Christmas Time

Maybe this post is a day late, but I wasn't going to pass up the opportunity to write about it.

Christmas has been a busy time for me... work, finals, and more work.  I finally made it "home" to Boise on Christmas Eve.  I got home, played some Nintendo, and then went to bed.  Christmas day we opened our presents and had the annual "Christmas Crap Out," which is when we get to eat whatever we want.  It's been fun being with the family, but unfortunately will end this Tuesday when I'll fly back home to work some more.  That's the disadvantage of working in retail I guess.

This Christmas season I hope everyone got to take a break from the stress and materialism that Christmas bring and reflect on the true meaning of Christmas: Christ.  Leah gave a great FHE lesson on this a couple of weeks ago that inspired me to write something about Christmas.  There's a song I've had playing on my blog by BYU's Vocal Point that's called "He is Born."  I want to post the lyrics to this song, because they really help me appreciate the birth of the Savior and how it was the beginning of a life that would eventually save me and everyone else:

Joy to the world, the Lord has come
To every boy and girl, He'll be the Holy One
He'll be a King, He'll be a Lord
He's just a baby, but He'll save the world

And I'll sing Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah
He is my Savior, today He's born
He is born

Rejoice, Rejoice, the Savior's come
We'll lift every voice, to the Healing One
The sinner's saved, the price was paid
He's just a baby, and He's born today

And I'll sing Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah

He is my Savior and my King, with all my heart to Him I'll sing

My Lord and King will I adore, with my praise forevermore

He is my Shepherd and I know, with all my love to Him I'll show

With all my life to Him I'll give, today He's born

He's Born

And I'll sing Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah

He is my Savior, today He's born

He is Born

I love this song and the lyrics.  I especially appreciate and relate to the part where is says that the sinner is saved, the price was paid...  That is truly a reason to celebrate, rejoice, give gifts, and spend time with family.  We're all sinners trying to do our best, and we rely on Jesus Christ every single day.  May we all remember the sacrifice that Christ made for us.  To end off this blog post, I'll put on one of my favorite scriptures of all time:

"And I saw in the right hand of him that sat on the throne a book written within and on the backside, sealed with seven seals.

And I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice, Who is worthy to open the book, and to loose the seals thereof?

 And no man in heaven, nor in earth, neither under the earth, was able to open the book, neither to look thereon.

 And I wept much, because no man was found worthy to open and to read the book, neither to look thereon.

 And one of the elders saith unto me, Weep not: behold, the Lion of the tribe of Juda, the Root of David, hath prevailed to open the book, and to loose the seven seals thereof."

-Rev. 5:1-5

Toilet Bowls and Worthwhile Bowls

Here is a quick overview of the 2010-2011 college football bowls coming up this month and next month.

TOP 5 TOILET BOWLS
These are the bowls that are the worst of the worst, with the least intriguing match ups, most lopsided match ups, or the biggest disappointments for that team.

5. New Mexico Bowl- BYU (6-6) vs UTEP (6-6) (Dec. 18th, 5:30pm)

These teams could not have ended off the season any different.  While BYU salvaged their season by ending off 5-1 (with a disappointing and controversial loss to Utah), UTEP ended off their season only 1-5.  Both teams are 6-6, which might suggest that this could be a decent matchup.  But with UTEP struggling so bad with a quarterback constantly getting picked off and losses to subpar teams, it should be a BYU blowout.  Another fun fact, only 6 teams have gone to more bowl games than BYU in the last 33 years.

4. Las Vegas Bowl- Utah (10-2) vs Boise State (11-1) (Dec. 22nd, 8pm)

Despite ALMOST losing to San Diego State and BYU and blowout losses to TCU at home and away at a mediocre Notre Dame team, Utah will travel down south to take on the Boise State Broncos.  Boise State was a field goal away from going to the Rose Bowl and possibly the national championship.  Unfortunately, the bullies of the WAC finally had someone stand up to them and beat them in overtime.  As a result, Boise State winds up in Las Vegas Bowl while a 4 loss Connecticut team gets to go to the BCS and a 2 loss Virginia Tech team (who Boise State beat along with a AA team) also gets to go.  This is undoubtedly a huge disappointment for the Broncos who returned all but 1 starter from last year's team.  Boise State will blow Utah out of the water.

3. Holiday Bowl- Nebraska (10-3) vs Washington (6-6) (Dec. 30th, 10pm)

Nebraska was once again a field goal away from going to the BCS.  Last year it was against Texas, this year it was against Oklahoma.  Nebraska boasts a 9-3 record (with losses @ Texas, @Texas A&M, and vs Oklahoma) while Washington has a meager 6-6 record.  Washington's quarterback Jake Locker has been plagued by injuries this season and hasn't had the supporting cast a star like him deserves.  Nebraska will go into this game disappointed, but will dominate Washington.

