The Clueless Sports Fan

  There should be more weight classes in the Ultimate Fighting Championship. A weight class is a division of weight that a fighter must be at or under in order to fight in his or her desired class. According to the ufc.com, “Failure to reach the required weight results in either the athlete forfeiting a percentage of their fight purse to their opponent, an agreement bet ween the two athletes to compete at a non-weight class specific weight (catchweight) or having the fight canceled altogether.”(UFC.com, 2023). Currently, there are 12 different weight classes spanning from straw weight at 115 pounds to heavy weight which is 265 pounds. These weight classes are to ensure fair fights. This is to prevent larger opponents dominating smaller ones.  A lot of fighters cut weight in order to make these weight classes. According to an article titled Weight Loss and Competition Weight in Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) Athletes, “ However, weight cutting is a more prevalent aspect i...

 This weeks topic of discussion was the uniform code and how the Norwegian woman's team was wrongfully fined for wearing shorts. According to the textbook, the woman should've been wearing bikini bottoms with "“with a close fit and cut on an upward angle toward the top of the leg". The women of the Norwegian team found this proactive and felt that it sexualized them. In retaliation they wore shorts. They were fined 150 euros per player for this. The fine caused an uproar around the world against IHF (the International Handball Federation). The IHF came out saying that they didn't even know where the rule came from. This was the most surprising part to me. Frankly, I also think that the whole ordeal isn't fair. So what if the players are wearing shorts. As long as the team is all matching, they should be allowed to cover up. posted below is a new york times article on it. It features a tweet from P!nk saying she would pay their fines for them and that she is pr...

            This week, we covered a few racial topics within the sports journalism world. The first is word choice of journalists. Many feels as though the words used to describe players based on said players race. A lot of times, white players are described as intelligent, smart, and witty, while black players are pinned as being athletic, powerful, and strong.  Another issue, one that was covered in the textbook, is the diversity rates among sports journalist jobs. Some statistics taken from the article "Warriors Owner Reportedly Adding A Bay Area WNBA Franchise" cited in the textbook reads "White males dominate sports journalism jobs including 85% of sports editors, 80% of columnists, and 82% of reporters" (McCreary, 2018).

       This week in class, we covered concussions and its ties to social norming. For a while many players were getting CTE . Short for chronic traumatic encephalopathy, CTE is a brain disorder caused by repeated concussions. For a long time, players were developing it, but the NFL was brushing it under the rug. The pay for concussions were scored with cognitive functions in mind. Black players were labeled as having lower cognitive functions. This is called social norming. Authors Terry L Rentner and David P Burns of Social Issues in Sports Communications says, "Black football player starts at a lower level of cognitive functioning than the average White player at the outset of their careers, Black players need to show larger cognitive declines than White players to qualify for compensation."(40, Rentner, Burns). Social norming is a form of systemic racism. Rentner, T. L., & Burns, D. P. (2023). Social Issues in Sports Communitions . Routledge.