Government Grants for All

After 1998 Students Didn’t Need to Begin Essays With a Blank Screen

Plagiarism is endemic and fighting it is an industry. The plagiarist psychiatrist Raj Persaud, last week suspended from practicing for three months by the General Medical Council, is nothing more than its most visible pimple. A few days after the GMC announced its sentence I went to a conference in Newcastle, the third International Plagiarism Conference, and heard Persaud’s name mentioned only when I raised it. The conference lasted two days; 200 delegates, mainly academics, attended; we heard about the Plagiarism Advisory Service, the scholarly journal Plagiary, the online magazine Plagiarism Today, the utility and otherwise of the software programs used to detect plagiarism. In universities across the world there is a war going on and all kinds of people are making money from it. One delegate referred to it as an “arms race” that the students would win because they would always come up with superior tactics.

To plagiarise is to steal someone else’s words or inventions and pass them off as one’s own. As a habit, it must predate the birth of the wheel. What has transformed it from a minor form of deviant behavior into a social problem important enough to attract funding from governments everywhere are two developments of the late 20th century: the increasing belief that a university degree is the most important certificate of human intelligence and employability, and the invention of digital text and web search engines, most notably Google. If, as Larkin says, sex began in 1963, then plagiarism started in 1998; and I should declare that I owe this thought to one of the conference’s guest speakers, Jude Carroll, a teaching fellow at Oxford Brookes University.

“After 1998,” Carroll told me, “students didn’t need to start their essays with a blank screen. Other people’s words could be easily imported.” Often these texts were adapted with minimal paraphrasing and no acknowledgment, sometimes because the student was ignorant of the traditions of scholarship; ‘they knew not what they did’ would be the kind interpretation.

In the years since, according to Carroll, plagiarism – or more accurately, detectable plagiarism – has risen tenfold. “Once it might have been three or four students in a thousand and now it’s more like three or four in every hundred,” Carroll said, adding a phrase that I had never heard before: “just-in-time information”. Among many students, the idea of “becoming knowledgeable”, that slow perusal of books in libraries, information dragged into the brain and then ground out again in essay form, had gone. About a third of Britain’s student population never go near a library. They study online. When the essay is due, Google will throw up the necessary texts, to be copied and pasted just in time. In Sweden, they have no word for plagiarism. They call it cheating and punish accordingly. But Carroll insisted that Britain should see it as a pedagogic rather than a moral problem, reflecting how students were taught and examined. Academics persisted in “the fantasy” that they and their students belonged to the same scholarly tribe, whereas students were pragmatic.

Which discipline provides most plagiarists? I thought the answer might be English or history, with their traditions of creative borrowing. Not so. Business studies top the league of detected plagiarism, followed by computing and accountancy. This may have less to do with the moral qualities of business students than with the machinery of detection. Probably, a higher proportion of business texts exists online. Software fights software. A program called Turnitin from an American company based in Oakland, California, is the market leader in online textual comparison. Nearly every British institution of higher education uses Turnitin, which was one of the conference’s sponsors. It boasts that it has access to 12bn web pages and 40m student papers, but only to “thousands” of books. Feed a student’s essay into the program and if parts of it find a match in another of the billions of accessible documents then the duplicated text will be highlighted in yellow – an excellent tool for discovering the original work if it’s an MBA paper from Princeton in 2003, but not (or not yet) if the source is a recherché study of Hazlitt from the Oklahoma University Press in 1953.

John Barrie, formerly a neurobiologist, founded Turnitin in 1998 after experiments in the classroom that used the web for the peer review of student essays, revealing a degree of collusion and intellectual theft that astonished him. He said plagiarism among students was a growing phenomenon. His program had discovered that 10% of the statements made by potential students to gain admission to a university were plagiarised: their heartfelt experiences (“Medicine means a great deal to me because …”) filched from the minds of others.

Students understand Turnitin; they know how it works, partly because universities encourage staff to demonstrate it as a teaching tool, to show what happens when sources aren’t properly referenced. Look at those yellow highlights! But all this means, according to a lecturer I met, is that Turnitin teaches students to be better plagiarists or to seek a different solution in the purchase of a bespoke essay from a company such as UKessays.com, which claims to have more than 3,500 writers on its books and can knock you out at an essay for prices ranging from £500 to £5,000 . All carry a £5,000 guarantee that they are “plagiarism proof”. Barclay Littlewood, the 30-year-old lawyer who owns UKessays, appears on The Sunday Times Rich List.

