Paying College Athletes

This has been in the news recently with Johnny Manziel being paid for signing sports memorabilia.  At first I was thinking why shouldn't someone be able to sell their own autograph, that seems unfair.  Let me start off by saying I do not think college athletes should be paid.  That's not to say I don't think they deserve to be paid, they do after all bring in hundreds of millions of dollars to the NCAA.  However, I think it's a bad idea to start paying college athletes in any way and here's why.

First and foremost, college athletes are told they are to be student athletes.  We've all seen those commercials about how they are going pro in something other than sports, well they'd better be focused on getting an education.  A free one at that.  There is real value that we should help people see in getting your whole college education paid.  Also, let's not act like this is some awful burden these players have to carry around, playing college sports.  Please, it's a dream of all these athletes to play sports at this high of a level.  That's my first reason.

Second,  lower level teams aren't going to be able to compete.  Say we allow players to get paid for signing a jersey or a card or something.  Now, for example, say we have a high level recruit that has always dreamed about playing for his local school, let's say BYU, and being the star. However, his family has financial troubles and a bigger school, let's say Alabama, comes out and starts talking with him.  They can tell him that boosters will pay him thousands of dollars for signing one thing.  Boosters would soon turn out to be the new recruiters.  It's going to become a game of how much money are your alumni willing to put into college sports.  Small teams aren't going to be able to compete to get high level recruits.  They already have so many other disadvantages such as equipment and facilities that this would just completely demolish low level teams having a chance to compete.  A booster can offer anything they want in exchange for an autograph they don't even care about and that is where this whole system can break down.

In the end I feel like it would be less detrimental to all of college sports to only allow players to be paid a small "stipend" by the school.  There has to be a line somewhere and in the end it really is just simplest to have no money paid to student athletes.  That's my two cents.  Don't pay the players, it will just get out of control.

Start of School

Another semester of school.  Hopefully I've only got a couple more of these left.  I'm not very good about being consistent with the whole blogging but I'm trying to be better.  School is going to be brutal again, more math classes...  I'm starting to realize as well that last summer just might be my last "summer" vacation.  If I can, fingers crossed, get a job next summer I won't be having another summer break like this last one.  

Summer is fun.  Kelsey and I got to go on some trips, see some shows, learn to play tennis, go boating, and hang out with family.  It's really too bad the working world can't take a note on the education world.  Breaks are needed.  I'm already looking forward to Thanksgiving break.  Some day in the future maybe I'll miss having these math classes, but I probably won't.  

Coming to and End

Finals are brutal. Stressing and studying for hours on end and for what? One test.  That's all it is.  You are required to take one test at the end of the year the that really no matter how much extra you study a teacher can still make it almost impossible to do well on.  You have learned in depth material from the entire year and then you get to be tested on it.  This final can determine your whole grade, yet at this point, it's really hard to get me to want to study more.  It just rarely seems worth it to study for hours on end for this one test, but we have to. If I don't, I know I'm not smart enough to get a good enough grade.  What's more frustrating is the fact that I don't ever see this test, I don't see what I missed, or know much about it.  I just see my grade that's posted on AIM and then get depressed.  Well that's the life of a student. 

Married LIfe

I really love being married.  I have the most incredible wife in the world.  She is always so patient with me; she lets me do the things I love even when it may not be convenient for her.  It's awesome to come home to someone after a long day and have someone be there for you, to love you and care for you.  I think it's something everyone in the world needs, someone to love them.  I love Kelsey Gill.
School is finally winding down.  There are tons of presentations and finals left to do but I think I'm almost getting to a point where it shouldn't be too awful.  I'm looking for a different better internship this summer and we'll see what happens over the next couple weeks. I don't really want to do an unpaid internship but it looks like that is what it will probably lead to.  Too bad, offer up my services for absolutely no cost.  Oh well, what can you do.

Conference Weekend

For the first time in my life I got to attend the priesthood session of General conference.  What a deal, marry an amazing woman (who just happens to be related to an important person in Salt Lake) and you get to go to conference sessions too.  She of course has gotten to do this her whole life, but little ole Mitch from Kansas is still just awe struck while we walk through these tunnels together, passing shoulder to shoulder with the likes of modern day Prophets.  How crazy is that!? These people have seen and heard things that most every other person in the world will never experience.  Then we get to sit at their feet and listen to them teach us.  What a cool tradition.  It’s unfortunate that sometimes it can be a little hard to stay attentive in the nice warm room they put all these people in.  Never the less, still just an awesome experience.  I love conference!

