in the study to find out how they plan to find a biomarker and use it to develop an objective way to diagnose concussions. An example of a possible objective test is a mouthguard that changes from clear to blue after a player sustained a hit that resulted in a concussion. The 2015-2016 ASU football season marked the study's third year of research. At the time of my documentary, the study had no timeline to release data.
ContributorsSeki, Katryna Marie (Author) / Lodato, Mark (Thesis director) / Kurland, Brett (Committee member) / Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication (Contributor) / School of Politics and Global Studies (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
DescriptionPanic at the Elbow: High School Baseball's Tommy John Surgery Epidemic reflects on the history of Tommy John surgery, examines the scale of the current epidemic, explores its underlying causes and ultimately recommends steps that parents and players can take to avoid such overuse injuries. Link to documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31xvOCN_tqk
ContributorsMargiott, Benjamin James (Author) / Kurland, Brett (Thesis director) / Byck, Peter (Committee member) / Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication (Contributor) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
My thesis project is a 26 minute 46 second film that documents the Arizona State hockey team's first season as an NCAA Division I program. ASU hockey was formerly a club team that competed in the American Collegiate Hockey Association (ACHA), but that all changed in the fall of 2014 after the program received a donation. The documentary explores the significance of the team, the emotion of the players and staff, and the results of the season.
ContributorsCasillas, Mauricio (Author) / Kurland, Brett (Thesis director) / Reed, Sada (Committee member) / Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
Each year, a select few minor league baseball players are chosen to attend the Arizona Fall League, a development league within Major League Baseball that hones the next generation of players, coaches, managers, and even umpires. These players make up the top talent currently in the minor leagues from each of Major League Baseball's 30 organizations. Of the thousands in the minors, just seven players from each organization can go to this extra six-week season, and learn to play alongside the best future talent the sport has to offer. On Deck: Inside the Arizona Fall League is a short documentary that looks at some of these players, as they continue their baseball journey that they hope leads them one day to the Majors. The documentary can be viewed online at https://youtu.be/jkggYiDtn14 or nicolesheraefox.com
ContributorsFox, Nicole Sherae (Author) / Lodato, Mark (Thesis director) / Kurland, Brett (Committee member) / Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
https://mendotadrought.wordpress.com/
Beginning in 2011, California’s most recent drought has brought four years of some of the warmest and driest seasons on record. Mendota, California in the San Joaquin Valley is a microcosm of the struggles many agriculture communities face when water resources are scarce. Known as the “cantaloupe capital of the world,” agriculture represents over half of Mendota’s economy, making unemployment one of the many challenges they face. However, community members are working to move forward and preserve the place they call home.
Medota has a population of about eleven thousand people with over 96 percent of them being Hispanic. The stories of elected officials, field workers, farmers, police, school leaders and local business owners give testament to a mounting fear for future water allocation. But their voices also give way to a shared belief—the community’s resilience will persevere through California’s drought. Mendota is presented through a multi-media piece that uses photos, videos and descriptive articles to showcase both their hardship and hope.
Beginning in 2011, California’s most recent drought has brought four years of some of the warmest and driest seasons on record. Mendota, California in the San Joaquin Valley is a microcosm of the struggles many agriculture communities face when water resources are scarce. Known as the “cantaloupe capital of the world,” agriculture represents over half of Mendota’s economy, making unemployment one of the many challenges they face. However, community members are working to move forward and preserve the place they call home.
Medota has a population of about eleven thousand people with over 96 percent of them being Hispanic. The stories of elected officials, field workers, farmers, police, school leaders and local business owners give testament to a mounting fear for future water allocation. But their voices also give way to a shared belief—the community’s resilience will persevere through California’s drought. Mendota is presented through a multi-media piece that uses photos, videos and descriptive articles to showcase both their hardship and hope.
ContributorsLang, Erica Lynn (Author) / Rodriguez, Rick (Thesis director) / Fergus, Tom (Committee member) / Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication (Contributor) / School of Transborder Studies (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
While former New York Yankees pitcher Goose Gossage unleashed his tirade on the deterioration of the unwritten rules of baseball and nerds ruining the sport about halfway through my writing of the paper, sentiments like his were inspiration for my topic: the evolution of statistics and data in baseball. By telling the story of how baseball data and statistics have evolved, my goal was to also demonstrate how they have been intertwined since the beginning—which would essentially mean that nerds have always been ruining the sport (if you subscribe to that kind of thought).
In the quest to showcase this, it was necessary to document how baseball prospers from numbers and numbers prosper from baseball. The relationship between the two is mutualistic. Furthermore, an all-encompassing historical look at how data and statistics in baseball have matured was a critical portion of the paper. With a metric such as batting average going from a radical new measure that posed a threat to the status quo, to a fiercely cherished statistic that was suddenly being unseated by advanced analytics, it shows the creation of new and destruction of old has been incessant. Innovators like Pete Palmer, Dick Cramer and Bill James played a large role in this process in the 1980s. Computers aided their effort and when paired with the Internet, unleashed the ability to crunch data to an even larger sector of the population. The unveiling of Statcast at the commencement of the 2015 season showed just how much potential there is for measuring previously unquantifiable baseball acts.
Essentially, there will always be people who mourn the presence of data and statistics in baseball. Despite this, the evolution story indicates baseball and numbers will be intertwined into the future, likely to an even greater extent than ever before, as technology and new philosophies become increasingly integrated into front offices and clubhouses.