Is there a particular kind of student more prone to plagiarism than others? People at the conference were careful in their answers, but there is no avoiding the phrase “international students”, who are disproportionately represented. British universities make a great deal of money from foreign students; their written English is often poor; and yet they are studying for postgraduate degrees in one-year courses that will enable them to attach the letters MA or MSc or MBA after their names. Research published this week by the Higher Education Academy shows that much more plagiarism is being detected among postgraduate students than among undergraduates.

A delegate said to me: “Imagine. Your family – maybe even your village – has clubbed together to pay your fees and expenses, which could be many thousands of pounds. How could you go back home without your degree?” I suggested the temptation must be very great. She laughed: “Temptation is the wrong word. They’re making a completely rational, pragmatic decision. They’re here to collect a qualification, a piece of paper, and then go away again. You think they’re going to away without the thing they’ve come to get?”

A piece of paper means a better job. Lee McQueen, who became Sir Alan Sugar’s apprentice, lied about his education and still won. Delegates were keener to mention him than Persaud. Didn’t it validate what the student plagiarists believed – that success came from what one could get away with? The uplifting thing, is that students who cut and paste and claim the result as their own are so far in such a small minority.

Tags: 1998, After, Begin, Blank, didn't, Essays, Need, Screen, Students

After 1998 Students Didn’t Need to Begin Essays With a Blank Screen

Plagiarism is endemic and fighting it is an industry. The plagiarist psychiatrist Raj Persaud, last week suspended from practicing for three months by the General Medical Council, is nothing more than its most visible pimple. A few days after the GMC announced its sentence I went to a conference in Newcastle, the third International Plagiarism Conference, and heard Persaud’s name mentioned only when I raised it. The conference lasted two days; 200 delegates, mainly academics, attended; we heard about the Plagiarism Advisory Service, the scholarly journal Plagiary, the online magazine Plagiarism Today, the utility and otherwise of the software programs used to detect plagiarism. In universities across the world there is a war going on and all kinds of people are making money from it. One delegate referred to it as an “arms race” that the students would win because they would always come up with superior tactics.

To plagiarise is to steal someone else’s words or inventions and pass them off as one’s own. As a habit, it must predate the birth of the wheel. What has transformed it from a minor form of deviant behavior into a social problem important enough to attract funding from governments everywhere are two developments of the late 20th century: the increasing belief that a university degree is the most important certificate of human intelligence and employability, and the invention of digital text and web search engines, most notably Google. If, as Larkin says, sex began in 1963, then plagiarism started in 1998; and I should declare that I owe this thought to one of the conference’s guest speakers, Jude Carroll, a teaching fellow at Oxford Brookes University.

“After 1998,” Carroll told me, “students didn’t need to start their essays with a blank screen. Other people’s words could be easily imported.” Often these texts were adapted with minimal paraphrasing and no acknowledgment, sometimes because the student was ignorant of the traditions of scholarship; ‘they knew not what they did’ would be the kind interpretation.

In the years since, according to Carroll, plagiarism – or more accurately, detectable plagiarism – has risen tenfold. “Once it might have been three or four students in a thousand and now it’s more like three or four in every hundred,” Carroll said, adding a phrase that I had never heard before: “just-in-time information”. Among many students, the idea of “becoming knowledgeable”, that slow perusal of books in libraries, information dragged into the brain and then ground out again in essay form, had gone. About a third of Britain’s student population never go near a library. They study online. When the essay is due, Google will throw up the necessary texts, to be copied and pasted just in time. In Sweden, they have no word for plagiarism. They call it cheating and punish accordingly. But Carroll insisted that Britain should see it as a pedagogic rather than a moral problem, reflecting how students were taught and examined. Academics persisted in “the fantasy” that they and their students belonged to the same scholarly tribe, whereas students were pragmatic.

Which discipline provides most plagiarists? I thought the answer might be English or history, with their traditions of creative borrowing. Not so. Business studies top the league of detected plagiarism, followed by computing and accountancy. This may have less to do with the moral qualities of business students than with the machinery of detection. Probably, a higher proportion of business texts exists online. Software fights software. A program called Turnitin from an American company based in Oakland, California, is the market leader in online textual comparison. Nearly every British institution of higher education uses Turnitin, which was one of the conference’s sponsors. It boasts that it has access to 12bn web pages and 40m student papers, but only to “thousands” of books. Feed a student’s essay into the program and if parts of it find a match in another of the billions of accessible documents then the duplicated text will be highlighted in yellow – an excellent tool for discovering the original work if it’s an MBA paper from Princeton in 2003, but not (or not yet) if the source is a recherché study of Hazlitt from the Oklahoma University Press in 1953.