2. Orange Bowl- Virginia Tech (11-2) vs Stanford (11-1) (Jan. 3, 8:30pm)

This match up may look intriguing on paper, but I consider it to be an outrage.  Virginia Tech started off the season losing to Boise State, a non-BCS school that according to the Ohio State president is "unworthy" to play for a championship.  Right after the loss, V-Tech loses to a Division I-AA school, James Madison.  These guys are a HORRIBLE team that are not even division one!  Apparently, however, those losses were forgivable and irrelevant as the ACC gets an automatic bid and sends their best school to face Stanford, who has only lost to Oregon, the team playing for a national championship. Stanford should kill Virginia Tech

1. Fiesta Bowl- Connecticut (8-4) vs Oklahoma (11-2) (Jan 1st, 8:30pm)

This is the biggest joke.  Since the Big East also gets an automatic bid, they get to send the champion of their conference.  It's not ranked West Virginia or the preseason favorite Pitt, it's UConn.  A 4 loss team that got shut out by a mediocre Louisville team.  Look who DIDN'T get to go to the BCS:
Boise State- 12-1
Michigan State- 11-1
Nevada- 12-1
LSU- 10-2
Alabama- 9-3

To me, this game just shows the insanity of the BCS and how they rob teams of a fair chance to play for the championship.  Landry Jones will light up UConn.  And I bet it won't even be that satisfying of a win, knowing that you beat a team that Louisville beat 23-0.

TOP 5 BOWLS TO WATCH
These are the 5 bowl games that you won't want to miss this year.

1. Poinsettia Bowl- SDSU (8-4) vs Navy (8-3) (Dec. 23rd, 8pm)

San Diego State has had a GREAT year.  In all reality, they were a field goal away from beating a Mizzou team that would upset the #1 team in the nation.  They barely lost to BYU on a controversial call, gave TCU a run for it's money and lost to Utah on a desperation team.  Basically, this team is one play away from being undefeated.  Brady Hoke has really turned this program around.  Navy is also having a great year.  They still have a game against army this Saturday, but Navy is always a well disciplined team that shows up to their bowl games.  At the end of the day, however, I bet SDSU walks away with the win.

2. Capital One Bowl- Alabama (9-3) vs Michigan St (11-1) (Jan 1st, 1pm)

Alabama is the reigning national champion from last year, but wound up having a disappointing season with three losses.  They still, however, have a decent quarterback with great receivers and running backs.  Michigan State has only lost against Ohio state.  This should overall be a great game, but I think Alabama will come out with the W.

3. Sugar Bowl- Arkansas (10-2) vs Ohio State (11-1) (Jan. 4th, 8:30pm)

I really like this Arkansas team with Ryan Mallett leading the way.  They have an awesome passing attack.  Ohio State, on the other hand, relies on their running game.  This should be an awesome game, but I predict Arkansas will get the win.

2. Rose Bowl- Wisconsin (11-1) vs TCU (12-0) (Jan. 1st, 5pm)

TCU remains undefeated as they walk into this game.  Had Auburn or Oregon lost, TCU would be headed to a national championship.  Wisconsin also looks good going into this game with their only blemish being a loss to a good Michigan State team.  I bet this game will be really close, but Gary Patterson's coaching will allow TCU to remain undefeated this season.

1. National Championship- Auburn (13-0) vs Oregon (12-0) (Jan 10th, 8:30pm)

The question has come up many teams this season, who can stop Oregon's lightening fast, hurry-up offense?  Other people have asked, who can stop Cam Newton?  So far, no one has had an answer.  And I doubt this game will provide us with an answer.  With both teams only having mediocre defenses, but unbelievable offenses, this game is sure to be a shootout.  In the end, I predict Auburn will come out on top.


Well, that's my overview of this year's bowl games.  We'll see what happens!

Thanksgiving Break

Hello everyone!  I just got back to Provo.  I was in Boise for the weekend visiting my family and enjoying all of the comforts that home brings with it.  As Kevin put it: "Paul, how happy are you to be back in Provo on a scale of 1-10?  Because I'm at a negative 4." Well said.  Here were some highlights of the weekend:

-Seeing Grandma Dorothy and Grandpa Peter.  I haven't seen Grandma and Grandpa since I got off my mission, so it was good to see them again!  Along with telling me some funny stories about the latest things going on in her life, I was also able to enjoy some incredible, authentic Italian stuffed mushrooms that Grandma made.  Amazing.  It was great to see them.  As a side note, Grandma is the most loyal follower of this blog.  Love you Grandma!

-Free laundry.  This may sound petty, but having good quality, free laundry facilities is a luxury for a poor college student.  Imagine the look on my face when I woke up one morning to find all of my laundry washed and folded in my suitcase.  Thanks mommy!

