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Thursday, April 18, 2013
www.southerndigest.com
Volume 60, Issue 14
NBC to air Bayou Classic until 2015 Aristide Phillips
The Southern Digest The 40th Annual Bayou Classic will be broadcasted on NBC nationally, officials said Thursday, the contract will be renewed until 2015. This is news both Southern and Grambling State fans could cheer about without butting heads. The agreement between NBC Sports Group and The Bayou Classic will extend the national broadcast on NBC through the 2015 contest. “I’m extremely appreciative of the work and of the Bayou Classic committee to handle that deal,” said Southern University athletics director William Broussard. The Bayou Classic has been affiliated with NBC Sports Group since 1991. Last year, the nationally televised edition of the 39th Annual Bayou Classic saw a 19 percent increase in ratings. In addition to the national broadcast, the game will be available on-demand at Hulu. com and NBC Sports Network will work with the 12 regional sports networks to re-air the game allowing The Bayou Classic to reach 50 million plus homes. With the Bayou Classic game continuing to being televised next
season, Southern can add 7 of the 12 games on their scheduled to be televised. “At our level as a Division I FCS program to have seven games televised either regional or to a national audience obviously has a tremendous impact in recruiting being able to play in two professional football team stadiums next year (MercedesBenz Superdome, Reliant Stadium),” said Broussard. It will not only be the football team who will get the national exposure from the televised game the fans and band could see the televised game benefiting them. “To be able to play games on that national television is great for recruiting is a good opportunity for the university to be on display including the band, the cheerleaders, and our fans and to be able to continue that tradition with NBC is a big load of confidence,” said Broussard. With the confidence NBC showed by continuing its partnership with the Bayou Classic could boost the morale of Southernites who may feel different distant about investing in their alma mater. “For anyone who thinks that the people don’t believe in Southern and don’t believe in investing
Brett Duke/ AP Photo Southern University defensive backs Levi Jackson, Kevin King and D’Mekus Cook celebrate together after Southern defeated Grambling State during the Bayou Classic college football game Saturday, Nov. 24, 2012, in New Orleans. in Southern or that there is a waning interest in Southern this sends a pretty strong message that it is indeed not the case,” said Broussard. Last year’s game saw the 19 percent increase in ratings because of the competitive game that was
displayed on the field. Southern won the game 38-33 snapping a four-year losing stint to rival Grambling State. “NBC was extremely pleased last year not only with our ratings jumps but just quality of the on field performance the fact that it
was a competitive game it lasted about 30 minutes longer then the TV block had allotted and NBC said ‘you know what that’s fine we will eat the cost of that because it was a good game being played,’ so that just shows that there is a lot of confidence,” said Broussard.
America is a nation of soft targets, fear and vulnerability Allen G. Breed
The Associated Press When her cousin and 11 others were gunned down at an Aurora, Colo., movie theater last July, Anita Busch lost all interest in her favorite television crime dramas. And when she heard that three people had been shot dead at an Oregon shopping mall in December, she stopped her Christmas shopping and sneaked out the back door of a department store. “After Aurora, even my little niece who’s 11 was afraid to go into a mall, to go shopping,” the Los Angeles woman says. “I look around all the time. I think everyone does.” The United States proclaims itself the world’s foremost economic and military superpower — the mightiest nation on Earth, “land of opportunity” for those who want to work hard and prosper. But as Monday’s bombings at the Boston Marathon illustrate, the reality is that, from sea to shining sea, this is a nation of “soft targets,” full of opportunities for those who want to do it harm. And so the message Tamara Ruben sought to convey to her third- through seventh-graders as they celebrated Israeli Independence Day Tuesday at Temple Beth El Mekor Chayim in Cranford, N.J., was to not let fear rule them — “that as much as possible not to let this event to dictate our daily life and make us afraid and paranoid and change drastically our style of life.” “Enjoy the simple things — the simple things that give us contentment and joy in life,” says Ruben, director of the synagogue’s
school. Like Busch, so many Americans have a visceral reaction when the backdrops of everyday life — a school, a supermarket, a mall, a sporting event — become places of violence and tears. The Boston bombings had Tricia Kaye second-guessing, if only briefly, her decision to participate in her fifth Chicago Marathon this October. “I had that kind of gut reaction that there’s no way to secure a race like that, and that it’s better not to do it,” said the 35-year-old Chicagoan, who works for a national financial planning company. “But it quickly changed to ‘Screw that, I’m going to do it.’” Lt. Christopher Shane Henderson, a firefighter and paramedic in St. Petersburg, Fla., says he can’t take his 20-month-old daughter to the circus or a fair without the specter of 9/11 or some other tragedy casting a pall. “This absolutely impacts how you view people,” the 33-year-old father says. “I think it’s pretty disgusting that people can’t go to places and enjoy things with our families without the idea lingering in our heads that somebody has malintent.” Psychologist Timothy Strauman says these reactions are only too natural. Growing up in Philadelphia in the late 1950s and early ‘60s, Strauman remembers the “duck and cover” drills and the signs pointing out the nearest nuclear fallout shelter. “What we felt then was, you know, the WORLD could come to an end,” says Strauman, a professor at Duke University in
David Zalubowski/ AP Photo An overhead view of activities at the Century 16 theatre east of the Aurora Mall in Aurora, Colo., in this, July 20, 2012 file photo. But as Monday April 15, 2013 bombings at the Boston Marathon illustrate, the reality is that, from sea to shining sea, this is a nation of “soft targets” full of opportunities for those who want to do it harm. Durham, N.C. “Mutually assured destruction — that was the policy.” Personally, Strauman — who specializes in depression and anxiety — feels much safer today. “Anytime a high-profile event like this occurs, one of the things that it does is it makes people think that the event is likely to happen again,” he says. “It changes our sense of how likely this is to occur ... and so it makes it very difficult for people in the immediate aftermath to stop and realize that it’s still an
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extraordinarily rare event.” It doesn’t feel that way, says Busch. Her cousin, Micayla Medek, was just 23 when she died in a hail of semi-automatic gunfire during a premiere for “Dark Knight Rises” at the Century 16 cinema last year. Busch listens in despair as politicians debate whether to debate tighter restrictions on high-powered weapons with high-capacity magazines.
See Soft Targets page 3