John Barrie, formerly a neurobiologist, founded Turnitin in 1998 after experiments in the classroom that used the web for the peer review of student essays, revealing a degree of collusion and intellectual theft that astonished him. He said plagiarism among students was a growing phenomenon. His program had discovered that 10% of the statements made by potential students to gain admission to a university were plagiarised: their heartfelt experiences (“Medicine means a great deal to me because …”) filched from the minds of others.

Students understand Turnitin; they know how it works, partly because universities encourage staff to demonstrate it as a teaching tool, to show what happens when sources aren’t properly referenced. Look at those yellow highlights! But all this means, according to a lecturer I met, is that Turnitin teaches students to be better plagiarists or to seek a different solution in the purchase of a bespoke essay from a company such as UKessays.com, which claims to have more than 3,500 writers on its books and can knock you out at an essay for prices ranging from £500 to £5,000 . All carry a £5,000 guarantee that they are “plagiarism proof”. Barclay Littlewood, the 30-year-old lawyer who owns UKessays, appears on The Sunday Times Rich List.

Is there a particular kind of student more prone to plagiarism than others? People at the conference were careful in their answers, but there is no avoiding the phrase “international students”, who are disproportionately represented. British universities make a great deal of money from foreign students; their written English is often poor; and yet they are studying for postgraduate degrees in one-year courses that will enable them to attach the letters MA or MSc or MBA after their names. Research published this week by the Higher Education Academy shows that much more plagiarism is being detected among postgraduate students than among undergraduates.

A delegate said to me: “Imagine. Your family – maybe even your village – has clubbed together to pay your fees and expenses, which could be many thousands of pounds. How could you go back home without your degree?” I suggested the temptation must be very great. She laughed: “Temptation is the wrong word. They’re making a completely rational, pragmatic decision. They’re here to collect a qualification, a piece of paper, and then go away again. You think they’re going to away without the thing they’ve come to get?”

A piece of paper means a better job. Lee McQueen, who became Sir Alan Sugar’s apprentice, lied about his education and still won. Delegates were keener to mention him than Persaud. Didn’t it validate what the student plagiarists believed – that success came from what one could get away with? The uplifting thing, is that students who cut and paste and claim the result as their own are so far in such a small minority.

Tags: 1998, After, Begin, Blank, didn't, Essays, Need, Screen, Students

Movie Review: Conjuction — The Junction Boys didn’t function

For the first time since the movie, “Forrest Gump,” legendary college football coach Paul “Bear” Byrant was depicted in a movie. This time he was the protagonist in the ESPN movie, “The Junction Boys.”

Bryant was played by actor Tom (“Major League” I & II, “Platoon”) Berenger, and while I am not a “Bear” Byrant expert, since I was five when he died in 1983, Berenger did a pretty good job of portraying a hard nosed “Bear” Byrant. It mentions some of his past as coach at Maryland and Kentucky, and some of his life as an impoverished youth.

The rest of the movie, however, was plagued by many unrealistic things. I noticed a few of these before I saw the “Outside the Lines” special on the movie afterward. One thing was how the offensive lineman looked so skinny. I know they weren’t as big as they are now, back then, but this was ridiculous. The guys they had playing the lineman, such as Fletcher Humphrys, hardly looked the part. This was even more obvious if you see the pictures of the real “Junction Boys” from back then.

“The Junction Boys,” ESPN’s second original movie was based on the book by the book by Jim Dent with the same name. The movie chronicles “Bear” Byrant taking over the Texas A&M coaching reigns in 1954 and him bringing his team to the distant place of Junction, Texas to practice.

The program had been a country club before he got there, so the reason Byrant buses his team to Junction to practice is to get away from that lax atmosphere. Over a hundred student athletes make the bus trip there, but the number of dwindles rapidly as many of them couldn’t put up with the Byrant’s tough practices coupled with the heat. Players either went to him to get a bus ticket out of Junction or ran away in the middle of the night and got their own bus ticket because they were terrified of him.

