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College Football Playoff Expansion: It’s Time to Pony Up and Pay College Players

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Photo: Don Juan Moore, Getty Images

Pay College Athletes Their Worth!!

With the recent development that the College Football Playoff committee is considering expanding the number of teams that make the playoff from 4 to 12, the business that is college football could go from an annual revenue of $4 billion to some insane amount beyond that. The only problem is that the labor force that is most responsible for the success of the sport – the players – don’t see a piece of that revenue pie. It is way past time for college players to be paid what is commensurate with their contributions to this enterprise, and people need to stop being hypocrites and wake up and realize that.

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How Race IS A FACTOR in the NBA Fan and Player Interactions

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Photo: Elise Amendola, AP

Are fans who show disrespect toward NBA players motivated by race?

During the first round of the 2021 NBA playoffs, several negative interactions between fans and players took place involving spit, alleged racial language, water bottles and popcorn. Because the optics are white fans and black players, the conversation immediately jumped to whether race has anything to do with the incidences. While race does play a role in these situations, the question as to whether the fans are racially motivated in their behavior is a different issue entirely. Race does have something to do with this, and it involves an understanding of the current – and historically ongoing – economic climate of America.

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Paul Pierce’s ESPN Firing Exposes our Need to Dial it Back from Social Media

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Photo: Jason McCawley, Getty Images

With Paul Pierce being fired from ESPN for going live on Instagram surrounded by strippers, weed and liquor, we need to think about how intertwined we’ve allowed social media to become with our everyday lives.

Former NBA player Paul Pierce was fired by ESPN after he went live on Instagram while at a gathering with friends, alcohol, weed, and strippers. Although this continues the fundamental problem of our society’s adoption of moral-policing with respect to people and employees, it also represents how intertwined with reality, and thereby our usage of the medium, that we have allowed social media to become. If we don’t dial back the way that we consume social media, we’re all going to be Paul Pierce at some point in our lives.

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Gina Carano is Fired, and the Disturbing Trend of Cancel Culture Continues

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Photo: Mark Cuthbert, UK Press via Getty Images

Gina Carano’s firing by Lucasfilm and Disney continues our disturbing trend of being intolerant towards disagreeable points of view.

Most people are focusing on Gina Carano’s poor use of a Holocaust analogy to justify the decision to drop her from The Mandalorian. What is being sorely missed is the point she was attempting to make. That is, we have adopted a culture of acceptance towards liberal points a view and an intolerance towards conservative, more traditional points of view. This imbalance is counterproductive to the notion of free speech and civil discourse, and as a result, Gina Carano has become another victim of ridiculous cancel culture. Poor analogy aside, her overall point is valid, and it is sad to see our society continue to traverse down the rabbit hole of persecution and career head-hunting for those who express conservative or otherwise disagreeable points of view.

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YFN Lucci’s Legal Troubles Represent a Larger Cultural Problem with Our Actions, Decisions, and Role Models

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Photo: Getty Images

YFN Lucci’s recent run-in with the law serves as a lens through which we can view our continued commitment to bad decisions and the need for us to become more culturally multi-faceted, and not be so tethered to hip-hop imagery and tropes.

Hip-hop star YFN Lucci is now in legal trouble after being arrested for his alleged participation in a shooting in Atlanta that left one man dead. The question isn’t whether he is innocent or not, but why he willfully made the decision to involve himself in this type of situation. This represents a greater societal issue with people of color making similar decisions and clinging to certain aspects of what we perceive to be our culture; decisions that lead to incarceration, and in more serious cases, death. We discuss that aspect of our culture, as well as our thoughts on how to incorporate more balance into our culture so that more of us can lead productive lives, make better decisions AND embrace who we are through cultural pride.

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Dan LeBatard CREATES HUGE HOLE in Programming After Leaving ESPN

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Photo: ESPN Images

What ESPN stands to lose from Dan LeBatard’s departure is far more than what it stands to gain. They are going to miss him in the long-run.

If you’re a follower of ESPN Radio programming, you’re probably aware that commentator Dan LeBatard, after a lengthy partnership with ESPN, has departed the network. I wanted to wait for the dust to settle a bit before opining on what I thought of the landscape of ESPN’s programming slate in the wake of his absence, and the prognosis isn’t great. As a fan of LeBatard’s, I believe that his off-kilter brand of comedy and levity with respect to sports is needed. Couple that with his willingness to call out arbitrary sports rituals that we blindly worship, and you have what amounts to a brand of sports commentary that the world needs more of, and that ESPN will sorely miss.

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What the Washington D.C. Capitol Insurrection TEACHES Us About Practical Solutions

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Photo: Shannon Stapleton, Reuters

Although high emotions are understandable, let’s not allow what happened at the Capitol to stop us from continuing to discuss PRACTICAL solutions to social and racial inequality.

The January 6, 2021 insurrection at the Capitol building in Washington D.C. spurred a racial conversation as to the difference in the way that people of color would be treated versus the way that the insurrectionists were treated. For us, this served as a reminder that there are practical ways to approach the conversation around combatting racial inequality, and there are impractical ways to do so. We want to talk about those practical ways.

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Dave Chappelle Urges Fans to Not Watch “Chappelle’s Show”. Ownership Matters!

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Photo: Mathieu Bitton, Netflix

Dave Chappelle is another cautionary tale on the importance of knowing your worth and having an ownership mentality.

During a recent stand-up set, comedian Dave Chappelle took some time to plead with his fans to not watch reruns of his early-2000s sketch-comedy show “Chappelle’s Show” because he does not own a piece of it, and thus is not paid royalties for the work that he created. This prompted us to continue our ongoing conversation about the importance of ownership, and how it is the key to freedom in life. This is also the first episode in which we have a guest contributor to the platform – local artist and friend of the channel Titaness Writes! Follow “Tite” on the channels below for everything she has going on musically and otherwise!

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What to Learn from Kanye West’s Comments on the Music Industry and Modern-Day Slavery

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Photo: Dimitrios Kambouris 2016

Why are Kanye’s comments about modern-day slavery and the need for ownership so important?

Kanye West took to Twitter to tweet out several comments on the importance of ownership. He also likened the music industry to modern-day slavery. We discuss his comments, as well as how important it is that black and brown people prioritize the notion of ownership to attain true freedom.

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NBA Player Boycott – Our Reactions

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Photo: Jesse D. Garrabrant, NBAE via Getty Images

How practical were the NBA player boycotts in the wake of the shooting of Jacob Blake?

In the wake of the shooting of Jacob Blake, NBA players collectively banned together to refuse play for two consecutive days on August 27 and 28. We discuss the practicality of the walk-off, whether it’s appropriate that professional athletes are being placed on the frontlines in the fight against racial inequality, and how others are being let off the hook.

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