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Name, Image and Likeness Rule Changes Could Benefit Female Athletes Like Never Before

With a medley of Earth Wind & Fire, Michael Jackson and James Brown’s classics blaring in the background at the Fort Worth Convention Center, Katelyn Ohashi crushed a miraculous floor routine at the 2019 NCAA Women’s Gymnastics Championships, earning a perfect 10.0 score. The UCLA senior completed one of the most difficult passes in gymnastics, and danced her way across millions of timelines into viral stardom.

She appeared on numerous talk shows, did countless interviews and showed the world who she was not only as a gymnast, but also as a person.

Ohashi received no compensation for her accomplishments. Due to NCAA rules, athletes are prohibited from earning money for their athletic achievements. Sixty-nine million people watched her flawless floor routine, yet Ohashi was not able to personally benefit from her own success off the mat.

“The NCAA is a billion-dollar industry built on the backs of college athletes,” Ohashi said in an article written by Jemele Hill for The Atlantic. “How different would things be for me had I been able to use my image and name in my last year of school in order to promote the things I want to further my future? I want to make sure the next person doesn’t have to wonder.”

The issue of student-athletes receiving compensation for their name, image and likeness has headlined the news for some time now, and we recently have seen a positive step forward with the issue. The NCAA Board of Governors released the statement on Oct. 29, 2019 in which the organization plans to allow college athletes to get paid for use of their names, images and likeness (NCAA, 2019).

Keyword here: plans.

Female athletes have been left out of this conversation since its inception, but they could benefit the most from legislation changes, if the NCAA moves in that direction.

This ruling will not go into effect for some time. The NCAA’s decision follows a new decision in California that “bans schools in the state from preventing student-athletes from accepting compensation from advertisers and allows them to hire agents,” (Dwyer, 2019).

The NCAA is under is insurmountable pressure after the new law in California was announced. From coaches to former athletes to presidents to fans, numerous entities believe student-athletes should be getting compensated for the work and the money they bring back to their schools.

Zion Williamson. Trevor Lawrence. Jake Fromm.

These athletes are just a few of the names mentioned in this debate. In the age of social media, they have given their respective universities more publicity from their athletic abilities than any commercial or marketing initiative could do alone.

Cameron Indoor Stadium is a basketball mecca for those who are fans of the game, and when you put one of the most marketable 18-year-old ballers inside of it, money is sure to be made. And that is just what happened during the 2018-19 basketball season at Duke University when Zion Williamson became America’s favorite walking highlight-reel.

And with a name like Zion, how could he not be?

Of the top five most-viewed college basketball games on ESPN, Duke was the one team playing in all five. Last season, Duke also had the highest-priced resale ticket for a seat in Cameron at an average of $329 (Smith, 2019). Fans at the Duke-UNC game on Feb. 20 dropped an average $3,200 to see Williams take on the Tar Heels (Smith, 2019). But, many people ask why Williamson and his teammates did not get any of that money back. The answer to that question is a complicated one.

The rise of Williamson’s success led many to question the NCAA’s policy on student-athletes receiving compensation for their name, image and likeness. Williamson was just one of the few male athletes that were mentioned in conversation about the how much money the NCAA makes compared to the athletes doing the actual work.

Despite the split of opinions towards debate of whether or not athletes should be paid, I am here to spark a different debate about the female athletes who have been left out of this conversation.

According to the NCAA, there were 216,378 female student-athletes or 44 percent of the student-athlete population competing at the Division I, II or III level during the 2018-19 academic year (Schwarb, 2018). The total number of athletes competing last year was at an all-time high.

In addition, the Division I gender balance has grown to be almost perfect – 53 percent are male and 47 percent are female.

If the divide between male and female student-athletes in the NCAA is almost equal, why do female athletes get left out of the conversation about compensation? Is there a strong market for sponsors to partner with some of the best female collegiate athletes?

I believe there is, and it is a great time to be a female athlete.

The U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team showed the country why that is true this past summer. The team earned a month-long stint on the front pages of newspapers and timelines across the world after historic goals, wins and poses that forced people to stop and pay attention.

Now, more than ever before, the gap between women’s and men’s sports is slowly closing. There is, however, still a large gap as the USWNT is showing us during their current fight for equal pay. But, it is a great time to be not only a female athlete, but also a sponsor for female athletes.

Because there are not as many professional opportunities post-graduation for female athletes, the four years female collegiate athletes have to play their specific sport is an important time. It’s their only stage and only time to be marketable off their athletic abilities.