Easter

Happy Easter!  It's finally spring.  It's not freezing cold in the mornings.  Only every now and then do I have to scrape my car of all the ice that covers the windshield.  The roads are dangerous to drive on in the mornings, life is good.

The only bad part of spring is finals.  I've got more math and stats tests this week.  I'm tired of tests and it's this time of the semester that I really do just feel like throwing in the towel sometimes.  School can be rough (e.g., papers, blogging assignments, projects, and tests).  It just wears me out by the end.  Only a couple more weeks, push through.

This week I was supposed to register for classes but haven't been able to yet.  So as all my classes are filling up with other people I'm waiting on an ecclesiastical endorsement to go through.  Sometimes there are just too many hoops to jump through with BYU.

NCAA Tournament

It's halftime of one of the ugliest basketball games I've ever watched, the KU vs. UNC game.  Both teams shot about 25 percent and turned it over like no ones business.  I've watched AAU games that were more organized than that was.  The basketball games at halftime of the BYU games, yes the games between 4th and 5th graders, are easier to watch than that was.  Atleast they have excuses for not scoring.  What excuse does a 7 foot person have for missing a lay-up? Seriously, it's embarrassing that so many people had to watch such an ugly game.  I love basketball, but that was hard to watch.  It was almost as painful as trying to do my math and stats homework... almost. Here's to hoping for a better half of basketball.
Also Professor Clarke has changed me into a grammar freak.  Yesterday I was at Dick's Sporting Good's and the employee was talking all about these ones and those ones.  It was painful to listen to actually, hard to believe I actually care about grammar.  Also I caught myself yesterday when I said me and my sister, I was ashamed of my grammar.  It's crazy because my mom has been trying to change all these habits of mine my whole life.

NCAA Tourney

March is here and the tournament is out.  The less the I watch ESPN in the year I feel like the more ridiculous and dumb all the drama is about seeds in the tournament.  Without ESPN this year I haven't watched that much college basketball.  Sitting here now and listening to all the commotion over who got what seed is just stupid.  It's amazing to me how much money these men get paid to sit and just yell at each other over which team will win.  They all project these completely outlandish upsets that are just absurd.  ESPN is just an interesting entity all together.  I think I prefer just getting my little bracket and filling it out without all these people giving their analysis about teams.  Just let the teams play the games.  

So much hype over a whole bunch of students out there.  So many harsh critics of these young kids too.    It's crazy how much our culture watches and pays attention to this; I am included in all that hype.  

Life is good

Well this week I got to finish up a couple tests.  School can be rough in those weeks that you have 3 tests.  The highlight of my week was once again the intramural basketball game that I got to play in.  I had probably one of the better games of my life this week; unfortunately our teams lost by almost 40 points.  As for me, I had 28 points.  That was the second straight game that I have had more than half of our teams points, that is not the best sign for our team.  I hit 5 threes in the second half, it was extremely fun to play like that again.
Today I'm trying to find some motivation to do my homework and it's not coming easily.  The desire by this time in the semester just seems to fade over small assignments.  You have all these tests and then basically homework that doesn't directly help your grade all that much but just small, pointless assignments that can really hurt when you don't do them.  That's just life I guess, time to get used to it.  One might think that I am used to it as this is something like my 16 year in school. That's kind of ridiculous when you think about how much time of your life you are in school up to this point.  I have spent many minutes in a classroom.
Well that's all for this week. I'm going to try and do something interesting this week so that I have something good to write about.  Maybe I can ace my grammar test.  I believe in miracles!

Driving to Boise is like Driving through Kansas

When I tell people that I lived in Kansas they usually have one thing to say "you lived in Kansas?  I drove through Kansas once and I can't imagine anything more boring than driving through there again." 

This last weekend I went to Boise for Kelsey's lacrosse tournament.  Let me tell you, there isn't much more boring than driving to Boise. I don't know why people think mountains somehow make driving so much better; I decided that driving is boring just about anywhere. Hopefully next year tournaments will be in cooler places that are nice and warm.  Other than the drive the tournament was great; they finished the weekend at 2-2. 

Now it's just on to another week of school.  I have 3 different tests again and just a lot of things to do. Just another week to try and survive.  School just never seems to stop chugging along.  There's always something else that you need to do, like write in this blog.  

