I love sports... I love teaching geography to 7th graders... so is it any surprise I mix the two? It might be surprising to the old guard... you know, the teachers that approach geography class as an opportunity to assess teenagers' coloring skills and trivial knowledge of capital cities. But to me, sports and geography are on par with peanut butter and jelly, Stockton and Malone... woah, see? I can't even get through more than 2 great combos without naming one from the sports world. Mixing sports and geography should not be THAT surprising though. Think about it... sports teams are all associated with a specific location, often in a large population center. The team name often gives us major clues about the physical geography, weather or climate, history, culture, industries, indigenous species, or greater importance of that city. (See my "Chart of Indisputable Proof" below) Geography must be considered by sports franchises when it comes to designing and building a stadium, advertising, pricing their tickets and concessions, planning the logistics of parking, traffic direction and safety, partnering with corporate sponsors, and an endless list of other issues. It goes even deeper than that, though. The very fabric of the franchise, literally and figuratively, often depends on culture. Literally, uniform and logo design and color schemes often reflect the local culture and feel of an area. Sometimes there are obvious connections, like the NHL's Washington Capitals, which feature a red, white and blue color scheme with an eagle, stars, and an outline of the Capitol building itself... how very fitting to evoke so much nationalistic symbolism and imagery for a team located and named after the nation's capital. Personally, I have been doing this without even realizing it since I was in elementary school when I was shooting hoops or playing street hockey in my driveway, playing for my own made up teams in my own made up leagues. I was the "star" of the fictional National Inline Hockey League's San Diego Senile Surfers, a clear nod to the climate and culture of Southern California. I "played for" the fictional North American Basketball Association's North Carolina Flyers, an allusion to the Wright Brothers first powered flight at Kitty Hawk in 1903. In 6th grade my friend and I created the Seattle Fighting Salmon, an indoor, on-turf team suited for the rain of Seattle (sponsored by Starbucks, which I'm sure was a relative bargain since it was 1999) and the Bangor (Maine) Polar Jammers, a hard-nosed, power running, outdoor team suited for the cold of Maine. I drew up the Midwestern Kickball League freshman year of high school. I created the Alaska Christian University Polar Bears with a really sweet Black/White/Icy Blue color combo on NCAA Football 07. In Madden 08, I moved the Minnesota Vikings to Honolulu to become the Hawaii Defenders, boldly featuring the stock image P-40 fighter plane logo as a shoutout to the pilots defending Pearl Harbor... ...but I digress... back to my point. Figuratively, you sometimes hear the talking heads on sports broadcasts mentioning a team's roster, style of play or attitude reflecting the local area. For example, saying the Pittsburgh Steelers play tough, gritty, blue-collar football points out that a city full of fans that have worked in manufacturing can relate to them. If a very skilled player know for their flash and good looks gets traded to a team in Los Angeles (i.e. Wayne Gretzky in 1988) or if a Los Angeles team plays an exciting, entertaining style (i.e. the "Showtime" Lakers of the 1980's) they are regarded as a perfect fit for that city and its fan base, which often features actors and musicians in the stands for every home game. TOP ROW: Movie Stars such as Jack Nicholson are courtside fixtures at Lakers games in L.A., while Director Spike Lee and Actor/Comedian Chris Rock can often be seen rooting for the Knicks in New York City. BOTTOM ROW: Fans residing in blue-collar industrial cities with cold climates wear hardhats to games and embrace the cold How do I use this effectively?In my fourth year teaching, I came across an old notebook I had used for a class in college. As I was flipping through it to see if there was anything important for me to save or if there was blank paper I could salvage, I stumbled upon the North American Basketball League (NABL), a "bored-in-class" side project I had worked on in Edu305. Remember the NABA from my driveway? This was the official offshoot, re-branded as a LEAGUE rather than ASSOCIATION to distance it from the NBA. I smiled ear to ear remembering how much fun I had sketching out those uniforms and logos, including the reincarnated North Carolina Flyers. As I looked at the teams that