Research Question in Conversation with Sources

After spending some time doing searches for good articles, I think that I have narrowed down my topic. I have noticed that there are many articles on the cost of college sports and most of the articles talk about how sports don't help the university. I am being persuaded to want to say that sports are bad for the university and that maybe I have to face the reality of that. My new question would specify on the negative effects of sports in college and how they are really taking away from schools. Many of my sources talk about the financial strains that sports put on colleges and how they are taking away from academics. Hopefully this is a good lead into a more specific research question for my paper.

Annotated Bibliography

Dowling, W.C. (2007). Confessions of a Spoilsport: My life and hard times fighting sports corruption at an old eastern university. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. William Dowling talks about the corruption that sports bring to universities and analyzes the situation at Rutgers University. A teacher with good credentials, Dowling provides first-hand experiences and solid evidence. He talks about how colleges have shifted their focus away from academics and have become lost in the world of sports. This book provides the counter-argument to my paper and will provide a good opposing view for me to better create an argument.
Fizel, John and Fort, Rodney. (2004). Economic of College Sports. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger Publishers. This book talks about the decisions concerning athletic programs at universities. The authors point out the financial issues with college sports and how the overall financial effects of sports on universities may be deceiving to the public. This will help my paper because it provides an overview of the whole impact economically of college sports.

Questions for Research Paper

Here are a few questions I came up with to start thinking about for my research paper. I might be able to get away with doing the overall effect of college sports at Rutgers, but even that might be too broad a topic to write a focused paper on.

What is the overall effect of college sports at a university?

What is the effect of college sports at Rutgers?

Do college sports benefit or hurt a university?

Do college sports take away from academics at a university?

Scholarly Sources

Works Cited

"Big-Time College Sports Getting Bigger." USA Today Magazine 138.2775 (2009): 6-. Print.

College Sports Taking a Financial Hit. 12 Vol. American Council on Education, 2009. Print.

Dowling, William C. Confessions of a Spoilsport : My Life and Hard Times Fighting Sports Corruption at an Old Eastern University. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007. Print.

"High cost of college sports | NJ.com."Web. 2/24/2010 .

Kemp, Ed. "Miss. Budget Cutters Targeting Spending on College Athletics." Community College Week 22 (2009): 5-. Print.

Mortland, Shannon. "Colleges Tackle Costs of Sports Programs." Crain's Cleveland Business 30.21 (2009): 10. Print.

Sander, Libby. "Athletics Programs Scramble to Streamline Budgets in Difficult Times." Chronicle of Higher Education 55.21 (2009): A13-. Print.

---. "A March from Madness." Chronicle of Higher Education 55.26 (2009): A4-. Print.

Wolverton, Brad. "For Athletics, a Billion-Dollar Goal Line." Chronicle of Higher Education 55.20 (2009): A1-A13. Print.

Rutgers RIOT

I thought the tutorial was very helpful. I learned how to narrow a topic down and how to use several key resources that the library has to offer. I also learned how the different research sources work and how to do a proper search on them by altering some of the terms and specifications with the terms. Using the tools the library has definitely makes it easier to find scholarly articles and helps with the whole research process. I think the interactive teaching method was definitely useful and it kept me involved. It was better than just listening to someone talk the whole time because I actually had to answer some questions and pay attention to know what was going on. One thing that could be done to improve it would be to make more of the interactive parts of the tutorial require a correct answer to make sure that the learner is really understanding what is going on. Overall, I think it was well put together and I would recommend it to someone who is trying to write a research paper.

Questions for the Librarian

1. How do you check out books from the library? Do you use your Rutgers ID card or do we have to get a separate library card? (I have never needed to check out a book so far so I honestly do not know how the system works.)

2. Is there a specific section in the library about Rutger's history (specifically sports)? I want to find some information about the history of sports at Rutgers and was wondering if information would be available on that.

3. What is the return policy on books? Can we keep them out for the whole semester to work on this paper or do we have to keep renewing the books if we want to keep them for the entire semester?

Scouting the Territory

My topic idea is still the same as it was when I wrote my first blog. I think sports would be an interesting topic to do and I have purchased the book Confessions of a Spoil Sport. I'm still not exactly sure what in sports I want to focus on, but I think I want to talk about the overall effects on the University. I know that is a pretty broad topic, but I'm sure once I start researching it and looking further into it, I will find a few topics to focus on and narrow down my focus in the paper. After I did a google search on effects of sports of Rutgers, I found an article on some criticism of the big time sports investment that Rutgers made when deciding to expand the football stadium and try and become a premier division one program. When I just searched sports at Rutgers, the football team page came up, as I expected it would. I came across a few other results when searching google scholars and I think this may be a useful tool in my research. I can't say I got any specific ideas about my topic from this, but I did find a few decent articles about my topic. The two sides of the debate about my topic would be whether or not a school, like Rutgers, should devote the time and money to sports as they have and take away from academics in the process.
This is one link I found: http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=JpS3OnBpcDMC&oi=fnd&pg=PR7&dq=sports+in+college&ots=TqELaOszCT&sig=ZzwRQLOicWCp6uHA9z37lWzd1ZU#v=onepage&q=&f=false

I think I still need to find out which side I am going to take on this debate.