Hopefully I make it through the week sanely so that I can write in this blog again next week.  

Another Sunday Afternoon

I was thinking this week how a blog can really become a modern day journal.  I guess that's kind of cool.  Lucky for me no one really looks at my blog so it can just be a journal if I'd like it to be and google will just keep it online for me.  I was thinking about how it could be fun someday to look back at a journal and remember small details of things that have happened.  Now I just need to figure out what those small details should be.  It snowed like crazy yesterday and I had to go down to Provo to take a grammar test.  Never really has been a strong suit of mine.  Far too many rules to follow.  I got a 77 percent.  Probably better than I would have done at the beginning of the semester.  Oh well.  What can you do? I might get a chance to retake it.  Although I am not really sure that I'd like to retake it, that test gave me a major headache.  After that I had an intramural basketball game to play in.  It was ugly.  Our team has played four games and we have lost them all by double digits.  It's with a couple mission buddies and none of them are very good.  Until yesterday I hadn't been playing that well either but yesterday I had a really good game.  I had 14 of our teams 22 points.  Maybe if they would have gotten me the ball more it would have been a closer game but too late now. Hopefully next game will be different.  I might be wrong but I'm pretty sure I had all of our teams points in the second half.  Having one player score is never very good for a team. Well I did what I could to help the team win and enjoyed making some shots again.  Shooting deep 3's and step back fade away 3's like the old days is really fun. Even though I did not do very well on my grammar test I still look at many of my sentences in these posts and realize how poorly they are formatted.  Hopefully Professor Clarke does not read these too carefully, but if he does then hope he enjoys this!  That's all for now.  Start another long week tomorrow!

Saturday Mornings

Well it's another Saturday. Thank goodness it's a 3 day weekend to catch up on some homework and sleep.  Kelsey right now is off to lacrosse practice; she was named the head coach this week!  Although it's awesome that she's head coach now I'm sitting here on Saturday wondering what to do.  The only things there really are to do is do some homework or watch some infomercials.  Right now I'm doing both.  There's some commercial about a healthy eating plan, a skin cream for aging, a "hurry cane", and something to get rid of hard water.  As I'm watching I can't help but think about this marketing class I'm in and analyzing the commercial.  It's actually interesting that despite all the ridiculous customers they show they really are trying to show reasons that people that use the product love it.  They are selling to the swing group through the eyes of the love group as Dr. Swenson would say.  I feel like such a loser right now.  I'm doing all kinds of lame things.  Oh well, maybe I should just buy one of the workouts then I'd have something to do! But would I really do it... that is the one-hundred forty dollar question.
 Well time to move onto my next homework project which hopefully isn't more writing because I'm really not good at this whole thing.

Sad sad week

I'm not sure I've ever had a week quite like this week.  I had three midterms to take: linear algebra, probability, and marketing.  Fun times for me.  Hopefully they go better than last semester's tests did. Believe it or not that was not the worst part of my week.  Maybe I'm a little too invested in sports.

49ers finally made it back to the Super Bowl only to get my hopes up and lose on the final drive of the game.  It was a sad night. Not to mention that it was 4 1/2 hours long! I had to sit through 4 1/2 hours to watch my team lose.  The day before Kansas basketball lost for the first time in 18 games. That's not too bad but it was sad.  It got ugly when they lost the next game to TCU and then their next game to Oklahoma.  Kansas lost three games in a row!? What on earth is that?  I have always had them to lean on when all my other teams lose.  Kansas is supposed to be the good team.  Well they weren't this week.  Then to top it all off BYU, oh BYU.  What are we going to do with BYU basketball? First the go and lay and egg in San Diego and lose to a not very good team.  Then they come home and I get to go to it.  Starts off great with BYU leading by 15 for most of the game.  Then all the sudden San Francisco comes back and beats us.  What else should I expect this week?  I know it's just sports but it is ridiculous to think that every single team I cheer for at this time of year just couldn't pull out a single win, even against pretty sub par teams.  Oh well what can one do but wait for next week.  Maybe it will be better.