This brings us back to Katelyn Ohashi. There is not a professional “league” for gymnasts – it’s the Olympic Team or bust. So, when her viral floor routine created so much publicity for not just herself but also for the sport and her university, Ohashi expressed her anger towards not being able to profit from her own abilities, name and likeness.

She does not have the same professional opportunities as her fellow Bruins who play basketball or football, so why shouldn’t she be able to profit from her own work? This was the peak of her career and athletic ability, and she probably won’t have another opportunity like the one she had.

In 2018, the NCAA reported that of the 3,692 female collegiate basketball players that were eligible to be drafted, 32 made it to the WNBA, which is less than one percent. (Roberts, 2019).

My mouth dropped when I read that.

If student-athletes received the opportunity to be paid for their name, image and likeness while in college, female athletes have the chance to benefit more than they ever have in sports.

This idea of compensation also does not have to be some monumental contract with Nike or Adidas. It can live on a much smaller level, but still have a positive impact on student-athletes. From a local car dealership to a small cafe in town, small businesses could also benefit from student-athletes getting paid.

The ruling and details of the NCAA’s changes in the current compensation policy will not resolved overnight. This is something that the younger athletes in middle school and high school right now will be affected by later.

There is a bright future for female collegiate athletes, and there is an opportunity here to give young girls a new dream that they may have not thought possible before.

References

Dwyer, C. (2019, Oct. 29). NCAA plans to allow college athletes to get paid for use of their names, images. NPR. Retrieved from https://www.npr.org/2019/10/29/774439078/ncaa-starts-process-to-allow-compensation-for-college-athletes

Hill, J. (2019, Oct. 30). The NCAA had to cut athletes a better deal. The Atlantic. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/10/ncaa-had-cut-student-athletes-better-deal/601036/

NCAA. (2019, Oct. 29). Board of governors starts process to enhance name, image and likeness opportunities. Retrieved from http://www.ncaa.org/about/resources/media-center/news/board-governors-starts-process-enhance-name-image-and-likeness-opportunities

Roberts, D.K. (2019, Oct. 29). Paying college athletes is a huge win for women. CNN Business. Retrieved from https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/08/perspectives/female-athletes-fair-pay-to-play/index.html

Schward, A.W. (2018, Oct. 10). Number of NCAA college athletes reaches an all-time high. NCAA. Retrieved from http://www.ncaa.org/about/resources/media-center/news/number-ncaa-college-athletes-reaches-all-time-high

Smith, M. (2019, March 11). The business of Zion. Sports Business Daily. Retrieved from https://www.sportsbusinessdaily.com/Journal/Issues/2019/03/11/In-Depth/The-Zion-Effect.aspx

My Bio

I am the Assistant Director of Athletic Communication at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Conn. From writing press releases to managing social media accounts, I wear numerous hats in this role at Quinnipiac with various responsibilities for 21 varsity sports. Women’s soccer, women’s ice hockey, softball, track and cross country are my main sports of focus, but collectively, the athletic communications staff works together to make sure all of the athletic programs are shown to the university, community and the world in a positive light.

My passion for telling stories and creating digital content was a perfect fit, as I developed connections with coaches, student-athletes and administrators quickly and learned to love the grind of working in college athletics. In my current and previous roles, I enhanced the skills I learned in college like video editing, photography, writing and graphic design, and I adapted to working under pressure and on a deadline. I started my career in 2017 at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass., as a Media Relations Assistant, and moved on to the role I have now at Quinnipiac.

My educational background includes a Bachelor’s degree in journalism from Shorter University in Rome, Ga. Along with managing a full course load, I was a collegiate soccer player for four years. My experiences as an athlete lead me to the career I have now in collegiate athletics. I am currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Interactive Media and Communication through Quinnipiac.

Readable Content

Every year, we see a rise in mobile phone website traffic compared to traditional means like web browsing. The number of people who own smartphones has gone up, so, naturally, the number of people that find information on their smartphones has also gone up. In 2018, 52.2 percent of all website traffic worldwide was consumed on a smartphone (Clement, 2019).

The producers of online content must think about their website’s appearance and readability in relation to the viewers’ eyes. These eyes are usually looking that the content on a smartphone, not a web browser.

If more and more people are accessing information with their mobile devices, the content must fit inside the mobile device’s dimensions. In addition, the content must be engaging, informative and appealing to the eye; otherwise, viewers are going to close the tab and search for something else.

There are many tips and tricks content creators can use to make their websites, blogs, stories or other outlets easy to read and understand. Matt Cronin of Smashing Magazine**LINK created a list to highlight important parts of readability and how to effectively execute the different aspects of typography.