-Food.  My mom's home-cooked food is absolutely incredible.  I know everyone says that about their mom's food, and sometimes it's true.  I have a lifetime trying other people's home-cooked food and sometimes it's pretty good.  But never as good as what Amy's Kitchen consistently provides day in and day out.  No one else can deliver like that.  It goes without being said, but Thanksgiving dinner was incredible.  The leftovers were also amazing.  And the downstairs fridge had unlimited cream soda and caffeine free Dr. Pepper.  I probably gained 10-15 lbs.

-Family.  Seeing my family is so much fun.  My mom is always caring and dad is always funny to talk to.  Upon my arrival, I immediately taught my brother Josh how to play Super Smash Bros.  Later, Travis, Tristan, Micah, Josh, Mark, and I all played indoor tackle football in our padded room called the "Riley Room" (named after my cousin Riley who has been known to be destructive to non-padded rooms.)  The football left everyone injured and crying.  Even I jammed my finger while I had 3 boys try to tackle me.  They almost succeeded. Almost.

-The baptisms of Travis, Rachel, and Tristan.  On Saturday, I got to see my little brother Travis and my little cousins Rachel and Tristan get baptized.  It was awesome to see them go in the water.  The highlight, however, was their confirmations.  You could tell that my dad was close to the Spirit as he confirmed them members of our church and gave them special blessings.

-BYU Basketball. Noah Hartsock made a clutch jump shot in a double overtime win over South Florida and the team later won the South Padre Island Invitational Championship when Jimmer made a last second 3 point shot close out the game against St. Mary's.  Good weekend for the basketball team.

Overall, it was a great weekend.  I'm glad I got to see my family and enjoy the weekend.  Here are a couple more tidbits to end off the post:

-Today is Andrew's birthday.  Andrew is currently serving a mission in the Ivory Coast and will celebrate his birthday in a hut made of straw that lets continuous rain pour in while he shivers in the cold with malaria and no food to eat..... just kidding.  He actually looks to be very spoiled out there despite the humble circumstances.  Happy birthday big guy.  See you in 7 months.

-3 more weeks before I head out to Oakland for Russell's wedding!  Russell was my mission companion and is now my roommate and one of my best friends.  He met the girl of his dreams, Claire, who is one of the sweetest and funniest girls on the planet.  They are both lucky and I can't wait to be one of the groomsmen in the wedding.  After the wedding, I'll fly back to Boise to enjoy the rest of Christmas break under my mother's care.

-One of my other best friends, Trent, will also get married on the same day as Russell!  I wish I could be at two places at once!  Congratulations to Trent and Star, whose wedding theme song should be "You Belong with Me" by Taylor Swift.  Told you so Trent.

-I FINALLY got my online class done!  Physical Science 100 online was a beast, but it has been slain.  I just need to take the final and the class will be out of my life forever.  Thank heavens!

-A quick note on the BYU game... I don't want to dwell on it for too long, but I can't think of a bigger tragedy than losing a game against someone you clearly outplayed for 4 quarters because of a bad call.  When the entire world, including Utah fans, saw Brandon Bradley's knee touch the ground before he had the ball stripped from him, everyone thought the game would pretty much be over.  But when the called fumbled stood, Utah scored and BYU lost the lead it had held 56 out of 60 minutes.  Granted, BYU just had some terrible luck in that game, including a punt hitting an unaware player, a tipped ball being intercepted by Utah, dropped balls that were perfectly thrown, etc. But the call the ref made was inexcusable.  Utah made a great block at the end of the game, but the events beforehand should never have led up to a block winning them the game.  As you can imagine, I'm devastated over the loss.  It truly was a heartbreaker.  BYU now awaits a New Mexico Bowl bid and it will probably be against Fresno State or a rematch against Nevada.

-New music for the blog is Christmas music!

That's all for now!  Check back for more posts later.

Some Things I'm Grateful For

In lieu of the Thanksgiving season, here are just a few of the things that I'm grateful for:

-A family that loves me no matter what

-The best friends anyone could ever ask for who will always love and support me

-Good health... most of the time (don't say anything mom)

-The gospel, its teachings, the Savior, and the hope His Atonement brings to everyone

-That I live in the United States of America

-My job

-An optimistic attitude that it will all work out in the end, and that Heavenly Father has a plan for me

2011 BYU Schedule Almost Finalized

Today BYU and Ole Miss announced their season openers against each other.  This fills 11 of the 12 slots that BYU needs to have a full schedule in 2011.  Obviously since BYU will be independent next year, scheduling has been difficult.  Luckily, ESPN is helping us out by scheduling games that we can't find ourselves.  Here is what the 2011 schedule looks like for BYU so far:

Sept. 3 @ Ole Miss

Sept. 10 @ Texas

Sept. 17 v. Utah

Sept. 23 v. Central Florida

Sept. 30 v. Utah State

Oct. 15 @ Oregon State

Dates TBA for:

At home: Idaho, San Jose State, New Mexico State and likely a FCS opponent.

