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Franchise Player
In professional sports, a franchise player is an athlete who is both the best player on their team and one that the team can build their " franchise" around for the foreseeable future. Overview In the United States, outstanding players were referred to as "franchises" at least as far back as the 1950s."franchise, n. I. 2. c. (b)" OED Online. June 2003. Oxford University Press. June 2010. By the 1970s, the concept of a "franchise" player who single-handedly generates success was commonly understood in the sporting trade. The term ''franchise player'' was in widespread use by the early 1980s to describe both star rookies like John Elway and Kelvin Bryant and veterans like George Brett. While the term is primarily associated with North American and English sports, it is sometimes used in reference to athletes in sports outside the United States, such as rugby league and association football Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport play ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Professional Sports
In professional sports, as opposed to amateur sports, participants receive payment for their performance. Professionalism in sport has come to the fore through a combination of developments. Mass media and increased leisure have brought larger audiences, so that sports organizations or teams can command large incomes. As a result, more sportspeople can afford to make sport their primary career, devoting the training time necessary to increase skills, physical condition, and experience to modern levels of achievement. This proficiency has also helped boost the popularity of sports.Andy Miah Sport & the Extreme Spectacle: Technological Dependence and Human Limits' (PDF) Unpublished manuscript, 1998 In most sports played professionally there are many more amateur than professional players, though amateurs and professionals do not usually compete. History Baseball Baseball originated before the American Civil War (1861–1865). First played on sandlots in particular, scor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe by the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south. The country covers five-eighths of the island of Great Britain, which lies in the North Atlantic, and includes over 100 smaller islands, such as the Isles of Scilly and the Isle of Wight. The area now called England was first inhabited by modern humans during the Upper Paleolithic period, but takes its name from the Angles, a Germanic tribe deriving its name from the Anglia peninsula, who settled during the 5th and 6th centuries. England became a unified state in the 10th century and has had a significant cultural and legal impact on the wider world since the Age of Discovery, which began during the 15th century. The English language, the Anglican Church, and Engli ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Designated Player
The Designated Player Rule, nicknamed the Beckham Rule, allows Major League Soccer franchises to sign up to three players that would be considered outside their salary cap (either by offering the player higher wages or by paying a transfer fee for the player). The rule, which was adopted ahead of the 2007 MLS season, enables teams to compete for star players in the international football market. The rule is one of two mechanisms by which MLS teams may exceed their salary cap, the other being allocation money. As of December 2019, there have been 209 Designated Players in league history. The rule is informally named after David Beckham, in anticipation of MLS teams signing lucrative deals with internationally recognized players, after Beckham entered into negotiations to join the league. Beckham was the first player signed under this rule, signing a five-year contract with the Los Angeles Galaxy with a guaranteed annual salary of $6.5 million. History The team salary cap was est ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Observer
''The Observer'' is a British newspaper published on Sundays. It is a sister paper to ''The Guardian'' and '' The Guardian Weekly'', whose parent company Guardian Media Group Limited acquired it in 1993. First published in 1791, it is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper. History Origins The first issue, published on 4 December 1791 by W.S. Bourne, was the world's first Sunday newspaper. Believing that the paper would be a means of wealth, Bourne instead soon found himself facing debts of nearly £1,600. Though early editions purported editorial independence, Bourne attempted to cut his losses and sell the title to the government. When this failed, Bourne's brother (a wealthy businessman) made an offer to the government, which also refused to buy the paper but agreed to subsidise it in return for influence over its editorial content. As a result, the paper soon took a strong line against radicals such as Thomas Paine, Francis Burdett and Joseph Priestley. 19th century In ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Association Football
Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who primarily use their feet to propel the ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is to score more goals than the opposition by moving the ball beyond the goal line into a rectangular framed goal defended by the opposing side. Traditionally, the game has been played over two 45 minute halves, for a total match time of 90 minutes. With an estimated 250 million players active in over 200 countries, it is considered the world's most popular sport. The game of association football is played in accordance with the Laws of the Game, a set of rules that has been in effect since 1863 with the International Football Association Board (IFAB) maintaining them since 1886. The game is played with a football that is in circumference. The two teams compete to get the ball into the other team's goal (between the posts and under ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Independent
''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was published on Saturday 26 March 2016, leaving only the online edition. The newspaper was controlled by Tony O'Reilly's Irish Independent News & Media from 1997 until it was sold to the Russian oligarch and former KGB Officer Alexander Lebedev in 2010. In 2017, Sultan Muhammad Abuljadayel bought a 30% stake in it. The daily edition was named National Newspaper of the Year at the 2004 British Press Awards. The website and mobile app had a combined monthly reach of 19,826,000 in 2021. History 1986 to 1990 Launched in 1986, the first issue of ''The Independent'' was published on 7 October in broadsheet format.Dennis Griffiths (ed.) ''The Encyclopedia of the British Press, 1422–1992'', London & Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1992, p. 330 It was pro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rugby League
