All posts by Christopher DeGroote

Who’s buying tickets to the ump show?

11 Nov 2021 Christopher DeGroote

Ah yes, referees. Our favorite part of the sport, right? They absolutely love making the game more controlled by their “accurate” calls at all times. Whether it be watching your hopes of continuing in the postseason be ruined by watching the worst Pass Interference call in the history of football happen, calling a strike on somebody that did not even swing to end a 107 win baseball season to both ruin hopes of millions of fans, or even a body part that you aren’t even allowed to score with being offside that disallows a goal.

Refereeing, or umpiring, is well and indeed a job for someone who has a solid heart to take criticism; however, that is what you are expected to do, because you can control a team’s season in one call. So why do people give them the “slap on the wrist” treatment? It mainly comes from the idea that “if it is perfect all the time, then it would be less fun.” That idea only works in the context of the same team winning all the time, most definitely not refereeing. I think most people who play the sport or watch the sport religiously would rather be able to think to themselves, “Yeah, we lost the game fair and square,” rather than go home thinking they got robbed by an incredibly poor refereeing call. I think most of the New Orleans Saints and San Francisco Giants fans can agree.

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Now you could say, “But some are judgment calls, so that’s why they aren’t perfect.” An idea of this would be when a football is fumbled, and both teams fall onto it in a massive “man-mountain,” where it is unclear who actually got the ball. Then, you usually just see who had the ball before everyone fell onto it. Yet, you can not use that for every 50/50 call. An example of this would be calling a strike. It happened even in game 4 of the National League Championship Series of 2021 between the Atlanta Braves and Los Angeles Dodgers. You could watch the ball fly into the top corner of the strike zone and be called a strike one pitch during the game. However, another pitch to the same spot is called a ball. There needs to be consistency.

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We have the technology to cover the referee’s mistakes; however, even that has flaws. An example of this would be in soccer, with the offside rule, which is when a player cannot run in front of the last defender when a forward pass is played. In 2020 in the Merseyside Derby, one of the biggest derbies in British soccer proved this an issue. It was 2-2 with only two more minutes of stoppage time between Everton and Liverpool. Sadio Mane passes the ball inside for Jordan Henderson to score past Everton goalkeeper Jordan Pickford for the last-minute winner, yet it does not count because of offside. The offside came when Thiago passed to Mane when he was considered offside even though he was offside by his elbow, which you are not allowed to score with and seemed almost perfectly lined in the video review. Yet, it was called off nonetheless when technological lines said he was offside by the width of a piece of paper.

Another example of technology failing us is in American Football. The rules for video review are incredibly complicated, which just sets up referees for failure. A perfect example would be the infamous Los Angeles Rams vs. New Orleans Saints no pass interference call in 2019. For context, before this event, you weren’t allowed to video review a pass interference call in American football. Drew Brees throws up a pass to Tommylee Lewis, and Nickell Robey-Coleman goes in for an obviously illegal hit on Lewis to stop him from getting to the ball.

In most cases, the referee would immediately throw a flag and award first down to the Saints, yet on this day, it just was not meant to happen because it was considered a clean hit. This led to the Saints kicking a field goal to take only a three-point lead, rather than the potential seven they could have had if the penalty was called. This gave time for the Rams to run down the field to set up Greg Zuerlein to hit a game-tying field goal. The game goes into overtime, Drew Brees throws an interception, Rams go back down the field to set up Zuerlein to win, and the Rams win.

Overall, I could go into many more examples about how teams have been ruined by poor refereeing calls, but we would be here all day. Referees will forever be the people that keep the rules in check for sports during a competition, but will they ever be perfect and make everything easy for athletes and fans to watch the sport? No, absolutely not. However, like with athletes trying to improve their skills, we can strive for perfection and find a way to improve refereeing – our sports depend on it.

Chris DeGroote is a junior member of the Multimedia Journalism class

News, Opinions

“Monolingual is the minority” – Learning a foreign language is key to global success

20 Oct 2021 Christopher DeGroote

At Mount St. Joseph, we spend a lot of our time studying subjects such as mathematics, science, history, or English because we’ve been told that it is “important” within our choice of major for college and career. Yet we seldom seem to hear about the importance of a foreign language. After all, I hadn’t given it much through since I no longer pursued my French language study. Even in our school system Math, Science, English, and History are all classes you have to take for 3 or 4 years, no excuse, yet in foreign language, it is only 2 years. So with that knowledge, I set myself out on the journey of finding the fundamental importance of knowing a language that isn’t your own.

I do think as citizens of the United States we also have to work as ambassadors of the United States to the world. That is learning of the languages and of the cultures. And getting good at it.
Dr. Elizabeth Pease

I decided that I would interview Jonathon Gibbons, a teacher who teaches Spanish, Italian, and the first two levels of French, to better understand why we should study a foreign language with a more self-important look. Most of us students would ask ourselves when exploring a new language would be “Why does it matter for me to study this?” or “Am I wasting my time studying this?” The question as to what we could benefit from studying a new language can be a complex answer for some, but to Mr. Gibbons, it was one of simplicity. “When in the cases of, especially in the ones that we learn, in either Spanish, French, Italian, German, or Chinese. These languages all have rich history and culture phenomenon that are worth knowing.” Gibbons added, “And also to say from my personal experience, in general, if I had not spoken another language I would have not met someone, might not have seen something.”

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When studying anything in high school, we often ask ourselves what the most essential thing to study is? The answer to that question is not as easy as learning Spanish, Italian, or French. Instead, it is one of the people’s motivations for what they want to do with their language knowledge. “If you, for example, are looking to get into, you know, art or history, you probably want to learn Italian or French,” said Gibbons.

