Tag Archives: TCU

local news

Freshmen or first-year?

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I need to get out more.

Texas Christian University, in Fort Worth, has decided it no longer will refer to new students at the school as “freshmen.” It will call ’em “first-year students.”

Oh, my goodness. This is another cog in the gender-neutral wheel that’s being turned at institutions around the nation. Some folks believe that the term “freshmen” is, um, too gender specific. To fix that issue, they want to rid the language of such terminology.

OK. How do I respond to this?

Let’s see. I’ll respond by disregarding it for the most part. I don’t attend school. Neither do my sons. My granddaughter is still in elementary school, so she isn’t even old enough to be troubled by terms and phrases that she might perceive to be offensive.

Sigh.

I long have considered myself to be a liberated American male. Many of the changes in popular culture have been all right with me. This one, though, simply annoys me. It’s not as though I’ll spend a moment worrying about it. I won’t lose a minute of sleep over whether TCU’s freshmen students will be called “first-year” Horned Frogs.

As I step back and take a longer view of it, I am left to wonder: When is this gender-neutrality effort going to end? 

The older I get the more I find myself disliking politically correct terminology. I get that we no longer use racially insensitive terms and I am fine with that nod to political correctness. I supported the decision to change the name of the Washington team that plays in the National Football League.

However, TCU’s decision to end the use of the term “freshmen” is an annoyance I cannot let pass.

Let us all stay tuned. I am certain there will be many more of these so-called language “reforms” on the horizon.

Sports news

That's how you pick a football champ

There can be zero doubt about a couple of things relating to Monday night’s football game to determine the national collegiate champion.

* First, the “wrong” team won the game. I am a native of Oregon and I was pulling mightily for the Oregon Ducks to beat the other guys and take a national championship back to the Pacific Northwest. They had me going after the first two possessions of the game. A quick score and then forcing the other guys to punt the ball away. Woe is me and the rest of us who comprise the Duck faithful.

* Second, Ohio State’s Buckeyes deserve the honor of being called the national champions of intercollegiate football. Let there also be zero doubt about the Buckeyes’ place in this four-team playoff, the first of its kind established by the NCAA to determine the best football team in the country. My hat — if I were wearing one at the moment — would be off in tribute to the Buckeyes. Man, they played a great football game!

The playoff system worked.

Four great teams were selected for this two-round playoff system. Granted, Ohio State was not my pick for the fourth seed; I preferred Baylor or perhaps Texas Christian University for that spot.

But as it turned out — much to the dismay of Alabama and now Oregon faithful — the Buckeyes turned out to be more than merely worthy of the honor of participating in the playoff system.

The Bowl Championship Series system is history. The bowl games, while important to the schools participating in them, no longer will determine the national champion. The BCS system of selecting the champs was too prone to second-guessing — not that this system didn’t have its share of doubters.

However, as we saw last night in Arlington, Texas, the new playoff system allows for the title to be decided by the coaches and athletes.

The NCAA football playoff system gurus got it right. Well done.