Web Typography Terms

Hierarchy – defining how a reader navigates the content (headings throughout the body)

Contrast – good contrast of text makes it easier on the reader’s eyes

Line Height – space between individual lines of text (makes text more scannable)

Line Length – number of words per line

A lot goes into reading, and various layouts, colors, words and other factors can influence a reader’s experience.

“’The contrast of pixels, the layout of the words, the concept of scrolling versus turning a page, the physicality of a book versus the ephemerality of a screen, the ability to hyperlink and move from source to source within seconds online—all these variables translate into a different reading experience,”’ (Konnikova, 2014).

In my opinion, clutter is at the top of the list when it comes to poor readability. In On Writing Well, William Zinsser claims clutter to be the “disease of American writing” (Zinsser, 2006). If I am reading a wordy story or blog, I lose track of the content and only focus on the extra words that should not be there.

Readable vs Unreadable

A hot topic in college athletics right now is about student-athletes getting paid for their likeness and athletic ability. There is a distinct divide across the country on whether or not student-athletes should be getting paid for the money they bring to their respective universities.

I am not here to argue that issue, but rather examine two different articles about the topic. The first is an article posted in 2017 by CollegeXpress, which seems to be a platform for high school students to research information about colleges. The second is an article from Forbes written in 2014.

The CollegeXPress article had a lot going on, visually. There were various colors, fonts, ads and a video at the beginning of the article. I would argue that the font was too small for a reader on a computer. The mobile version was even worse – large paragraphs and small fonts made it difficult to read.

The Forbes article also had ads, but I was more comfortable and engaged reading the article because it was left justified and in a smaller column. Having the line length shortened to half of a computer screen makes it easier to read and scan because the reader can fly through the lines without losing place.

Marc Edelman’s article on Forbes was also formatted as a list. He listed 21 reasons for why student-athletes are technically employees and should be allowed to unionize. Having detailed explanations listed out instead of hefty paragraphs definitely improved the readability.

The mobile version was also formatted better than CollegeXPress’s with a larger font and a larger line height.

As we can see, typography and readability are important as a content creator and distributor. In this case, both of the articles above were relaying similar messages, but the execution for each was very different. The formatting of each article directly impacted how interested I was in reading and digesting the information. As a tip, content creators should always keep in mind that hierarchy, contrast and line height/length are important formatting tools that can help improve the execution of the article.

References

Edelman, M. (2014, Jan. 30). 21 Reasons why student-athletes are employees and should be allowed to unionize. Retrieved fromhttps://www.forbes.com/sites/marcedelman/2014/01/30/21-reasons-why-student-athletes-are-employees-and-should-be-allowed-to-unionize/#30f8673b8d05

Clement, J. (2019, July 22). Percentage of all global web pages served to mobile phones from 2009 to 2018. Retrieved from https://www.statista.com/statistics/241462/global-mobile-phone-website-traffic-share/

Cronin, M. (2009, March 18). 10 Principles of readability and web typography. Retrieved fromhttps://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/03/10-principles-for-readable-web-typography/

Martinez, M. (2017, March). Should college student-athletes be paid? Both sides of the debate. Retrieved from https://www.collegexpress.com/articles-and-advice/athletics/blog/should-college-student-athletes-be-paid-both-sides-debate/

Zinsser, W. (2006). On writing well: The classic guide to writing nonfiction. HarperCollins Publishers. New York, N.Y.

Deep Work, Smartphones, and Changing Times

How to Take Back the Control We Have Almost Lost

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Deep work is the practice of limiting distractions and diving into a project or work-related activity with all efforts pointed towards that certain project (Newport, 2016). In society today, people are having difficulty concentrating on anything for longer than a few minutes due to our smartphone usage. The Technological Age has drastically changed our working models, and in turn, people are accomplishing less in the normal workday.

Cal Newport dives into the practice of deep work and how the attention resistance could be the best step forward for people who are tired of being distracted all the time. The time has come for people to try to keep up with machines. “As intelligent machines improve, and the gap between machine and human abilities shrinks, employers are becoming increasingly likely to hire “new machines” instead of “new people,” (Newport, 23). Due to an unprecedented growth in the economy and technological world, restructuring is occurring. With this restructuring comes a divide among people in the “Intelligent Machine Age” – the high-skilled workers, the superstars and the owners (Newport, 2016).

Siri, Where Am I?

New York City is one of my favorite places in the world. I love the feeling you get when you look up at the sky and see a jumble of skyscrapers around you. I love the hustle and the madness of the city by day and night.

