I still don't know for sure if the story has appeared in the print edition of the Deseret News. I know it wasn't in Friday's paper, at least. But I'll have to get my hands on some copies as soon as it does.
I've gotten a few e-mails from readers, most of them saying: "Well, yeah, duh, but tell us about Title IX!" The Title IX aspect of university budgets is interesting, for sure. I just picked something else to talk about this time around.
If any of you want to do your own Title IX-themed investigation, or any investigation into athletics budget numbers, here's how:
1) Go to http://ope.ed.gov/athletics/WebsiteUpdatedMessage.aspx
2) Click on "Go to login page"
3) Then click on "Get data for one institution"
4) Then search for Brigham Young University (or any other college you're interested in looking at)
Kristian Ekenes did a great job with this. He had a lot of initiative, which you need if you want to get anywhere in this business. He talked to the Jimmer, the Michelle Peralta, Charles Abouo, and some guy who I think should be the next Michelle Peralta. Emilio Urriola, who is quoted in the article, was getting me all worked up just when I was editing the story with Kristian! He said he likes basketball, but he doesn't like the players. How does that even make sense?!
Anyway, this Jimmer worship debate isn't ending anytime soon. Which is great for me and The Daily Universe, haha.
We also got our own story on Jerry Sloan, long time head coach of the Utah Jazz, resigning.
When Rich Evans came into the newsroom at around 1 p.m., he said we needed to find someone who could go to Salt Lake for the 3 p.m. press conference. Lucky for us, our man Chuck Krebs happened to be there and was willing to go. He had never been to something major like this, and he was pretty nervous. But he jumped in with both feet. He had a lot of questions, but he also had to learn a lot on his own. And he did great.
It's not often that sad news comes across the sports desk.
This Tuesday, a press release came from BYU women's basketball to let everyone know that Alexis Kaufusi, a sophomore on the team, had been diagnosed with cancer and would be sitting out the rest of the season.
I was already planning on covering the Wednesday game against Air Force, to give a little extra help to our women's basketball beat reporters. Anyone paying attention to our women's basketball coverage at The Daily Universe would know we often don't get Wednesday game stories until Friday's paper, so we made some changes in assignments to try and prevent that from happening. Part of that move was that I took a turn covering a women's basketball game.
But after Kaufusi's announcement, this story assignment had new meaning. And it turned into a great story. Sad news, but great story.
Norma Collett, the SID for women's basketball, said I did a nice job on it. And Rich Evans, my boss at the paper, said he really liked it too. He said as he read it, he thought to himself, "This looks like a professional story." I am grateful for the compliments and glad I got a chance to do this story.
So, any of you who are college basketball fans, BYU fans, or human beings in general, you already know about the latest wave of Jimmermania this week.
I can't put up many links on the blog here, because The Daily Universe website is down, we're guessing because it got Jimmered. No joke. But I'll give you a sequence of events:
1) On Tuesday's opinion page in The Daily Universe, a letter was published entitled "Idol worship." I can't link to it since the website is down, but here's the copied-and-pasted text:
I can't walk across campus without hearing Jimmer Fredette's name a dozen times. His name comes up everywhere: in class, at work, during lunch. Really, people? Cut it out with the Jimmer worship. Last time I checked, idol worship was very much frowned upon in the scriptures. Don't you have a life to live? Then quit wasting it in front of the TV or in lines at the Marriott Center. At the very least, stop trying to convert those of us who don't follow BYU sports and don't care that baseball and badminton are two different things. Pushing basketball on us isn't going to make us like it any better. I'm not blaming Jimmer for all this; was it Nephi's fault in the Book of Mormon when his brothers worshiped him? As far as I'm concerned, Jimmer is perfectly free to live his dreams. If he reaches his goals and lives his dreams, more power to him. I would like the same courtesy from his fans: let me live my own dreams in peace, even if they don't include ever sitting in the Marriott Center screaming my brains out. Michelle Peralta Apple Valley, Calif.