Quarterback “Skeet” Curry, lineman Johnny Haynes, and linebacker Claude Gearhart were three characters that the storyline followed. All three characters were fictional, but based on real “Junction Boys.” Why they did this is I am not totally sure, especially when big names such as former Alabama head coach Gene Stallings and former NFL player and Houston Oilers coach Jack Pardee were both “Junction Boys.”

In the movie, Byrant head butts a player because he wasn’t blocking properly, but worse he kicks Haynes after he passes out. According to Dent, the book’s author, this truly happened, although, some of the players that were there deny it happened the way it occurred in the movie, or that it happened at all. The real players said the movie was over dramatic and said that Byrant was a fair coach.

A lot of the football action looked very real and so did the 1950′s uniforms and equipment, but then they showed rare footage of the 1954 Texas A&M practices on “Outside the Lines” and the players all wore red and white uniforms with numbers on it. ESPN must have used the no-number uniforms in the movie to keep the players identities secret.

The movie also portrayed the practices from being kept hidden from the media, which was untrue. The media had a few run-ins with Byrant apparently, and this should have been shown in the movie to add another interesting storyline.

The movie showed the background of the three fictional characters in their youthful lives outside of football in Texas, before they went back to school, which shows why some of the players decided not to quit. They decided not to quit because they had no where else to go and didn’t want to lose their scholarships. This should have been less implied than it was.

Berenger did don the legendary “Bear” Byrant plaid hat and blazer in the scene where the “Bear” went back to Junction, Texas for a reunion with the 1954 Aggie team. He portrayed him as a man who was scared to face these men because he regretted pushing them to the extremes that he did, even though the Aggies won the Southwest Conference two years later in 1956.

“The Junction Boys,” just had too much football in it, if that is possible, and not enough storyline to explain why some of the players stuck around.

ESPN’s over hyping of the movie is what caught my eye, and I thought it was better than their first movie, “A Season on the Brink,” because Byrant actually overcame something, unlike Bobby Knight in “A Season on the Brink.”

I look forward to more movies by ESPN, preferably ones that go back in history like “The Junction Boys,” where we can learn about things in sports we might not now much about.

Tags: Boys, Conjuction, didn't, function, Junction, Movie, Review

12 Amazing Uses For Pepper You Didn’t Know About

Various forms of pepper have long been used to satisfy our culinary experience but as it turns out, there is a lot more to pepper than meets the eye.

Let’s have a look at some of the things pepper can be used for other than to spice foods:

1.If your old clunker is starting to get a slow leak in the radiator, pour some black pepper into it to plug up small holes. This will buy you time to get it fixed properly.

2.Are you having trouble with biting ants in your yard? You don’t need to use harsh chemicals for this. All you need is about a half cup of black or cayenne pepper poured down the hole and voila, no more ant problem.

3.This also holds true for hungry ants looking for something sweet in your kitchen. You can put white pepper in their path and they will disappear thinking there are no meals here.

4.No sooner have you planted your vegetable garden than those pesky hungry bugs arrive ready to undermine all your hard work. Here is a recipe that not only keeps insects away but also animals.

- 2 tbsp cayenne pepper
- 2 large cloves of garlic
- 4 medium sized onions
- 4 cups water
- In a blender or food processor, blend until completely smooth. Then add about a gallon of water and you are ready to spray your plants.

5. Want to keep your colors bright when you do laundry? A tsp of pepper in your wash will keep your colors bright a lot longer. It can also keep your colors from bleeding. There are not many products that can do that.

6. Do you have problems with your sinuses? Do you have a cold? Cayenne pepper in your favorite food can unclog you and get you cleared up in no time. Or, mix liquid pepper with eucalyptus and put it in your steamer to sooth and unclog your sinuses . (Your health food store should carry these drops. If they don’t, ask them to.)

7. Help your liver detoxify with this early morning drink;

- 1 lemon squeezed,
- ¼ tsp cayenne pepper,
- 1 cup filtered water,
- 1 tsp maple syrup
When you drink this every morning you begin to look forward to it.

8.For arthritis pain you can make your own homemade warming massage to sooth where it hurts.

Recipe: Mix together

1 dropper of almond oil (Always use a carrier oil such as almond, jojoba or olive oil)
2 drops of pepper
1 drop ginger
2 drops lavender

Massage on the affected area and feel the warmth working.

