Conclusion of Sport Globalization

As always, it seem like when it's the last week of the semester you can't help but question yourself where has the semester went? At the start of this class I had no idea what was expected to be covered in the materials but soon learned that sports around the world is just as popular and in depth as it is in America. The class has been such a learning experience about different cultures and different insights about sports globally.

I really enjoyed to broad range of topics we discussed over the semester. Dr. Spencer covered anything and everything it seems like over a period of three months we discussed everything in the alphabet A through Z. Recently covering the Paralympics, along with every other single sport from baseball, cricket, rugby, basketball, football, and of course the other "futbol" or as we call it soccer.  My favorite topic discussed out of everything we touched on was the subject of hooliganism. I can relate to this topic the most because being a die hard college football fan I can relate to soccer hooligans and their passion for the game. To get a first person view of the topic we had a guest speaker whose name was Dr. Meek who gave an outlook on the degree of radical stunts hooliganism can reach in Europe. I enjoyed his presentation out of all guest speakers because he gave great detail of how hooliganism is prevalent and in some circumstances dangerous. One subject I wish we could have covered briefly is the sport of Polo. A sport played on horses is a unique game and the rules and objective are not very wide known.

Another positive thing from the class I enjoyed was the cohesiveness of the class during a majority of discussions. We had many open debates on random material and many of the discussions were open minded and free to debate your point of view on the matter. To further advance the class room learning potential it was a special opportunity to have a classmate from Switzerland which everyone knows was Wiebe to add outside perspective on certain topics.

In retrospect on the semester and the class it was a great experience to learn about the Globalization of Sport around the world. ESPN only gives limited spot light to events around the globe and I can really say when I was sitting in class it felt like I was watching ESPN Global, a new channel about global events around the world.