2) Before the letter was actually published though, it was put up on the Daily Universe website. Michelle linked to it on her Facebook page, apparently proud of what she had accomplished.
But her Facebook privacy settings must have been pretty lax, because tons of people were able to comment on her Facebook page until the thread was ultimately taken down. But not before someone captured most of it:
3) We spent all day Tuesday in the newsroom reading aloud our favorite Jimmerisms from the thread. It was classic.
4) Eamonn Brennan from ESPN even picked up on it, and blogged about it on ESPN's website.
One of the best things about this Facebook thread is that virtually all of the comments were kind and clean, and just simply funny. Probably at any other school, the comments would have been littered with profanity and mean-spirited responses. But not at BYU. That's something we can be proud of. (Ryan Ginn at The Daily Reveille wrote about that too.)
5) Some of BYU's "Front Row Fanatics" put together a YouTube video, inviting Michelle Peralta to take part in the Jimmer experience:
6) Our opinion editor got enough letters that she planned Thursday's page to be all about Jimmer. Again, I'd give you links to all the letters, but the website is down probably because so many people have already read them and wanted to comment.
But, lucky for you folks, I have access to part of the opinion page. I drew a cartoon that provides a pictorial Jimmerism. Here it is in glorious color!
7) We quickly assigned a reporter to do a story on all this, our very own Kristian Ekenes. He's come up with a lot of great stuff so far, including an exclusive interview with Michelle Peralta herself. Look for that story in tomorrow's edition of The Daily Universe!
Don't get me wrong. I am infested with Jimmer Fever and I can't wait to cover the MWC Tournament in Las Vegas and hopefully a few NCAA Tournament games.
But with National Signing Day, I'm starting to get excited for football again.
Since no reporters were available yesterday morning, I filled in and went to a Signing Day event at Rio Tinto Stadium, where a few of Utah's top recruits signed their letters of intent. There were six there who were headed to BYU, and I talked to Austin Heder, Kesni Tausinga and Baker Pritchard. They were a lot of fun to talk to, especially Kesni. He's going to be a lot of fun for reporters in the future.
BYU had its own press conference yesterday afternoon, and again no reporters could go. So Alex and Sarah went to this one. From what Alex said, it looks like the press conference wasn't so much about the new recruits as it was about the future of BYU football generally. About going independent, exposure on ESPN...Bronco was actually excited. And that's saying something.
I whipped up two COMMS 420 stories in one day. It's quite an achievement, but now my fatigue-induced nausea and ache is setting in. It was worth it though.
First, I put the finishing touches on a story about the BYU athletics budget on Tuesday. I interviewed Dallan Moody, the athletic director over finances, like two weeks ago. But I procrastinated with other interviews and stuff, without any real good reason. My professor, after seeing my rough draft with only the Moody interview, suggested writing the story as two parts. So I worked on dividing it up on Friday, and then planned on doing the rest of my interviews Monday.
It's a good thing, too, because Monday my second 420 story became suddenly urgent.
Professor Hughes gave me the assignment to write a story about former Utah governor Jon Huntsman, Jr.'s presidential prospects. Some Huntsman buzz came up after a Newsweek interview hit newsstands earlier this month, written by none other than McKay Coppins, a friend and a BYU grad. Pretty cool for McKay, I hope I follow those same footsteps somehow.
Anyway, I was thinking of writing just a general story on the buzz. But then on Monday, the news broke that Huntsman had submitted his resignation to the White House and would be leaving his ambassador post. Which is a pretty obvious sign that he's up to something.
In The Daily Universe front page meeting, someone asked if a 321 reporter could do a story on the Huntsman developments real quickly. I piped up and said I was going to do one for 420, but that it would probably be two or three days before I could finish it. But I realized that if I was really going to do this story, to do it quick enough after Huntsman's breaking news for it to be relevant, I would have to do it the next day.