9.If you feel the beginning of a migraine headache coming on then immediately put about 4 to 5 droppers full of pepper in water and drink. If you don’t have the pepper tincture then you can use about a ¼ to ½ teaspoon of cayenne pepper in a half glass of water. Repeat after a half hour if you have any remaining pain.

10.According to Dr. Richard Schulze, M.H., N.D., if someone is having a heart attack, you can revive them by putting 4 to 5 droppers full of cayenne pepper tincture directly to the mouth. If you don’t have the tincture, use a tsp. of cayenne pepper and some water and continue to give it every five minutes until the person has recovered. They may sputter and choke a bit but according to Dr. Schulze, he has seen many miracles of people recovering completely.

11.Do you have a problem with squirrels eating the feed in your bird feeder? Cayenne pepper yet saves the day again. Sprinkling it in the feed does not affect the birds. They apparently have a high tolerance for the pepper and the vitamin A in it improves their plumage.

12.If you have problems with rodents chewing on cables then you can rub pepper tincture on them and they won’t go anywhere near it.

So there you have it. I’m sure we will discover more wonderful uses for this versatile spice.

Tags: About, Amazing, didn't, Know, Pepper, Uses

Does the Government Give Grants for Debt Relief? Understand the Things You Really didn’t Know about!

In these economically challenging times we all have been experiencing the last year or two, the matter of crushing debt that seems to be dragging more than a few people down is becoming more of a worry to more and more people every day. For those who cannot stomach the thought of just declaring bankruptcy – and ruining their credit score for years – there can be a way out.

For a fact, the federal government gives away billions upon billions of dollars a year to people for just about any reason. Such gifts (and they really are gifts and not loans) are called government grants, and a person with a lot of debt, and who cannot repay such debt, is most likely eligible for government grants for debt relief.

The government itself runs a website that discusses free government grants, and it can be located with a simple Internet search engine query. Additionally, there are several quality websites on the Internet that specialize in helping people with application processes and advice on how to move a government grant applications through the bureaucratic steps needed before obtaining such a gift.

Today, the government realizes that it’s far better to just give people money to pay off that debt than to stand aside and let millions of people declare bankruptcy and further hurt an already shaky economy. Take a few minutes to learn a bit more about government grants and then whether or not you can really repay your debts in any other way before heading over to a website to begin the process.

***Update***
I have done a bit of research for you. Government Grant Experts can help you get the grants you deserve by helping you get out of debt fast. You can find out if you qualify for a Government Grant for free!

Click here to fill out a short form to save your finances and get out of debt as early as this week!

Tags: About, Debt, didn't, give, Government, Grants, Know, Really, Relief, Things, Understand

Does the Government Give Grants for Debt Relief? Understand the Things You Really didn’t Know about!

In these economically challenging times we all have been experiencing the last year or two, the matter of crushing debt that seems to be dragging more than a few people down is becoming more of a worry to more and more people every day. For those who cannot stomach the thought of just declaring bankruptcy – and ruining their credit score for years – there can be a way out.

For a fact, the federal government gives away billions upon billions of dollars a year to people for just about any reason. Such gifts (and they really are gifts and not loans) are called government grants, and a person with a lot of debt, and who cannot repay such debt, is most likely eligible for government grants for debt relief.

The government itself runs a website that discusses free government grants, and it can be located with a simple Internet search engine query. Additionally, there are several quality websites on the Internet that specialize in helping people with application processes and advice on how to move a government grant applications through the bureaucratic steps needed before obtaining such a gift.

Today, the government realizes that it’s far better to just give people money to pay off that debt than to stand aside and let millions of people declare bankruptcy and further hurt an already shaky economy. Take a few minutes to learn a bit more about government grants and then whether or not you can really repay your debts in any other way before heading over to a website to begin the process.

***Update***
I have done a bit of research for you. Government Grant Experts can help you get the grants you deserve by helping you get out of debt fast. You can find out if you qualify for a Government Grant for free!

Click here to fill out a short form to save your finances and get out of debt as early as this week!

Tags: About, Debt, didn't, give, Government, Grants, Know, Really, Relief, Things, Understand

Does the Government Give Grants for Debt Relief? Understand the Things You Really didn’t Know about!

In these economically challenging times we all have been experiencing the last year or two, the matter of crushing debt that seems to be dragging more than a few people down is becoming more of a worry to more and more people every day. For those who cannot stomach the thought of just declaring bankruptcy – and ruining their credit score for years – there can be a way out.