I had created years before I knew I would teach geography for a living, I noticed just how much geography was actually involved. I had teams named for physical geography like the Aurora Hilltoppers. I had teams named for local industries like the St. Paul Lumberjacks, Topeka Combine (pictured here), Odessa Oilers and Vancouver Whalers. I had teams named for local history and culture like the Ciudad Juarez Aztecs and Honolulu Leis. I had teams named for what makes the city famous today like the Norfolk Admirals and Newark Jumbos. I had even marked city population stats on each page to make sure the cities were big enough to support a marginally large professional sports franchise with enough fans and revenue. Granted, not all my teams were SUPER steeped in geography... I mean, the Kalamazoo Fighting Kangaroos was not due to the thousands of wild Kangaroos roaming West Michigan... I just couldn't pass up the opportunity to draw a Kangaroo with boxing gloves and abbreviate them to the K'Zoo 'Roos. Nonetheless, an idea was born. What if the kids had to do this? Would there be enough geography to integrate where I could assess them on standards? I began to work out the logistics and realized I might have to NARROW DOWN the focus of the project to fit a manageable number of standards. There was more than enough geography to work with. So here it is... this is what we do. As a summative project in our North America unit, they create their own professional football franchises based in a city of their choice. All the student-created franchises are joined together in a fictional league called the Made Up North American Football League (MUNAFL). The student-created franchises are assessed on several different National Geography Standards. For more detail, you can check out the Standards page on my website and specifically focus on Standards 1, 10, 11, 15 and 18. To check out the glorious details of the project, you can find it on my TeachersPayTeachers site. When selecting their city, they need to analyze everything from metro area population and population density, major transportation routes, crime rates, median incomes, local businesses, early history, etc. Once they have determined they will have a good chance of success in a particular city based on that criteria, they move on to creating a nickname, logo and uniform combination with local ties. As a group, we look at real examples of sports teams that mix local flair into their names and logos for inspiration, and students have come up with some great ideas... for instance, the New Orleans Swing (tying to the history of Jazz), Los Angeles Lobos (Spanish for Wolves), Las Vegas Gamblers (based on the tourism and entertainment industry) and possibly my personal favorite, the San Francisco Criminals (due to the proximity to Alcatraz Island). With the name and color scheme set, they move on to selecting a suitable construction site for a new stadium, which forces them to use map skills as well as urban planning. With a site selected, they must design a stadium that fits with the climate (indoor vs. outdoor, artificial turf vs. natural grass), and demographics (seating capacity based on population, specialty stadium food based on local tastes, pricing of tickets and merchandise based on incomes) while perhaps selling naming rights for the stadium to a local business in exchange for a higher budget (ex: 3M Stadium in Minneapolis or Disney Field in Orlando). With their individual franchises taking shape and all the cities set, students take a list of each franchise in their class and analyze it to break into logical divisions based on region and relative location. What students may not realize by this point of the project is that every decision they have made up to this point is impacting their bottom line. Money becomes an issue, especially when it's time to sign players and create a competitive roster. If a student is in one of the largest cities, such as New York, Los Angeles or Chicago, they are given a larger budget by the league office to simulate the impact their larger market would make in real life. Students that locate their franchises in smaller, more isolated cities are given less money and will have to be more creative to compete. In addition, students that forged partnerships with companies from their area and put their logo on their jersey or sold naming rights to their stadiums get a boost in their budget too. With budgets set, they go and look at real salary data and decide which players they can potentially sign. They must weigh the advantages and disadvantages. Signing better players may bring more success to the team, which means more fans, more TV games, and more money. However, as a brand new