You can find yourself on the crowded sidewalks of Times Square or in the quieter villages of the Upper West Side. Having been to the city countless times, I feel as though I have good grasp on where things are and where I am while walking around, but I can also feel turned around a lot, too.

When I walk up the steep steps at a subway stop, I look up and sometimes know exactly where I am. Other times, I look around and can’t tell which was is north or south.

Without my iPhone, navigating a city like New York would be difficult. Google maps has helped me in so many situations – in times where I am driving to a place I’ve never been to or just looking for a place to eat. We rely on our phones for a lot of things, but knowing where we are and where we want to go are some of the most important.

Not only do we rely on the phone itself, but more importantly, we rely on the apps that make up the phone, as described by Adam Greenfield in “Sociology of the Smartphone.”

“The smartphone is not particularly useful. It can be used to make voice calls, certainly; it generally comes loaded with a clock, calendar, weather and map applications, a Web browser, and a stock ticker. But the overwhelming balance of its functionality must be downloaded from the network in the form of apps” (Greenfield, 10).

Before reading Greenfield’s explanation of this idea, I had never thought of the iPhone as just a hosting device. But, without the apps, there wouldn’t be as much of a specialized use to the iPhone. I do believe, however, one of the most exciting parts of the iPhone is the camera. It has evolved tremendously over the years, and it is one of the best parts of the phone.

The evolution of not only the camera, but the entire phone is a fascinating timeline to examine. The first iPhone was unveiled in 2007 (Greenfield, 8), and I was in the fifth grade. I distinctly remember the news of the new gadget coming out – it was so futuristic. The size, the small circles known as applications, the invisible keyboard, the touch screen.

The fact that you could touch the screen and things would move was so new and exciting. Everyone wanted one, but they were really expensive at the time. I remember not really knowing anyone my age who owned one. It was more for adults who used it for work.

The first iPhone I owned came in my junior year of high school – five years later. My friends, classmates and I went through the flip phone era before any of us had iPhones, which I am thankful for.

Has this accelerated transition of technology been for the better or for the worse? Greenfield examines this question with the idea that there probably isn’t a correct answer. I’ve found that we as humans are trained to always strive to be better and do better. We have the idea that working hard and creating news ideas is just how we function.

Is there a more efficient way to do this and to make things easier for people? How can we improve this product? How can we make our business better?

Tech companies everywhere try to answer these questions, and in turn, we arrive at where we are today, with iPhones attached to us like we are handcuffed to them.

Dear So-and-So, Sorry for the Late Email

Now more than ever, people receive work-related alerts throughout the day and into the late hours of the night. The dam of life is open and email inboxes are flooding.

Employees are pressured into returning emails almost immediately after receiving them, including myself. (Texting has really become the new email, but we will save that for another discussion). Work efficiency is down and unread mail is up. Are companies looking to fix this?

Well, according to Clive Thompson, Adam Gazzaley and Larry Rosen, some companies are trying to help their employees out. Edelman, a public relations firm in Toronto, uses a 7-to-7 rule, where employees are encouraged to only respond or send emails during the hours of 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. (Thompson, 2014).

I thought this was a great strategy to use, but unfortunately, some companies and employees can’t always act on that rule. Time sensitive issues can arise, and a response at a late hour is occasionally required. However, I believe companies can take the time to implement some form of this rule.

In Cal Newport’s Deep Work, he emphasizes the fact that people would rather respond quickly to an email than take the time to have a meeting or talk on the phone.

“We find ourselves in distracting open offices where inboxes cannot be neglected and meetings are incessant – a setting where colleagues would rather you respond quickly to their latest e-mail than produce the best possible results” (Newport, 97).

I find this to be very true in a typical office setting. I rarely have meetings anymore, but I find that meetings are really helpful. In addition to actually sitting and talking to people that you work with, getting up and physically moving to a different space and not looking at a computer is always a good thing.

I am all for meetings, but people nowadays would rather just send you a quick email than get up and communicate out loud.

It turns out, the idea of being more efficient with fast responses on our smartphones actually makes us less efficient. It will be interesting to see what a typical office is like in five to ten years.

References

Gazzaley, A. Rosen, L. (2018, Jan. 8) Remedies for the distracted mind. Retrived from https://behavioralscientist.org/remedies-distracted-mind/

Greenfield, A. (2017). Sociology of a smartphone. Retrieved from https://longreads.com/2017/06/13/a-sociology-of-the-smartphone/

Newport, C. (2016). Deep Work. London: Grand Central Publishing.

Thompson, C. (2014, Aug. 28). End the tyranny of 24/7 email. Retrived from https://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/29/opinion/end-the-tyranny-of-24-7-email.html

Wake up Call – Sent from My iPhone

Have the Negatives of Social Media Overtaken the Benefits?