Rugby league football, commonly known as just rugby league and sometimes football, footy, rugby or league, is a full-contact sport played by two teams of thirteen players on a rectangular field measuring 68 metres (75 yards) wide and 112–122 metres (122 to 133 yards) long with H shaped posts at both ends. It is one of the two codes of rugby football, the other being rugby union. It originated in 1895 in Huddersfield, Yorkshire as the result of a split from the Rugby Football Union over the issue of payments to players.Tony Collins, ''Rugby League in Twentieth Century Britain'' (2006), p.3 The rules of the game governed by the new Northern Rugby Football Union progressively changed from those of the RFU with the specific aim of producing a faster and more entertaining game to appeal to spectators, on whose income the new organisation and its members depended. Due to its high-velocity contact, cardio-based endurance and minimal use of body protection, rugby leag ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Merriam-Webster
Merriam-Webster, Inc. is an American company that publishes reference books and is especially known for its dictionaries. It is the oldest dictionary publisher in the United States. In 1831, George and Charles Merriam founded the company as G & C Merriam Co. in Springfield, Massachusetts. In 1843, after Noah Webster died, the company bought the rights to ''An American Dictionary of the English Language'' from Webster's estate. All Merriam-Webster dictionaries trace their lineage to this source. In 1964, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. acquired Merriam-Webster, Inc. as a subsidiary. The company adopted its current name in 1982. History Noah Webster In 1806, Webster published his first dictionary, ''A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language''. In 1807 Webster started two decades of intensive work to expand his publication into a fully comprehensive dictionary, ''An American Dictionary of the English Language''. To help him trace the etymology of words, Webster learne ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
North American
North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Caribbean Sea, and to the west and south by the Pacific Ocean. Because it is on the North American Tectonic Plate, Greenland is included as a part of North America geographically. North America covers an area of about , about 16.5% of Earth's land area and about 4.8% of its total surface. North America is the third-largest continent by area, following Asia and Africa, and the fourth by population after Asia, Africa, and Europe. In 2013, its population was estimated at nearly 579 million people in 23 independent states, or about 7.5% of the world's population. In human geography and in the English-speaking world outside the United States, particularly in Canada, "North America" and "North American" can refer to just Canada and the United S ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Franchising
Franchising is based on a marketing concept which can be adopted by an organization as a strategy for business expansion. Where implemented, a franchisor licenses some or all of its know-how, procedures, intellectual property, use of its business model, brand, and rights to sell its branded products and services to a franchisee. In return, the franchisee pays certain fees and agrees to comply with certain obligations, typically set out in a franchise agreement. The word ''franchise'' is of Anglo-French derivation—from , meaning 'free'—and is used both as a noun and as a (transitive) verb. For the franchisor, use of a franchise system is an alternative business growth strategy, compared to expansion through corporate owned outlets or "chain stores". Adopting a franchise system business growth strategy for the sale and distribution of goods and services minimizes the franchisor's capital investment and liability risk. Franchising is rarely an equal partnership, especially in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
George Brett
George Howard Brett (born May 15, 1953) is an American former professional baseball player who played all of his 21 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a third baseman for the Kansas City Royals. Brett's 3,154 career hits are second-most by any third baseman in major league history (after only Adrian Beltre's 3,166) and rank 18th all-time. He is one of five players in MLB history to accumulate 3,000 hits, 300 home runs, and a career .300 batting average (the others being Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Miguel Cabrera, and Stan Musial). He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1999 on the first ballot and is the only player in MLB history to win a batting title in three different decades. He was also a member of the Royals' 1985 World Series victory over the St. Louis Cardinals. Brett was named the Royals' interim hitting coach in 2013 on May 30, but stepped down from the position on July 25 in order to resume his position of vice president of baseball operations. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kelvin Bryant
Kelvin LeRoy Bryant (born September 26, 1960) is a former American football running back in the National Football League and the United States Football League. High school Bryant played two years of varsity football at Tarboro High School in Tarboro, N.C.. In the 10th grade as a player on the Junior Varsity team he was invited to move up to varsity but endeared himself to his team by choosing to remain with the Junior Varsity squad. His 10th grade team was 8-1, his 11th grade (varsity team) was 6-4 and as a senior the Tarboro Vikings were 10-0 in the regular season claiming the conference championship and ranked number 1 in the state in the 3A classification. A first round playoff defeat ended dreams of a state championship. College career Bryant played college football at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he was a three-time first-team All-ACC tailback. When he left UNC in 1982 he had 3,267 rushing yards in his career. This was, at the time, the third hi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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