I freaked out. But, Monday night I called McKay and he graciously gave me 15 minutes of his time on the day that he was "vindicated" (his word). That gave me a good start, and then the next morning I finished my last interview for the BYU athletics budget story and then rushed to find some more interviews for the Huntsman story. I talked to the president of the BYU College Republicans, the president of the BYU Democrats, a political science professor and two students from the Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy.
And I finished it that afternoon! I was 45 minutes late to my 4 p.m. class, but other than that it was pretty smooth.
The original story was 58 inches long! I decided to take out some secondary quotes for a shorter version (which was still 40 inches). Our fearless leader Natalie Crofts was kind enough to use both versions, the short one for the newspaper and the long one for the website.
(My BYU athletics budget story will be published sometime later.)
It had to get cut down for the paper. So, lucky for you folks, I've got the complete version right here!
Last Saturday when No. 9 BYU beat ColoradoState, Sports Illustrated's Seth Davis shared his discovery with his Twitter followers. He had found the one thing that has power over Jimmer Fredette.
"The Jimmer has 21 pts and it is not even halftime. Halftime is the only thing that can guard The Jimmer," Davis tweeted.
The pressure from a clash between two top 10 teams, a competitive basketball conference, an opposing team's antagonistic and screaming fans, distant and unfamiliar basketball arenas and even the 20.75-foot three-point line cannot hold back Fredette. He is not subject to location, distance, or fatigue. The only concept Fredette is not impervious to is time.
In fact, Fredette not only overcomes everything on the long list of what would be obstacles to any mere mortal, he thrives on it. And he's not tuckering out anytime soon, even after a hard fought 71-58 victory over San DiegoState.
The Mountain West Conference schedule has only revved up Fredette's scoring output (he now averages 35.7 points per conference game), and all year his most amazing performances have been on the road. Before last night he averaged 26.7 points per game - the highest in the nation - but even more remarkable is when the home games are taken out of the equation, the average goes up, not down. Fredette averages 31 points on opponents' courts, thanks in large part to his gigantic, ridiculous long shots from deeper than downtown.
Fredette brought his road rage back to the MarriottCenter under the national spotlight against No. 4 SDSU. He was 14 for 24 on field goals, 5 for 8 on threes and 10 for 11 on free throws, for a total of 43 points, and was unfazed by SDSU's Kawhi Leonard, a fellow Player of the Year possibility. His average points per game is now 27.4, more than 3 points ahead of second place Kemba Walker from Connecticut. (Leading up to this game, Fredette was so far ahead of Walker he could have missed every single one of his shots against SDSU and he would still be the best in the country.)
The highlight of last night's thunder dome in the MarriottCenter was a long three right in D.J. Gay's face, which then led to a big-time dunk for teammate Jackson Emery. The streak of unbelievable, divine shooting from Fredette continues.
While "The Jimmer Show" is definitely deserving of attention from sports fans nationwide, most of Cougar Nation has another reason to root for Fredette's ever-increasing success: He has accomplished so much and has set himself up for much more, and he has done it all as a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
If there's one thing we Mormons love, it's a famous Mormon. At least part of the Mormon community's support for Mitt Romney, Stephenie Meyer, Steve Young, Fredette and others is because their place in history legitimizes our religion and culture. We can prove to the world that if a Mormon can run for president, write a best-selling book, win a Super Bowl and (we hope) take a college basketball team to the Final Four. So the world shouldn't consider us weird or dangerous anymore.
Of course, we should not be begging for the world's approval. In many ways, our gospel perspective teaches us it's better to be different. Even if we're not of the world, though, we should be in the world, if nothing else to be "a city that ... cannot be hid" (Matthew 5:14). As we establish ourselves by our achievements, we invite others to learn more about the gospel and what it has to offer them. And that's a major reason why we love Jimmer.
Because when he is featured on ESPN SportsCenter, in Sports Illustrated or the Wall Street Journal, he represents each of us. The more the national spotlight shines on him, the more we "let [our] light so shine before men, that they may see [our] good works" (Matthew 5:16).