franchise, money can be tight and it's risky to sign a big-name player for big dollars. Granted, this is all theoretical and there is no way for us to actually project how successful one student's team will be compared to another in real life, but at least they are thinking about the potential economic impact. BEING SELFISH: Ok... am I doing this for me? Am I running this project because I like sports and because this is what I did for fun when I was their age? Well, kind of... But is that necessarily a BAD thing? I don't think so. If I am completely invested in a project, if it was a labor of love, if it ties to things I care about deeply and get me excited, then all of that positive energy gets transferred out to the students. I think it is especially important for me to use a project I care so deeply about because I KNOW all the seventh graders don't share my enthusiasm. The thing is, that would be true for ANY project we could possibly do. Some kids will get into it with no prompting on my part, others will need lots of convincing that what we are doing is worthwhile and could be fun. Before doing this project the first time, I thought long and hard about the kids that didn't care for sports. There was a 7th grade girl that flat out wrote "sports is my worst nightmare" on an advanced learning plan that gets shared with teachers in order to help us accommodate for their needs. Would I be torturing her with this project? Would I be disregarding one of the only requests she had about her educational experience? I worried about her reaction at first, but calmed down after thinking about all of the other avenues this project creates that aren't necessarily sports-focused. This particular student is a gifted artist and has ambitions to do animation and design as part of a future career. Her talents were very evident in the design of her logo, uniforms and stadium. That was complete validation for me because it proved even kids that hated sports had plenty of opportunities to enjoy this project in other ways and get something meaningful and valuable from it. Not to mention the fact that such a wide variety of geography standards are also being assessed in a non-traditional way with real-life applications. AS PROMISED: |
TEAMS WITH NICKNAMES RELATED TO WEATHER/CLIMATE:
Carolina Hurricanes, Oklahoma City Thunder, Phoenix Suns (c'mon, these are fairly self explainatory)
Carolina Hurricanes, Oklahoma City Thunder, Phoenix Suns (c'mon, these are fairly self explainatory)
TEAMS WITH NICKNAMES RELATED TO HISTORY:
Chicago Fire (referring to the widespread fire of 1871) , Philadelphia 76ers (referring to the headquarters of the American Revolution beginning in 1776), San Francisco 49ers (referring to the California gold rush of 1849)
Chicago Fire (referring to the widespread fire of 1871) , Philadelphia 76ers (referring to the headquarters of the American Revolution beginning in 1776), San Francisco 49ers (referring to the California gold rush of 1849)
TEAMS WITH NICKNAMES RELATED TO CULTURE:
Chicago Blackhawks (Tribe originally living in the region), Houston Texans (evoking the Texas flag and independence movement), Montreal Canadiens (connecting to broad identity of all CanadiAn citizens, but with subtle reference to the French speakers of Montreal itself, hence, CanadiEns)
Chicago Blackhawks (Tribe originally living in the region), Houston Texans (evoking the Texas flag and independence movement), Montreal Canadiens (connecting to broad identity of all CanadiAn citizens, but with subtle reference to the French speakers of Montreal itself, hence, CanadiEns)
TEAMS WITH NICKNAMES RELATED TO INDUSTRIES:
Milwaukee Brewers (Milwaukee's production of beer), Green Bay Packers (team originally affiliated with meat packing company), Pittsburgh Steelers (Pittsburgh's history of steel production)
Milwaukee Brewers (Milwaukee's production of beer), Green Bay Packers (team originally affiliated with meat packing company), Pittsburgh Steelers (Pittsburgh's history of steel production)
TEAMS WITH NICKNAMES RELATED TO INDIGENOUS SPECIES:
Milwaukee Bucks, Seattle Seahawks, Miami Marlins
Milwaukee Bucks, Seattle Seahawks, Miami Marlins
TEAMS WITH NICKNAMES RELATED TO OVERALL IMPORTANCE OF THE CITY:
Ottawa Senators (Capital of Canada), Orlando Magic (home of Disney), Houston Astros (Home of NASA)
Ottawa Senators (Capital of Canada), Orlando Magic (home of Disney), Houston Astros (Home of NASA)
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John Honish:
8th grade Social Studies Teacher
DeForest Area Middle School
DeForest, WI, USA
Alter ego: educational hip hop superstar "H-Dub"
President of the D.P.R.H.
FANschool commissioner and presenter
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