In the quest to showcase this, it was necessary to document how baseball prospers from numbers and numbers prosper from baseball. The relationship between the two is mutualistic. Furthermore, an all-encompassing historical look at how data and statistics in baseball have matured was a critical portion of the paper. With a metric such as batting average going from a radical new measure that posed a threat to the status quo, to a fiercely cherished statistic that was suddenly being unseated by advanced analytics, it shows the creation of new and destruction of old has been incessant. Innovators like Pete Palmer, Dick Cramer and Bill James played a large role in this process in the 1980s. Computers aided their effort and when paired with the Internet, unleashed the ability to crunch data to an even larger sector of the population. The unveiling of Statcast at the commencement of the 2015 season showed just how much potential there is for measuring previously unquantifiable baseball acts.
Essentially, there will always be people who mourn the presence of data and statistics in baseball. Despite this, the evolution story indicates baseball and numbers will be intertwined into the future, likely to an even greater extent than ever before, as technology and new philosophies become increasingly integrated into front offices and clubhouses.
ContributorsGarcia, Jacob Michael (Author) / Kurland, Brett (Thesis director) / Doig, Stephen (Committee member) / Jackson, Victoria (Committee member) / Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
My thesis project, "Reforming the NCAA: How the governing body of intercollegiate athletics should handle student-athletes into the future," sets out to create a working blueprint for how the NCAA should handle the relationship between student-athletes, universities, and the NCAA from this point forward. The NCAA has come under fire in the past 10 years for its failure to meet modern social constructs and provide student-athletes with the resources necessary to achieving a successful educational and athletic experience, and through my thesis, I formulated reforms the NCAA can adopt and enact to respond to the growing issues within intercollegiate athletics. I began the process last spring with my thesis director as we selected a topic together, and I researched a variety of topics relating to current NCAA issues throughout the summer and fall. In the fall, I outlined sources I hoped to interview, and I conducted interviews over winter break. I spent the first two months of 2015 writing and refining my thesis, and through March, I created a PowerPoint presentation I used to defend my thesis project. During the process, I met with my thesis director at critical junctures to discuss the direction of the project and to determine how to find a delicate balance between creating attainable goals for reform and overstepping my boundaries. After a successful thesis defense, I made small revisions to the thesis and had my project re-approved by my director and second reader. In the coming weeks after submitting my thesis, I plan on exploring the possibility of having my thesis published and received critiques from those in the industry who follow collegiate athletics closely.
ContributorsCrowley, Kerry O Shea (Author) / McGuire, Tim (Thesis director) / Kurland, Brett (Committee member) / College of Letters and Sciences (Contributor) / Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2015-05
Description
In this research paper I explore former male athletes, specifically professional football players entering local journalism. Research paired with interviews in regards to the topic explain why there are nearly 10 former NFL players in local markets where an NFL team is present, and why local journalists along with future journalists should not be worried about the number of former male athletes in local journalism. The paper also dives into the side-by-side statistics of why there is significantly more former college athletes in local journalism than former NFL players. The research focused on more than 100 television stations, revealing that 100 former or current collegiate or pro athletes are journalists for local stations where an NFL team is present. The data is solely reliant on the information that the journalists provided in their bios on the station websites. This could be seen as a possible limitation, however, the likelihood of these journalists either lying or not identifying as a former athlete is minimal due to the size of the accomplishment of actually participating in college as an athlete. The basis of my research is to figure out if former NFL players and former athletes in general are taking journalism jobs from aspiring journalists. I conclude that future journalists are not at risk of losing jobs when it comes to retired football players entering the field of local journalism. With that said, aspiring journalists need to continue to develop their social media skills to compete with athletes’ audiences on social networks.
ContributorsTotri, Anthony Matthew (Author) / Kurland, Brett (Thesis director) / Reed, Sada (Committee member) / Walter Cronkite School of Journalism & Mass Comm (Contributor, Contributor) / Department of Information Systems (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05
DescriptionBehind the Cages is a documentary that takes a detailed look at Arizona State Hockey which is considered a club, not a sport. They receive no funding from the university, so this reveals how they make it work. The link to the documentary is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNEd61ocnfo
ContributorsArgeros, William Ogden (Author) / Brown, Aaron (Thesis director) / Fergus, Tom (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication (Contributor)
Created2014-05
Description
This thesis documentary film takes a look at the dysfunctional but ongoing relationship between Twitter and sports journalism. The foundation of this relationship's dysfunction is what I have coined as the Twitter Outrage Cycle. In this cycle a sports broadcasting personality comments on a matter while on-air. Next, the program's audience where the comments were spoken becomes offended by the statement. After that, the offended audience members express their outrage on social media, most namely Twitter. Finally the cycle culminates with the public outrage pressuring networks and its executives to either suspended or fire the individual that said the controversial statements. This cycle began to occur on a more consistent basis starting in 2012. It became such a regular occurrence that many on-air talent figures have noticed and taken precautionary measures to either avoid or confront the Outrage Cycles. This documentary uses the voice of seven figures within the sports media and online interaction forum. Notable using the voices of three notable individuals that currently have a prominent voice in sports journalism. As well as a neutral social media curator who clearly explains the psyche behind these outraged viewer's mindsets. Through these four main voices their ideals and opinions on the matter weave together, disagree with each other at times but ultimately help the viewer come to an understanding of why these Outrage Cycles occur and what needs to be done in order for them to cease. We Should Talk: The Relationship Between Twitter and Sports Journalism is a documentary film that looks to illustrate a seemingly minimal part of many people's lives that when taken into perspective many people look at in a very serious light.
ContributorsNeely, Cammeron Allen Douglas (Author) / Kurland, Brett (Thesis director) / Fergus, Tom (Committee member) / Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05