Being a journalist can be the greatest job in the world sometimes.
I was lucky enough to have a seat at the Marriott Center last night and witness history being made.
It wasn't history because of the game itself, necessarily. BYU had beat San Diego State before. Jimmer had scored more points in earlier games. Two top ten teams in the Mountain West Conference is pretty rare.
But what really made it history was the environment surrounding the game. The hype and excitement leading up to the game might have been the bigger story.
The student section filling up at 6 p.m., more than two hours before tipoff.
At least the students acted like it. There was a beautiful white-out section, full of creative and hilarious posters and face paint. And the stadium was loud. I remember going to the Utah State game earlier this season, and it got really loud for the player introductions. But last night, it got that loud every time anything good happened for BYU. All game. And anything Jimmer did, it was even louder than that.
Which meant it was loud a lot. Because Jimmer was phenomenal. He made a believer out of everybody. (More on that here.)
Some additional game notes:
- Since I was an extra representative for The Daily Universe, I had to sit in the extra seating which was way up by the J Portal. The seats weren't bad, but when I went down to the main press row for the last minute game, there was quite a difference. Wish I were the basketball beat writer, haha.
- My Internet was working off and on, until a half hour before tipoff it quit for good and never came back on. I was frustrated and distracted the whole first half. Lucky for me though, the editorial I was planning was mostly written except for throwing in some final game stats. So I really only needed Internet at the end, so I figured I should pick up the wireless signal down on the floor. ... Nope, didn't work there either. So I literally ran to the JKB and got online there to finish up my editorial.
- I sat by The Daily Aztec's sports columnist Matt McClanahan. He was a cool dude. I probably would have chatted with him more if I weren't so distracted by my computer, but the conversation we did have was good. Nice guy. Here's what he wrote about the game: Jimmer hands SDSU its first loss. It's always interesting to see what an opposing team's student newspaper sees compared to what we see and write, haha.
- Jimmer was out of this world, but I wish the rest of the team could have made more shots. I especially felt bad for Jackson Emery, who probably could have benefited from all the NBA scouts there to see Jimmer but only had four points. On the other hand, our basketball beat writer Steve McCall pointed out that Emery did have four steals, six rebounds and held D.J. Gay to only two points. So maybe Emery put on a show for the scouts after all.
- A few of my favorite signs from the student section:
"You won't get a good night's sleep at this Marriott!"
"Kemba Who?"
"The Real King James"
"The Perfect Season Ends Tonight" ... after the game finished, flipped over to say, "Defeated"
To read my editorial, go here. And to read the long version, go here.
I was thinking a lot about President Barack Obama's speech in Tucson. When I tuned in Wednesday night, his speech had an impact on me. My wife and I were both brought to tears, especially upon hearing the story of Christina Taylor Greene, the nine-year-old girl who was killed in that Tucson shooting and has become a symbol of the optimism and innocence that our country needs so much of.
I spent enough time thinking about it that over the weekend I was able to come up with a viewpoint for today's editorial page.
The photo above is one I sent along with the editorial, in case there was room for it on the opinion page. I guess there wasn't, but that's one benefit of a blog! As much space as I want!
I also wrote one paragraph that, although I'll admit it was a big part of my motivation to write an editorial, didn't really fit with the mood and tone of the rest of what I wrote. So I'll include that here:
"Anyone who finds fault in this speech must be so entrenched in his conservative mindset that he is not only trying to score political points, but stubbornly won’t allow any points for Obama in the process. Regardless of my political beliefs, I can trust my president and his calm manner and thoughtful leadership."
It's a little attacking, which would have seemed out of place with the overall theme of my editorial. But, here it is on my blog, in case you're interested.
(Update: I got a nice compliment via e-mail from Bruce Young, who mentioned a similar blog post he wrote about Obama's speech and the next day's speech at BYU from Condoleezza Rice. From his blog, I found out that he is an English professor at BYU. Thanks for the response, Professor Young!)
