Souza

Matheus Souza
Professor Bradley
ENC2135
4 February 2016
Intramural sports at Florida State University is one big community made up of smaller
ones, each focused on a specific sport. The intramural soccer community is home to all of those
who love The Beautiful Game. Every semester, friends gather up teams of 3 or 7 players,
depending on the semester, and take on other teams within the university. Each individual team
makes up the entire intramural soccer community, and team members communicate through
various means in order to find out important information like deadlines to enroll in a team, game
times, or where to meet for a game. Individuals communicate through different genres.
According to The Bedford Book of Genres, a genre is a compositions kind, category, or sort.
Genres give us a way to categorize or describe types of compositions. The communication that
goes on within the intramural community may take the genre of texts messages, social media
posts, phone calls, or face to face verbal encounters.
Participating in intramural soccer is not that simple, and a person interested in
participating cannot simply show up to the fields and expect to play. An interested player must
find a team first if they do not know anyone willing to play. Quickly finding other students to
make up a team might seem like an enormous task. Luckily, the entire intramural community has
a Facebook page called FSU Intramural Free Agents. Through the genre of social media, this
Facebook page helps students find other people at Florida State University who want to
participate in intramural sports. Within the FSU Intramural Free Agents page, students can
communicate through text posts. These posts are made up of a few things. One of them is the
sport the student wants to participate. To find teammates, one must first designate what sport
they are looking to play. The next bit of information is how many people that student is looking
for to complete the team. Another key piece of information is the day the student wants to play. It

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is not enough to simply find someone willing to play the same sport as you, the game times must
also work for all parties. Lastly, this is not required, but people appreciate it if the text post
contains the students skill levels since some people are more competitive than others. Once a
post has been made, other students can reply to it. They may claim to be interested and want
more information on when to play. From there, students can build connections and establish a
team.
In the FSU Intramural Free Agents Facebook page, the main purpose of
communication is to find teammates. The people that resort to the Facebook group can advertise
themselves in hopes of finding others interested in playing as well. The audience for the FSU
Intramural Free Agents group is other Florida State University students looking for teammates.
Within the FSU Intramural Free Agents Facebook group, there is a specific rhetorical
situation in which students utilize rhetorical appeals to help them find a team. Daniel Anderson
defines rhetorical situations as circumstances in which a speaker exchanges a message with an
audience. Different audiences mean different rhetorical situations. In this case, the audience and
situation involves students looking for other students to be on their sports team. Rhetorical
appeals help the speaker get his message across depending on the rhetorical situation. There are
three types of rhetorical appeals: logos, pathos, and ethos. Logos has to do with logic. It connects
facts and evidence to the point being made. Pathos appeals to peoples emotions and values.
Finally, ethos has to do with authority, and when it is utilized, the audience will believe the writer
is credible, authoritative, and trustworthy. When trying to find teammates on Facebook, logos
and ethos can be used to persuade someone to want to be in a team with you. For example, a
student might write a text post stating that they have played soccer all throughout high school
and won several awards. This establishes authority and infers that it would be logical for
someone to want to choose that person to be on a team. Pathos can also be used on the FSU

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Intramural Free Agents Facebook group. A student may evoke the feeling of triumph towards
the audience by writing a post about how they wants to be the Spring soccer champion that
semester and wants to form a team with other people willing to achieve that. This could attract
people with the same ambition and help them establish a team. Someone may also utilize pathos
but with a different approach. They may try to take the sad route and say that they cannot find
anyone to play with and desperately needs a team. This could cause someone to sympathize with
the writer and invite them to join their team. Overall, the use of logos, ethos, and pathos on the
Facebook page serves the purpose of convincing other students to put that student on their team.
If a student already has a group of friends with which to make a team, utilizing the FSU
Intramural Free Agents Facebook page is not necessary. However, communication with
teammates is still essential. Once a team has been established, it must go through the registration
process online. When a team goes online to register, they must provide a team name and a day of
the week that the team wishes to play. So before registration can happen, teammates need to
communicate and figure out a team name and what day the team plays. This is when the genre of
texting comes in. This team discussion can also be done face to face if all team members are
present, but it usually just takes place in a group texting environment. The reason for this is
because it ends up being more convenient, rather than having to find a time of day when all team
members are free to get together and discuss a team name and schedule. Once the team has
agreed upon the necessary information to complete the registration, a team may register and be
officially in the intramural program for that semester.
The purpose of a group text within a team is to discuss more team oriented information.
This includes what day of the week to play would work better for all team members. In addition
to that, within a teams group chat, team members can suggest team names for the online

