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YouTube For High-School Jocks
theodp writes "Used to be college scouts had to put in lots of miles to find a hick from French Lick. But thanks to the Internet, athletic recruiters no longer have to traipse out to actual games to find talent. The players are coming to them via links to video streamed from sports-info websites like Student-Athlete Showcase, iPlayers, and GetMyNameOut. The home-video-meets-NFL-Films highlight reels — which parents commission for a fee ranging from $300 to $5,000 — have become a standard component of college applications for jocks (as well as for aspiring actors, dancers, and musicians). One sales pitch: 'Are you willing to risk your child's potential scholarship with a homemade videotape? Remember, first impressions last forever!'"
A jock is a subclass of high school athletes who generally bully nerds and geeks and tend to act fairly arrogant.
The characterization of athletes in this article shows the high school nerd mentality that everyone who is athletic must fall into the class of people who bully nerds. Most people outgrow this attitude as they get older and don't make such bigoted characterizations. Sadly, as this article shows, not everyone does.
Parents should take advantage of any method to get their kid noticed.
I find this rather dubious with using videos solely rather than watching on site performance because as everyone knows, you can pretty much doctor even the worst performance and make it look good with the right sound bites and clips. Then those athletes who may even be better at the sport and who can't afford to make a good production video won't get as much attention.
Of course, one would suspect something if a set of parents spent $50 grand on hiring Pixar to make their son's youtube video.
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You know, I can't help but feel that there's a lot of anger in this post. I was picked on in high school too, but you know what? Having moved on, I no longer harbor anger or resentment towards people who may resemble, by their extracurricular activities, people who picked on me in high school. Above all, I don't resort to the kind of name-calling that reminds one of all too many calls of "NEEEEERRRRRRRRDDDDDDD".
Actually, by your link to the Urban Dictionary, a Jock is indeed an Athlete. However, it is just not a "Real Athlete" according to at least one of the definitions submitted by those who chose to put their two cents in. I find it strange that by submitting this link as proof of "A jock is not an athlete" you appear to believe that being physically involved with sports activities does not constitute athletic status. The Majority of the definitions I read at Urban Dictionary confirm that Jocks are indeed athletes, only athletes that are also bullies, bigots, or have anger management issues.
It is interesting to note that the majority of definitions there also appear to be written by people who would never consider themselves to be a "Jock". Now, I know that some of these would be the "Real Athletes" mentioned in that one definition, however I would not hesitate to guess that most of these people would be those people who grew up hating "Jocks" during their school years, for a number of reasons.
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My HS must have been the exception. The majority of the football players (who were also frequently basketball and baseball players) were actually fairly nice guys, quite a few were in honors/AP classes. I dunno if the coach(es) told them to be nice, or if they genuinely were that way, but they were quite affable people.
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Any Sports team that based an evaluation purely on a video deserves everything it gets.
However, as a starting point it's an excellent way of whittling down candidates and seeing what's out there. This is a good idea as long as it doesn't become exploitative (um, which for modelling and acting such things very much already are). Yes, you can alter perception to a degree with CG, with visual effects, or even just good camera direction -- however, this is highly skilled and very few people on Earth can do it, most of them already do indeed work in the film industry.
Incidentally if you think Pixar would do a YouTube video for 50 grand... try 50 grand per second, and you'd be closer.
Oh shut up. You're making us all look bad, especially by being modded up.
Yeah, you had a bad experience in the AV club in high school, get over it. Go to your local park and find an ad-hoc football game, talk to the guys, then tell me they're all arrogant anti-intellectuals. Hell, some of the smartest people I know, in the most cutting-edge tech companies, have basketball and soccer teams organized.
Stereotypes are bad, mmmkay?
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No, you're HS isn't the exception. The other description is a caricature along the lines of Revenge of the Nerds.
Oh come one, he said it was a stereotype, which if you're going to offer that fact up means you know that it doesn't apply to everyone. And he's absolutely right that it has a basis in reality, the reality of our high school culture. High schools are demented, dementing places where social strata are formed based on fashion, and higher strata are allowed (and to maintain status often required) to harass lower strata while the faculty look on and smile. This is, of course, a generalization, and doesn't apply to every school. But I should hope that if you can't see any truth to this description of high school and the social pressures it creates, then you are probably in the minority.
It shouldn't be surprising at all that outside of a High School most athletes tend to be much nicer, more humble, and more accepting of intellectualism if not intellectuals themselves. A park pick-up game isn't passed through the filter of high school athletics. Hell, some of the worst "jocks" I knew in high school became vastly better human beings the very second you interacted with them outside of that pressure-cooker of social dysfunction.
There is definitely such a thing as a "jock" and they are by and large a byproduct of high schools where while the nerds may use the term "jock" derisively, it is most often used as an aspiration.
The fact that being a "jock" is completely meaningless after high school is why things get so much better in that regard, just like every meaningless social issue in high school gets better after high school.
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