Throughout our childhoods, we flip the through pages of countless books. Books required for school reading and books for reading in a beach chair; books we love and can’t put down and books we hate and fall asleep reading at the kitchen table on a late school night.

I quickly discovered as a kid that people either love reading or hate it. There’s no middle ground. You were either the person waiting in line at a Barnes and Noble when the new Harry Potter book came out, or you weren’t.

I was the one waiting in line for The Deathly Hallows.

Growing up, I was surprised to always hear the same reaction from people about loving to read. People thought it was the worst possible way to spend free time.

“Oh, you actually like to read?”

But, more recently, I have discovered that even the avid readers have replaced those best-sellers with iPhone screens. We now live in a world where we digest information by scrolling endlessly through small blocks of 240 characters or less. We read opinions from thousands of people every day, some of whom we have never met.

Even authors, who write for a living, claim to be losing their reading endurance. Michael Harris, the author of Solitude: A Singular Life in a Crowded World, believes the “screen-orientated style of reading” has detrimentally impacted our old style of reading skillset.

“…Book-oriented styles of reading opened the world to me – by closing it. And new, screen-oriented styles of reading seem to have the opposite effect: They close the world to me, by opening it (Harris, 2018, p. 2).”

Books give our imaginations a new door into new worlds we never thought possible, all through the use of language. They take us to places where no one else can be, and in a way that opens the rest of the world to us after we put the words down.

Screens have a way of closing people off from the world, by giving them an entire world of information. With the stroke of a few keys, we can find the answer to any question instantly. By having the answers at our fingertips, our attention span is completely diminished. We no longer have to make our brain work. In turn, we have lost the ability to read well.

Interestingly, we aren’t reading less. It’s more so that we are reading worse.

“In a very real way, to lose old styles of reading to lose a part of ourselves (Harris, 2018, p. 3).”

Now the Millennials ask, or at least some of us do, have the negative effects of screens and instantaneous response officially outweighed the benefits? Will our children’s children ever hold a real book in their hands?

Generation Z’ers, whose first word was “iPhone,” do not see their lives as something related to the addiction to technology. “Generation Z addresses new technology as an “extension of themselves” rather than an addiction or compulsion,” (Vigo, 2019, p. 1).

Is it too late to turn back now?

DEEP READING -> DEEP WORK

One of the best skills we learn in school is reading comprehension. We learned to sit down, take notes and remember what we are reading. We had discussions and watched films about the books we studied.

This practice was especially difficult when you hated the book you were assigned to read. There were always books in high school that just did not appeal to certain students. We all remember the books we enjoyed and the books we hated.

1984.

That was the book. The book that I despised. I can still remember the smell of the overused paperback – old, grimy and depressingly gray, just like the plot.

I read it my freshman year and always thought it was introduced too early. I understood the overwhelming theme of “Big Brother” and how this was a prediction for what our world was going to turn in to (you weren’t too far off there, Mr. Orwell), but it was a complex plot to digest as a young freshman.

Despite wanting to throw 1984 behind me and move on to whatever Shakespeare play we were going to read next, I still remember it and I remember how it made me feel – anxious, depressed, confused. But, the deep reading/work that went into that project showed that even with books you don’t love, you can still understand them and retain the information if you work hard and understand deep work.

Deep Work by Cal Newport

“As intelligent machines improve, and the gap between machine and human abilities shrinks, employers are becoming increasingly likely to hire “new machines” instead of “new people,” (Newport, 2016, p. 23).

That’s a bit daunting, isn’t it?

Due to an unprecedented growth in the economy and technological world, restructuring is occurring. With this restructuring comes a divide among people in the “Intelligent Machine Age” – the high-skilled workers, the superstars and the owners.

The high-skilled workers work well with machines, the superstars are the top-notch group people that excel at what they do and the owners have the direct access to capital.

Newport gives us a few tips to help us survive in the ever-changing technological environment that we find ourselves in every day.

We must quickly master hard things while producing on an elite level with quality and speed.

Simple enough, right?

As a professional in the communication world, I have noticed that if you find yourself behind on “the next big thing” it is hard to catch up. The digital world changes every day, and in turn, you must also change and evolve every day.

One of the best tools you can use to stay current is YouTube. You have to be able to teach yourself as the world evolves around you, otherwise it will leave you behind…

______________

References: Cal Newport’s Deep Work; Michael Harris’ “I Have Forgotten How to Read”; Julian Vigo’s Forbes article “Generation Z and New Technology’s Effect on Culture”