Away: Hawaii and Louisiana Tech.

Even though BYU will get to play at home a lot next year (7 out of the 12 games), the hardest games will all be on the road, other than Utah.  Playing in the south is hard, especially at Ole Miss and Texas.  Oregon State is looking better every year and strange things always happen in Hawaii.  I'm excited to see how Jake Heaps and the cougars do against nationally recognized programs on the road.  Hopefully a long spring and summer of throwing routes non-stop to his receivers will get the offense to where it needs to be to compete.  Only time will tell!

Meanwhile, BYU just needs to win tomorrow to get a bowl game.  Beating Utah never looked more realistic, however.  SDSU will at least batter the Utah team and hopefully BYU will be able to clean up in Salt Lake City.  If BYU wins out, we will get 2nd place in the Mountain West Conference.


Prediction for tomorrow's game:  BYU- 58  New Mexico- 3


Also, just as a side note, this is my 20th post since I've started the blog.  Since then, I've had over 1,000 views of this page.  Hope to keep writing in the future!

Brian Baugh Football

Our football season came to a close on Tuesday night.  There's not point in getting into the details, but we made some bad decisions with the football and played a terrible game.  We plan on playing 9 man football this winter and hopefully we'll have a better season than we had this fall.

Mid-November Update

It's been a while since I've written.... And that's mostly been because of a lack of events.  With that, here's a recap of anything meaningful that's happened the last 10 days:

-Frisbee season is over.  Despite the miraculous comeback in our first tournament game, we had an anti-climatic finish.  We had 8 people so that we could sub one at a time, but we were missing 2 of our best players.  We got off to a good start and we were winning at half time 6-5.  Unfortunately we kind of got lazy in the second half and made some bad decisions throwing the frisbee. The other team eventually won 10-8.

-Football season continues.  The night after we had a disappointing loss in frisbee, we played our first football game in the tournament.  We did awesome.  We went against a team that had  2 junior college football players that were incredible receivers.  Despite that, our offense kept us in the game. We scored on every possession that we had.  They scored on every possession they had, until the last one when we were able to make a great defensive stand.  My only regret in that game was that I felt like I didn't contribute much.  I'm glad I have another opportunity to make some plays next game.  Our next game is on Tuesday night at 9:15pm.  If we win that game, we'll play again Saturday.

-BYU won it's 3rd straight game and looked awesome doing it.  Jake Heaps has really come along and our receivers are finally coming along.  Luke Ashworth had the night of his career catching 4 passes, all for touchdowns.  The longest pass of the day was a 62 yard bomb that was perfectly thrown to Luke Ashworth.  Cody Hoffman had a fumble and so did Jake Heaps on a botched pitch to JJ DiLuigi, but other than that it was a really clean game.  CSU didn't score until our third string defense was put in in the 4th quarter.  Final score was 49-10 which puts BYU at 5-5 for the season.  It's almost as if BYU has had 2 different seasons.  The first 5 games they went 1-4, the next 5 games they have gone 4-1.  With New Mexico being the worst team in all of college football, we should easily beat them next week at home.  That win will make us bowl eligible.  After that, expect a great Holy War when BYU goes up to play the U.  With the way that the U has played, we should be able to beat them.

-Last night we made a Tucano's run.  My friend Sarah gave Kevin and I 2 for 1 coupons and we had to use them yesterday or they would expire.  It was a great night.  It was Kevin, Meridith, Darrik Cheney, and me.  About halfway through our great dinner, Kevin and I got into a tussle about who had eaten more.  We kept eating and eating, and before long we were asking the meat servers about who they thought had eaten more.  Kevin claimed that since he had eaten more vegetables and some of Meridith's food, that he had eaten more.  The meat servers said they had definitely given me more meat across the whole duration of the night.  Eventually, Kevin flipped over the little totem poll to red, indicating that I had been the victor.  It had come at a great cost, however.  I almost exploded a couple times and started literally going insane.  I would laugh at anything and in my insanity, Kevin and Darrik convinced me to leave my phone number for the waitress... Classy.  Either way, it was some good food for only half the price!

That's pretty much everything that has been going on as of late.  I'm excited to make my way back home for Thanksgiving and see my family (and eat my mom's cooking.)  I'm also making some important decisions about what to do next semester and whether or not I should quit my job at Simply Mac.  It's been an awesome job, but I need to focus on school and get it done.

With that, I'll sign out.  Look for more posts later this week.