You have now seen why we should study a foreign language, but what do we get from learning a different language? In a sense, it is a case of what you should get from learning a new language. As stated before, a person who finds it necessary should want to study it for maybe a goal of history or art. A way of having this appreciation is for having the ability to go to see a film and understand the language they are speaking, even if you aren’t as good at that language. Or it can even unexpectedly help you. Mr. Gibbons explained how suddenly, it can help you, “I would say more practically, deal with survival situations when need be. Not only to help yourself but also another person.”

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If you are a junior or soon to be junior, you likely think about continuing down the path of studying a foreign language. Dr. Elizabeth Pease believes in the importance of going beyond the basics. “A real simple one is working beyond the beginner basics in one subject area and taking it to an intermediate advance level, is just a very good exercise and experience in the foreign language.” For us to continue the study would be like taking a higher math subject from what we are required to do, you could do the same for a foreign language.

So yes, there is some use to studying a foreign language beyond the two years required. However, some students may already know a foreign language before going to MSJ. Now, this is probably just a far-off example, yet it is a natural thought because of the many people that go to this school. The simple answer is that it would be beneficial to be bilingual and be trilingual, which can benefit you in life in the long run, or it can help you study the language you already know to improve for a variety of reasons. “They would still really need to study the written form of the language, the grammar, and greater precision of the language. So they still may need to keep studying that very same language,” Dr. Pease said.

More of the world is bilingual or multilingual than is monolingual. Monolingual is the minority. We don’t want to be the minority, we want to compete, we want to be able to connect, we want to bring goodwill to others.
Dr. Elizabeth Pease

The final question I asked was, why should we study a foreign language in university? This was a question I had thought about for a while because what would we exactly do with the language during university. “I do think as citizens of the United States we also have to work as ambassadors of the United States to the world. That is learning of the languages and of the cultures. And getting good at it.” Dr. Pease continued, “More of the world is bilingual or multilingual than is monolingual. Monolingual is the minority. We don’t want to be the minority, we want to compete, we want to be able to connect, we want to bring goodwill to others.”

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So at the end of the interviewing process, it ended up opening my mind up to learning a foreign language again. Learning about why we study a foreign language was actually more interesting than I imagined it would be. Hearing from people directly involved with the learning and teaching of a foreign language made me appreciate it even more. And I hope it has done the same for you.

Chris DeGroote is a junior member of the Multimedia Journalism class

Opinions, Pro Sports

The lack of equity in soccer has gotten out of hand

17 Sep 2021 Christopher DeGroote

Football, aka soccer in the states, is a beautiful game. The game most of the world loves. The game where everyone with just the ability and desire to work hard to earn their chance on a team will make it right? Maybe you would also hear that it is the sport where “anyone or any team can win.” Well, you are actually almost utterly wrong if you think that. You can spend your entire life working towards making it to the highest level and maybe have the chance to win a title for your team. Instead, you will likely just end up losing to a team that can spend on players who have better talent than you. So I am going to explain to you how wealthy billionaires have ruined football.

First, let me explain why the owners have more power than American sports owners. In American sports, there is something called a salary cap. This salary cap system is used in many American sports to stop teams’ excessive amounts of money. Yes, in European soccer, there is some sort of rule where you aren’t allowed to spend over a certain amount for wages. However, this rule is relatively easy to bypass for teams with wealthy owners. They can spend more on wages than the less affluent teams due to their higher wealth, causing this separation between teams. This leads to exclusive competition among only a few teams in the league compared to everyone else.

Now, what teams have these types of owners? Simple answer: almost every single good one.

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Let’s talk about one of the first real mega-money men of the sport, Roman Abramovich, the owner of Chelsea F.C. He took ownership of the team in June 2003. He wanted to take over the club because he saw potential in the team after they finished fourth. In total, under his reign of ownership, Chelsea has won nearly 20 trophies, with more still to come for as long as he is in charge. It also has kept them at the top consistently for most of that time. Yet he has also spent nearly 4 billion dollars on players alone to get Chelsea to where they are.

Years of constant investment in some of the best players in the world can also impact players who could succeed in this newfound competition for a position. A player who has had this experience is Tammy Abraham. He played for Chelsea FC, and got consistent game time during the 2019-2020 season. During this season, he shined looking like one of the best strikers in the premier league and thought he would keep the form going. Then, Chelsea spent millions on strikers such as Timo Werner in 2020 and Romelu Lukaku in 2021 to push him out of the starting position. He has since moved to a team named Roma FC, where he has gotten off to a good start.

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Now that we learned what it is like to be at the top, let us see what it is like to be average. Sometimes, you can spend this mass amount of money and still not reach the heights of winning trophies or competing for more significant competitions. For example, Everton, a team that has spent nearly 500 million dollars, still has found little success.

What owners mainly spend their money on is the transfer fees of players. For example, recently, Manchester City spent nearly 130 million dollars on Jack Grealish. Yes, spending that much money on a single person is extreme, but that is the primary way for teams to compete for the top.

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These owners also want more ways to make money. Through wanting to cut costs on running the team, taking money from the team, and even trying to come up with grand ideas to bring more cash into themselves. An example of this would be Manchester United’s owners taking money from transfer fees to pay their own expenses.

The sport is now viewed by hardcore fans as being a cash grab rather than an experience for anyone and everyone. A way the fans feel this is through ticket prices. The average ticket price to get into Premier League games increases every season and gets more hurtful to fans’ pockets. Not only in tickets, but the owners also likely make fans overpay for any sort of merchandise that the team makes, such as jerseys, scarves, hats, etc.

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Overall, owners can completely invest in making their team better to become a more prominent name to make their money. They rob players’ careers to make money for their own gain rather than even caring about the players; they don’t care about the people who give them the money, the fans.