Super Bowl Sunday

Well the Super Bowl is finally here.  It's been a really long time since I have actually cared about who wins the Super Bowl.  In past years I've been rooting for a team to lose more than I have a team to win. So this is fun! The one thing I am not a fan of at this point is that it's fast Sunday! Can there be a more cruel thing to do?  I mean this day is all about eating chips, drinking soda, and eating more chips.  I saw a stat that said 11.2 million pounds of chips are going to be consumed today in the USA.  That's pretty impressive.  Yet I need to wait and wait I shall.  I don't know if there is any way around this but it's just not right.  I guess the Church would look pretty vain if it were to delay Fast Sunday just to allow a guy like me to eat some chips on Super Bowl Sunday.  If the Church did that they would be approving watching sports on Sunday! Who knows what kind of uproar would be heard among Latter-day Saints about how the Church is no longer true.  Since there is really no end to fast Sunday being on Super Bowl Sunday I will just learn to deal with it.  Fast for the 49ers to win the Super Bowl!  Woohoo! Go niners!

Just another week

Today was the day that Kelsey and I got to introduce ourselves to the ward in talk form.  It's funny how the church does that.  We're so glad you're here come speak to us!  It went well enough and now it's over and now shouldn't have to speak for a while we hope!  Only problem was right after I got asked to teach a lesson in Elder's Quorum next month.  Great! Love getting to teach.

It has almost been a month since Kelsey and I got married.  That is bizarre to me.  A whole month has just gone by in a flash.  We're moved into our apartment, hung up pictures, reorganized, and made many trips to the local stores for things that we've realized we forgot.  It's fun moving in and starting a new home.  We get to go to Home Depot, get memberships to Costco, and figure out banking and all kinds of details.  

In the last month and a couple days we have been extremely busy.  We moved all our stuff(at least the stuff that fits) to our apartment, we finished wedding preparations, got married, went on a honeymoon to Hawaii, started another semester of school and work and much much more.  Quite the month if you ask me.  All grown up! Well not really.  But trying to get there!  Life is fun, life is great!

Cougar Disappointment

Year's past this was the week that I'd have been camping out for big BYU Basketball games.  Luckily this year wasn't one of those years.  Couldn't have been colder for those poor souls out freezing on that concrete.  That being said it makes it all the more exciting for those students knowing what they've sacrificed waiting for this game.  It provides a whole lot to the environment and anticipation of everyone.  In fact last year at the Saint Mary's game, students may have gotten a little too invested.  I remember walking out of the Marriott Center watching students get handcuffed after throwing things on the court.  It was a little bizarre.  Well this year for the most part students and parents behaved themselves despite bad calls and frustrations on the court.  The thing that bothered me the most though is all of the basketball coaches BYU seems to employ in the stands.  It's amazing to me how quick we go from utter happiness as a player drains a three to screaming insults at them.  I have a question for all these fans: Do you think that player doesn't feel horrible for having screwed up in front of 24,000 fans? Let me tell you as one who screwed up plenty of times in front of 24 fans, it sucks.  Players feed off of emotion and the emotions in the Marriott Center are so bi-polar it's insane.  A home court advantage is so great because you shouldn't be worried about how your fans are going to react.  The home fans are supposed to always be cheering.  As a player lines up a shot on his home court he shouldn't ever have a thought of, "If I miss this man am I going to hear it from the fans."  Now I'm not saying we can't be upset.  These guys and girls down there have put themselves in the spotlight and are doing what most people dream to do.  But as fans if we want our team to win, we can't be booing and screaming how idiotic that last play was. Believe me when I saw they know even more than you do, no matter how much you may know about basketball, how idiotic that play was.  At BYU there are too many Chiefs and not enough Indians. 

So this is my first Blog ever, I've never even really looked at a blog before so I don't really know what these do.  My wife seems to enjoy them.  So I guess this whole marriage thing means that I should give it a try. Right? Or maybe that's not the reason at all that I'm blogging.  Maybe I just really got into the whole spirit of this blogging trend (word courtesy of my wife) and decided I should just give it a whirl. Really though that just doesn't sound like me.  There is a slight possibility that one of my teachers has asked me to create a blog for credit in his class.  Of all the options that seems like the most likely one if you know my personality.  I'll leave it up to whoever might stumble upon this blog to decide though.  I don't really know who would even read this blog.  I'm not that great of a writer. I probably am not going to tell many people about this blog, so in all reality I'm really writing this to myself.  It's pretty interesting I guess, this whole blog thing that is.  Maybe by the end I'll actually enjoy this and write something about my life, but as of right now this is all we are going to get.