Recruiting: The Game Before the Games

Courtesy of CBS Sports

I'm not sure how many people actually follow the U of M football on and off the field. Yes, a lot of people attend the games at the Big House and cheer on the team, but the team on the field didn't just show up one day on campus and try out for the football team.  Most of them were starting to get recruited while they were still sophomores and juniors in high school.  I know that might sound a bit over the top, but these athletes are be told by men that are at least two to three times their age that they should come play football at this university or that and be pulled in every way imaginable, especially for the very top tier recruits.  I check out MGoBlog quite frequently and the amount of people that write and care about football recruiting, as well as basketball to a somewhat lesser extent just because of the team size, astounded me.  I think i should preface this by saying the whole reason I really got into following football recruiting is because a good friend and former teammate of mine committed to play football here.  I started to wonder who else would be coming in to play with him and it just took off from there.

He's the one on the far right if you were wondering.

I personally went through the football recruiting process, although not at as high a level as division 1 football. I was mostly getting looks at from D-3 and smaller D-2 schools.  I went on visits and got some phone calls, but I didn't realize what it really meant to be a highly recruited, BCS level recruit.  I found this pretty short video that helps scratch the surface of what high school athletes go through.

-courtesy of NCSAsport
When you realize how small the percentage is of high school kids that get drafted is, you can begin to see how high the level of competition is and how little room for error there is for even getting looked at by BCS schools.  This is a very high stakes game that that can decide whether someone gets a free education at a great university, or has to pay their way like most college students because of either a lack of exposure or just lack of talent.
That being said, recruiting season is in full swing with most of the big name recruits getting offers and taking visits and colleges hosting junior days to get a closer look at the athletes they are recruiting.  Michigan just had quite a successful junior day-type event.  It started with two recruits verbally committing to Michigan around 1 on the Saturday we played Ohio(State) and ended on Sunday when U of M have received verbals from 8 total recruits in a 36 hour period.  This has never happened before in the history of U of M football recruiting.  Keep in mind that these kids that committed are not even done with their junior years of high school and won't even be freshman until the fall of 2013.  To put it in perspective, Michigan didn't receive a single commitment for their class of 2012 class until the end March.  Its the end of February and Michigan has 13 out of a possible 20-22 spots filled.
If you asked almost any coach, they would tell you that recruiting is the lifeblood of a program.  Without good levels of talent, it is almost impossible for a team to do well.  Of course there are always players who are "under-the-radar", late bloomers, or deemed as "projects", meaning they have a lot of potential but are not college ready to see the field and need to be coached up before they see the field.  The coaches work with players once they're on campus and attending college is obviously a big part of success, but the product on the field had been through a process that is the real way teams win championships.  One could say that a major reason the SEC teams do as well as they do because of their ruthless recruiting tactics and the sheer numbers of top shelf talent they bring in every year.  I won't get into an argument about oversigning (its ridiculous and shouldn't be allowed), but I will say that it is slowly being gotten rid, or at least limited of by most colleges.
The games in the Big House and the players on the field *couch* Denard *cough* might get all the attention, but the process the players goes through before touching the field is the real game that is played by coaches on a daily basis.

What I Learned from the Video Game Archive

           I went to the UM Library system’s Computer and Video Game Archive at North Campus with a friend for the first minor quest. We played games from pre-2000 and post-2000 devices as I attempted to connect the perspectives I’d encountered in UC-256 to these video games, including theories about competition and fun.

            Stephen Garcia, one of our guest speakers, previously lectured about the psychology of competition. I found that many of the theories he discussed were directly applicable to video games. The N-Effect, “the discovery that increasing the number of competitors (N) can decrease competitive motivation” seemed especially evident while playing Mario Kart, a 15-year old game on the Nintendo 64 platform (Garcia 1). 

            Initially, when only my friend and I played the game, our times were nearly 12 seconds faster, a significant difference, compared to when we increased N to four by allowing two other individuals to join our game. Based on Garcia’s guest lecture, this result was unsurprising because according to the N-Effect, a smaller number of competitors leads to a higher competitive motivation because social comparison increases. Additionally, Garcia stated that closer relationships with the comparison target cause a stronger social comparison, therefore increasing competitive behavior and motivation (Garcia Lecture). I had a close relationship with my friend, but I had distant relationships with the other two individuals we had just met. 

