give me a break. It's borderline r****ded. To think that someone can't handle classes because they play sports is stupid.
That's not exactly what was said, but it was in the same realm of ridiculousness. I was listening on the way home from work and the caller was a total ass, but Matt just went off on him, yelling and calling him a douchebag. I've always been a fan of Matt Jackson, ever since the evening crew days, but while I love that he talks about the Rockets a lot and is entertaining, I've really noticed his propensity to just start yelling non-stop when he disagrees with a caller. As soon as the caller says something he doesn't agree with, he interrupts and his voice immediately gets louder and he won't let the caller finsish. It's really annoying, and this was just another example of him doing that. Now, the caller was a total idiot, but still...I don't think people should rip Rich for telling Matt that he was acting out of line to a listener of the station...he was.
If a caller is an idiot, he should be called an idiot. The people that call into 610 are some of the most clueless morons ever. I don't know where they find these people.
Well, perhaps I misunderstood the op, but how you paraphrase it is not how I took it... I guess we could discuss the semantics, but I guess it's more that I don't think that a radio host should call his listeners douchebag when they call in to their show. Screen it, like they all do, and if it's so bad you have to go there, maybe don't let him on your show, or dismiss it without being... like that. I don't know, just seems lame. Perhaps you disagree. I'm ok with that.
The caller was a dweeb, HOWEVER, he did have a valid point. In case anyone missed it, or is comprehension-challenged, the point he was trying to make was this: Even with Rice's higher standards, and the above-average academic abilities of the athletes Rice DOES admit, the fact that rice is such a small student population means that the actual percentage of football players vs the student body as a whole is much much larger than at most other schools. This in turn means that, even though the student-athletes are above-average compared to athletes at other schools, they are still below the average student at Rice, and being such a large percentage, this brings down the academic ranking of Rice a a whole. And for that reason alone, many people, student and professors, would very much like to see Rice do away with athletics altogether, or at leat football, since football teams generally carry at least 80 students. Why would this matter to a Rice student? Well, in certain professional fields, competition is razor-sharp, and sometimes, academic rankings can determine which applicant gets the coveted position. So the caller DID have a point. And it was valid, when taken in that very narrow context. I am not saying he was right, or that he was not an ass, because he was. But for everyone to go off on the guy, for Matt to call him names, and for them to run and call ND Kalu to get on the phone and talk about how angry the idea made him, well they were the ones who were wrong, because they simply stopped listening. At the same time however, everyone there, (especially Rich, you could tell from his tone) was loving it because it stirred up callers and really got people fired up. And look, a multi-page thread on CF too!
everything, in some idiotic way, could have a point in a "very narrow context". i just don't think there is anything wrong with calling a spade a spade. Like one guy who called in after the loss to the Jets and said to start Grossman.
His whole argument was that because the football team makes up such a large portion of the student body, it's dragging down the average SAT score of the students that Rice accepts. For some reason he kept quoting 8%, but actually the football team makes up between 2-3% of the student body, and that's including walk-ons. So if you factor out the non-scholly football players and take into consideration the fact that Rice is currently upping enrolling each year (this year's freshman class is the biggest ever) and how college rankings are actually calculated, no, the caller didn't really have a valid point. I mean, I could call in and say the fact that UH, TSU, UST, etc exist is devaluing my Rice degree and *technically* I'd have a point. That doesn't mean I wouldn't deserve to be called a d-bag, an idiot, or whatever. But I guess this debate is more about whether or not a guy hosting a call-in radio is out of line for angrily dismissing a caller who, uh, called in.
fine...the guy deserved to be called a whiny little b*tch...not a D bag...would hate to insult Dbags afterall.
And another thing, He kept claiming to speak for the majority of Rice students. That "point" was absolutely ABSURD and completely unfounded. I have never heard anyone (student, faculty, staff, whoever) at Rice say that the university would be better off without athletics. It doesn't even make any sense. I'm getting mad just thinking about how this D-BAG had the nerve to speak for "the majority of Rice student." Excuse me while I go find a Longhorn to punch.
Rich Lord calling Britney Spears a backwood hillbilly skank ? That was Matt Jackson and sound man's chance to go Chris Crocker attack on Rich for his bad mouthing. (The topic was AOL 100 most searched women for this year. Thats definite thread potential)
There was a pretty serious discussion amongst the faculty and students a few years ago regarding if Rice, and it's mission as an academic institution, would be better served by dropping out of D-I athletics.
I remember that, and IIRC, there were talks about dropping (only) football to D-III. But even so, D-III football and D-I everything else is a lot different than foregoing athletics altogether, which is what I said in the part of my post that you quoted. I feel like most of Rice agrees with our President's sentiment that athletics shouldn't be the most important thing, but they're important enough that if we're going to do them, we need to do them right.
The whole subject kinda comes across as "Rice Exclusive", like only those in the Rice club could really understand their own in-house issue. Which would then make the issue irrelevant to anyone not connected. Where then mentioning the issue to non-Rice people might come across as self promotion, rather than informative.