For a fact, the federal government gives away billions upon billions of dollars a year to people for just about any reason. Such gifts (and they really are gifts and not loans) are called government grants, and a person with a lot of debt, and who cannot repay such debt, is most likely eligible for government grants for debt relief.

The government itself runs a website that discusses free government grants, and it can be located with a simple Internet search engine query. Additionally, there are several quality websites on the Internet that specialize in helping people with application processes and advice on how to move a government grant applications through the bureaucratic steps needed before obtaining such a gift.

Today, the government realizes that it’s far better to just give people money to pay off that debt than to stand aside and let millions of people declare bankruptcy and further hurt an already shaky economy. Take a few minutes to learn a bit more about government grants and then whether or not you can really repay your debts in any other way before heading over to a website to begin the process.

***Update***
I have done a bit of research for you. Government Grant Experts can help you get the grants you deserve by helping you get out of debt fast. You can find out if you qualify for a Government Grant for free!

Click here to fill out a short form to save your finances and get out of debt as early as this week!

Tags: About, Debt, didn't, give, Government, Grants, Know, Really, Relief, Things, Understand

Movie Review: Conjuction — The Junction Boys didn’t function

For the first time since the movie, “Forrest Gump,” legendary college football coach Paul “Bear” Byrant was depicted in a movie. This time he was the protagonist in the ESPN movie, “The Junction Boys.”

Bryant was played by actor Tom (“Major League” I & II, “Platoon”) Berenger, and while I am not a “Bear” Byrant expert, since I was five when he died in 1983, Berenger did a pretty good job of portraying a hard nosed “Bear” Byrant. It mentions some of his past as coach at Maryland and Kentucky, and some of his life as an impoverished youth.

The rest of the movie, however, was plagued by many unrealistic things. I noticed a few of these before I saw the “Outside the Lines” special on the movie afterward. One thing was how the offensive lineman looked so skinny. I know they weren’t as big as they are now, back then, but this was ridiculous. The guys they had playing the lineman, such as Fletcher Humphrys, hardly looked the part. This was even more obvious if you see the pictures of the real “Junction Boys” from back then.

“The Junction Boys,” ESPN’s second original movie was based on the book by the book by Jim Dent with the same name. The movie chronicles “Bear” Byrant taking over the Texas A&M coaching reigns in 1954 and him bringing his team to the distant place of Junction, Texas to practice.

The program had been a country club before he got there, so the reason Byrant buses his team to Junction to practice is to get away from that lax atmosphere. Over a hundred student athletes make the bus trip there, but the number of dwindles rapidly as many of them couldn’t put up with the Byrant’s tough practices coupled with the heat. Players either went to him to get a bus ticket out of Junction or ran away in the middle of the night and got their own bus ticket because they were terrified of him.

Quarterback “Skeet” Curry, lineman Johnny Haynes, and linebacker Claude Gearhart were three characters that the storyline followed. All three characters were fictional, but based on real “Junction Boys.” Why they did this is I am not totally sure, especially when big names such as former Alabama head coach Gene Stallings and former NFL player and Houston Oilers coach Jack Pardee were both “Junction Boys.”

In the movie, Byrant head butts a player because he wasn’t blocking properly, but worse he kicks Haynes after he passes out. According to Dent, the book’s author, this truly happened, although, some of the players that were there deny it happened the way it occurred in the movie, or that it happened at all. The real players said the movie was over dramatic and said that Byrant was a fair coach.

A lot of the football action looked very real and so did the 1950′s uniforms and equipment, but then they showed rare footage of the 1954 Texas A&M practices on “Outside the Lines” and the players all wore red and white uniforms with numbers on it. ESPN must have used the no-number uniforms in the movie to keep the players identities secret.

The movie also portrayed the practices from being kept hidden from the media, which was untrue. The media had a few run-ins with Byrant apparently, and this should have been shown in the movie to add another interesting storyline.

The movie showed the background of the three fictional characters in their youthful lives outside of football in Texas, before they went back to school, which shows why some of the players decided not to quit. They decided not to quit because they had no where else to go and didn’t want to lose their scholarships. This should have been less implied than it was.

Berenger did don the legendary “Bear” Byrant plaid hat and blazer in the scene where the “Bear” went back to Junction, Texas for a reunion with the 1954 Aggie team. He portrayed him as a man who was scared to face these men because he regretted pushing them to the extremes that he did, even though the Aggies won the Southwest Conference two years later in 1956.

