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Congratulations to the BYU football team for being invited to play in the Las Vegas Bowl. As a fan, I appreciate the efforts made by the players and the coaches to make this football season great and exciting.

I found out that BYU will increase tuition for 2006-2007 to $1,810 a semester. This is an increase of $105.

Not that this is a surprise. I’ve thought for sometime that tuition has been unusually low. There are a couple of things though that bug me about this. The first is that this announcement comes only two months before tuition needs to be paid. Somehow my long term budget all of a sudden needs to find an extra $105. I think they could have announced the increase in tuition earlier in order to give students the time to budget the extra nickels and dimes.

The other thing that worries me, is that if I remember back to tuition when I was a freshmen, I seem to remember it being below $1500. Fourteen hundred and something dollars. Thats what tuition was when I first started to attend here. Three to four hundred dollars of increase of tuition in the time I’ve been here worries me. Then again, now that I think, I’ve been here for a while and the increase is probably just normal.

In my two year missionary experience in Romania, there was a missionary theme or technique we had called Proselyting for the elect. In general, it said that if we were trying to find the elect of God, we should be bold in challenging them to do the things they needed to gain a testimony such as read the Book of Mormon or attend church. The idea was that the elect would use these challenges to gain a testimony and become strong members in the church.

There was once a sarcastic comment made more than once that said that we should board ourselves up in the chapel and wait, because the elect would tear down the doors to hear the gospel. Of course that was ridiculous to think that way.

I’ve heard a similar comment from some girls, who say that they shouldn’t have to dress up or put forth effort to look pretty, because that is not who they really are, and if someone were to love them, then he would love them for who they really are.

So girls, if you are going out to socialize with those from the opposite gender, don’t metaphorically board yourselves up the the chapel. Look nice, be nice. You don’t need to be someone else, just be yourself and be your best.

As I watched the Ute’s starting quarterback Brian Johnson get injured in their game against New Mexico last week, I began to wonder what it would mean to the Holy War football game this weekend. Since that time, the Utes have closed their football practices to the press, and BYU is busy trying to find as much material on the Utah backup QB as they can.

I have some general thoughts about what this will mean for the game. It could mean a lot as far as turnovers. Our defense has been getting better and better about forcing turnovers. I think that we could see a fair number of Utah turnovers during the game. I think we will probably see some on 3rd down when Utah would be trying to convert.

I also think that Utah will have some great plays, mostly in the first half, that are going to make cougar fans bite their fingernails. Utah is going to come to Cougar Town with some new plays and strategies that we’ve never seen before and a level of desparation that might remind us of a 4th quarter against Air Force.

But I think the second half of the game is going to be all blue. I think Utah will have used up their bag of tricks all in the first half, and are going to be shut down during the second half. The cougars might need half of a game to discover who this readjusted Utah team is, but after that, it will be solid offense and many scoring opportunities.

Of course, a new QB for Utah could mean that they don’t have as much experience with communication. I think communication is going to be a task for the Utah O-line. This is one place where a blue stadium will be an advantage. If the fans can get loud every time the Utes are on offense, then they will have a much more difficult time communicating, and their offense will break down and make mistakes.