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registration and inform what time to meet up for a ride to the intramural fields. The audience of
the team group chat is the individual team members.
Within an already established team, rhetorical appeals are also useful. A team member
can utilize logos and pathos to convince the other team members to decide on a day of the week
to play that works best for that student. One may utilize logos and say that it would be logical to
have game days be on a Friday because on the other days of the week, that student either has a
quiz or a test, or has to be studying for an upcoming quiz or a test. An example of utilizing
pathos would be if a student tries to explain to his teammates how busy that student is all week in
order to get the other teammates to feel sympathetic which in turn results in them choosing a
good game day. Ethos can be used by a team member who feels as he should be the captain and
wants to coordinate the team. With the proper use of ethos, a team member can seem
authoritative and trustworthy and can get the rest of the team to agree on him being captain.
Intramural soccer, or any intramural team for that matter, has expectations of what
communications should be like. The most important of all is respect. Whether a student is on
Facebook looking for teammates, or already on a team, respect is key. On Facebook, no one
would want to recruit a disrespectful person for their team. Within a team, no one would want to
play with someone who has no respect for the other team members. After all, people interested in
specific intramural sports all share the same passion, whether its soccer, football, basketball, etc.
This common interest brings up another expectation: passion. Intramurals may not be as
competitive as a legitimate sports club, but everyone involved in intramural sports expects others
to play with passion. To have fun playing is a clear expectation, but also with passion for the
sport you love.
The mode of communication in intramural soccer varies. It can be audio or text-based. It
is audio when team members call each other by phone to find out plans for the week. This is
useful if a team member just wants to quickly talk to one other team member without having to

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wait for a reply, which is the case when texting. It is text-based when they communicate with
each other through text messages, like in the team group chat. This is useful when the entire team
needs to communicate with each other at the same time, but they are not all in the same physical
location. The medium is digital due to the use of phones. However, there is also face-to-face
communication. Although face-to-face communication may not be the primary medium for when
a team is planning things, it is the primary medium on game days. Before games when the team
is together, members talk with each other about the upcoming match and discuss player roles and
strategies. During a match, the only way for team members to communicate with each other is
face-to-face. This communication could be of instructions on what to do with the ball, advice on
something that can be done better the next play, or compliments about something that is being
done correctly.
The genres of communication discussed are very effective. If they were not, the
intramural sports program at Florida State University would not be as popular as it is today. The
FSU Intramural Free Agents Facebook group has been around for quite some time and
constantly has users posting on it. The constant user interaction with this Facebook page implies
that it has been effective in helping students find teammates. When it comes to communication
within a team, group text messages and occasional phone calls also are effective. If they were
not, teams would not be able to organize themselves and show up to games on time. The only
time communication may be a bit ineffective is in the group texts. If a lot of people are talking at
once, it may be hard to know who is talking to whom. However, for the most part, students
figure it out and keep their team organized and in the know of any upcoming games.
In conclusion, intramural sports make up a large part of the Florida State University
community. Students interested in intramural sports can easily find others to participate in sports
with via text-based digital communication on Facebook. Those who find a team to play on can

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then communicate with other team members via text messages to plan and organize team related
information. If the communication was not effective, or if it was to break down, the intramural
community would suffer. Students would not be able to participate in the intramural sports
program, would not be able to coordinate plans with their team, and would end up missing games
and having a bad season. However, when all the communication is effective, and when all the
wheels are turning, then the intramural community thrives because students are able to find
teammates, they are able to go to the games, and they are able to enjoy playing the sports they
love.

Works Cited
Anderson, Daniel. Write Now. Boston: Pearson/Prentice Hall, 2012. Print.
Braziller, Amy, and Elizabeth Kleinfeld. The Bedford Book of Genres: A Guide & Reader for
Florida State University. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2014. Print.