“The Junction Boys,” just had too much football in it, if that is possible, and not enough storyline to explain why some of the players stuck around.

ESPN’s over hyping of the movie is what caught my eye, and I thought it was better than their first movie, “A Season on the Brink,” because Byrant actually overcame something, unlike Bobby Knight in “A Season on the Brink.”

I look forward to more movies by ESPN, preferably ones that go back in history like “The Junction Boys,” where we can learn about things in sports we might not now much about.

Tags: Boys, Conjuction, didn't, function, Junction, Movie, Review

Movie Review: Conjuction — The Junction Boys didn’t function

For the first time since the movie, “Forrest Gump,” legendary college football coach Paul “Bear” Byrant was depicted in a movie. This time he was the protagonist in the ESPN movie, “The Junction Boys.”

Bryant was played by actor Tom (“Major League” I & II, “Platoon”) Berenger, and while I am not a “Bear” Byrant expert, since I was five when he died in 1983, Berenger did a pretty good job of portraying a hard nosed “Bear” Byrant. It mentions some of his past as coach at Maryland and Kentucky, and some of his life as an impoverished youth.

The rest of the movie, however, was plagued by many unrealistic things. I noticed a few of these before I saw the “Outside the Lines” special on the movie afterward. One thing was how the offensive lineman looked so skinny. I know they weren’t as big as they are now, back then, but this was ridiculous. The guys they had playing the lineman, such as Fletcher Humphrys, hardly looked the part. This was even more obvious if you see the pictures of the real “Junction Boys” from back then.

“The Junction Boys,” ESPN’s second original movie was based on the book by the book by Jim Dent with the same name. The movie chronicles “Bear” Byrant taking over the Texas A&M coaching reigns in 1954 and him bringing his team to the distant place of Junction, Texas to practice.

The program had been a country club before he got there, so the reason Byrant buses his team to Junction to practice is to get away from that lax atmosphere. Over a hundred student athletes make the bus trip there, but the number of dwindles rapidly as many of them couldn’t put up with the Byrant’s tough practices coupled with the heat. Players either went to him to get a bus ticket out of Junction or ran away in the middle of the night and got their own bus ticket because they were terrified of him.

Quarterback “Skeet” Curry, lineman Johnny Haynes, and linebacker Claude Gearhart were three characters that the storyline followed. All three characters were fictional, but based on real “Junction Boys.” Why they did this is I am not totally sure, especially when big names such as former Alabama head coach Gene Stallings and former NFL player and Houston Oilers coach Jack Pardee were both “Junction Boys.”

In the movie, Byrant head butts a player because he wasn’t blocking properly, but worse he kicks Haynes after he passes out. According to Dent, the book’s author, this truly happened, although, some of the players that were there deny it happened the way it occurred in the movie, or that it happened at all. The real players said the movie was over dramatic and said that Byrant was a fair coach.

A lot of the football action looked very real and so did the 1950′s uniforms and equipment, but then they showed rare footage of the 1954 Texas A&M practices on “Outside the Lines” and the players all wore red and white uniforms with numbers on it. ESPN must have used the no-number uniforms in the movie to keep the players identities secret.

The movie also portrayed the practices from being kept hidden from the media, which was untrue. The media had a few run-ins with Byrant apparently, and this should have been shown in the movie to add another interesting storyline.

The movie showed the background of the three fictional characters in their youthful lives outside of football in Texas, before they went back to school, which shows why some of the players decided not to quit. They decided not to quit because they had no where else to go and didn’t want to lose their scholarships. This should have been less implied than it was.

Berenger did don the legendary “Bear” Byrant plaid hat and blazer in the scene where the “Bear” went back to Junction, Texas for a reunion with the 1954 Aggie team. He portrayed him as a man who was scared to face these men because he regretted pushing them to the extremes that he did, even though the Aggies won the Southwest Conference two years later in 1956.

“The Junction Boys,” just had too much football in it, if that is possible, and not enough storyline to explain why some of the players stuck around.

ESPN’s over hyping of the movie is what caught my eye, and I thought it was better than their first movie, “A Season on the Brink,” because Byrant actually overcame something, unlike Bobby Knight in “A Season on the Brink.”

I look forward to more movies by ESPN, preferably ones that go back in history like “The Junction Boys,” where we can learn about things in sports we might not now much about.

Tags: Boys, Conjuction, didn't, function, Junction, Movie, Review