             Later that day, I played Super Smash Brothers Melee on the Gamecube, a game released in 2001. I had played this game throughout my childhood, and although it had been a long time since last playing it, I already knew the basic strategies and techniques to easily defeat the highest level AI enemy.  I remembered reading about Tejada-Flores’ types of “games” in climbing that were used to make those practices meaningful to the gamer (Tejada-Flores 1-2). I decided that applying his perspective to my game would make Super Smash Brothers Melee much more challenging and thus, actually meaningful.

           I gave myself various handicaps, from fighting multiple enemies at a time to not allowing my character to use weapons, to choosing the weakest champions available to play. I did this because I had already mastered the basics of the game, and playing without any sort of handicap would have been far too easy and a meaningless activity. By defeating enemy AI characters in much more challenging matches because of my handicaps, I had a more meaningful experience.

            According to Koster’s Theory of Fun, successful games have certain elements incorporated into them: preparation, a sense of space, a solid core mechanic, a range of challenges, a range of abilities, and skill required in using abilities (Koster 11). After I thought about his perspective, I realized that there isn’t much of a difference in older games or modern games. Sure, newer games may have better graphics and more complex game-play, but successful games of any generation have the same basic factors that make them so great. Koster states, “Games do not permit innovation. They present a pattern… you don’t get to change the physics of a game” (Koster 8). Do you think that the same theories apply to new and old games, or is there some type of difference? I'm interested in hearing what you think!

The Psychological Principle of Flow & Montessori Education

I initially was introduced to the concept of flow my first year while in the School of Art & Design's Concept, Form, & Context program. The TED talk by Csikszentmihalyi made me increasingly interested in the concept.

Brief additional online researching of the topic brought me to the synthesis of the psychological state of flow to the methods and practice of the Montessori style of education. For those unfamiliar with the Montessori education, our trusted free online encyclopedia tells us that it is a specific approach to teaching and learning, utilized in approximately 20,000 schools worldwide. Named after Italian physician and educator Maria Montessori, the style has several principles upon which it is built, of which a few are listed here:

1. Classrooms have students of mixed ages, commonly from ages 3 to 6
2. Students have a choice of which activity they engage in
3. Work time is long and uninterrupted
4. Students are intended to learn by personal "discovery" instead of strict instruction

Being a product of the Montessori method, I was able to Relate this approach to the ideas presented by Csikszentmihalyi. By having a choice in which activity a student engages in, they allow personal interests to motivate their actions, and aren't forced into any particular activity. Coupling this with having long work time and not being interrupted by a bell to change subjects every 30 minutes allows full immersion of the student into the work - ideal conditions to promote a state of flow. Finally, since the students are intended to lean through personal discovery, they develop a feeling of self-confidence and accomplishment which is essential to immersion into flow.

Race Maps and Claude Steele

I recently came across this article that shows the populations of major U.S. cities color-coded by race: Race Maps of America

Here is a picture of Detroit (also found in the article):

Note: Red represents White, Blue is Black, Green is Asian, Orange is Hispanic, Gray is Other, and each dot represents 25 people


After reading the article by Claude Steele this past week, the message presented by these maps immediately entered my mind. The maps clearly demonstrate that in our modern society, even though the Civil Rights movement and the likes are in our history, segregation continues to thrive. In each map, there are prominent dividers between Whites, Blacks, Hispanics, and Asians. Notable is that many of the minorities are located in the center of the city, where poverty and crime flourish. We would like to consider our country a "melting pot" by which many different perspectives and cultures are infused into one. In this visual, we would expect a rainbow rather than the separation observed.

To connect this with our discussion of Indian culture with Deloria (note that Indians are not even distinguished in the maps), it looks as though all minorities in the country are squeezed and contained within their own sort of "reservations" by which their cultures and heritage live, yet barely exist beyond.

The connection between the maps and Steele's message is that this physical separation amplifies the demographic distinctions and self-fulfilling prophecies among entire communities. Steele talks about how once one student "disidentifies" self-esteem with academic performance, his friends and social group are likely to follow. The clear barriers between races continue to encourage this "groupthink," and close off different, positive prospectives from influencing these social groups.