Isn't it ironic?

As you know from my previous blogs, I am from Illinois but currently attend Florida State University. If you've been following NCAA football at all this year you would know that the Florida State Seminoles will be playing in the Orange Bowl on January 1st in Miami. Who is their opponent you might ask? A little school from the MAC division that is known as Northern Illinois. Where I was born and raised in Illinois is fairly close to the campus of NIU and I can't tell you how many times I have made the trip to spent weekends with friends who currently attend this University. Since I know a lot of friends who go to Northern Illinois and the campus is only a short drive from my hometown, Its safe to say that I have probably been on the NIU campus 40 plus times in my short lifetime. Not only do many of my close friends attend NIU but my older brother does as well.
Since this is probably the only time these teams might meet while i'm attending FSU and my friends and brother are attending NIU I kind of find it ironic that these two teams would be meeting up to play for a bowl game this January. I hope the Seminoles can pull off this win over these Huskies so I can have bragging rights over all my friends back home and with my brother as well. If I didn't attend FSU I might have been at NIU as we speak right now, so I hope FSU can win this game to just add to my confidence that I made the right choice in choosing this school over NIU. Go Noles!

On to the next one...

As football season starts to wind down to an end, it is a bittersweet feeling that I get because I know that there won't be any exciting football games to go to every weekend, but that means that basketball season is underway as well. As I have mentioned throughout my blogs, I am a huge sports fan and love to play and watch just about anything you can compete in. Basketball is always an exciting time of year for me because it brings back so many high school memories of when I use to play. Now that I am a spectator from the stands, it still feels good to look out onto the court and relive all the memories I made in the past years.
The Florida State Seminoles had a pretty good season in basketball last year winning the Atlantic Coast Conference with some huge wins over the North Carolina Tar Heels and the Duke Blue Devils. The successful play of last season hasn't really carried over to this season though. The Seminoles lost their first game of the season to an unranked and less athletic South Alabama team. The Noles did lose a lot of key players from last season though and do have many new faces on the team this year. These new players are young and inexperienced and I think that this has something to do with the sudden downfall so far this season. The Seminoles did however go on to win their holiday tournament right before thanksgiving break and hopefully that type of energy they use to win that tournament will carry them throughout the season. Even though this young Seminole team might not be too hot this year, with this kind of youth and athleticism, this team can only grow for the next couple years to come. Go Noles!

Notre Dame

If you follow college football then you should be aware of the successful year that the Notre Dame Fighting Irish are having. As I mentioned earlier in my previous blog, I have never been a fan of ND and have friends attending the school currently that keep on making sure that I know about their current success in this years BCS standings. Notre Dame finished the regular season undefeated and ranked number one in the nation and will get the chance to play either Alabama or Georgia for a shot at the National Title.
Even though I am not happy that Notre Dame has been successful this year, I am glad to see that they will have to play a tough SEC team in order to win the National Title. I keep telling my friends who attend ND that they haven't been tested at all this season with their schedule strength and I believe that they will have a tough time with who ever they end up playing in the National Title game. My friends think that they will have no trouble with any of these teams but I am confident that the SEC will walk away with the title and it might be a blood bath for the ND football team. I am looking forward to this game and hope that my predictions are correct so I can rub it in my friends' faces like they've been doing about how well ND has done this season. With this being said...Roll Tide and Go Dogs! 

FSU vs. UF

Over this thanksgiving break there was some pretty big sports rivalries that occurred in college football and some might say there was none bigger than the Florida State Seminoles vs The Florida Gators. This is my first year at FSU and I've always wanted to be a part of a big rivalry like this one, but I never imaged it would be this big of a deal. My dad came in this weekend to attend the game as well, because he wanted to experience the hostel environment like the one that occurred on Saturday in Tallahassee.
As I woke up early that Saturday morning to get ready to tailgate, I could already tell how great of an experience this game was going to be by the sounds of people getting loud and rowdy at the break of dawn. There streets were filled with Seminole and Gators fans as you walked around town. As we piled in the the stadium to watch our favorite teams compete, I knew it was going to be one of the most exciting games I've ever been apart of and been able to experience. As you probably know now, the Gators did end up winning the game, but it was a very intense and exciting game as the lead changed in the third quarter and the Seminoles fans felt that they were going to be able to close out the game as victors. Even though the outcome of this game was not what I was hoping for, it still was a very exciting experience to be apart of a rivalry this intense, and I look forward to beating the Gators next year...Go Noles!

thanksgiving feast

What's one thing that everyone looks forward to during the thanksgiving holiday besides being with their family? All that food! I've been an athlete my whole life and burn a lot of calories during the week so I can put down a good amount of food without gaining too much weight. I love that I am able to eat good tasting food without having to worry about gaining weight because I know I would burn it off in a day or two, so I was really looking forward to a good thanksgiving feast this break. The night before thanksgiving dinner I went out to dinner with my dad and step mom to a Japanese steak house. Sushi is one of my favorite types of food, so I had to get at least one sushi roll with my meal.
The meal was a great success and tasted amazing, but my thoughts were still set on that big thanksgiving dinner that was still to come the next day. As we proceeded to leave the restaurant I began to feel a pain in my stomach. As we drove home the pains began to grow bigger and stronger by each passing minute. By the time we pulled into our driveway, my body felt like it was about to explode. Yup, you guessed it! Food poisoning  just my luck. As I spent the rest of the night in the bathroom and laying in my bed I couldn't help but think about all the great food that I might be missing out on due to this stomach flu.
The next morning I woke up feeling a little better, but I knew that there was no way that my stomach could handle a full course feast that I had been planning on eating since break started, and as dinner time came around it turned out that I was right. Even though I didn't get to enjoy as much food that I had planned on enjoying this break at least the my food poising passed quickly without me being seriously sick.

Professional Athletes paid too much?

Some people believe that Professional athletes in society today are overpaid for their contribution to the sport and some of them are overrated. I don't believe in this at all, I think most professional athletes are paid just the right amount of money. People who aren't professional athletes hear about how much these teams pay their players over the course of a few years and they think it's ridiculous.What these non-athletes don't realize is that these professional athletes won't be able to play the sport they love for very long before the sport starts to take a toll on their body and age and younger more athletic players catch up to them. These professional athletes are lucky if they are able to make it playing in the competitive world of sports for a decade, then their career is pretty much over. These athletes then have to change their whole career path that they've been working for their entire life, for some athletes the sport they play is the only thing they are really good at in life. Imagine if you worked your whole lifetime to get your dream job and then a couple of years later you are let go from this job and had to find a completely different career path, doesn't sound like fun does it? The money that these athletes make in their short career is most of the time the money that they will have to live on for their rest of their lives to support themselves and their family. When you take in account how short professional athletes' careers are, do you really think that they get paid too much?

Politics in the NFL

Whenever a professional football player does something to draw attention to them or their team either on or off the field, politics always step in and make sure that the image of the NFL is not criticized for the event that occurred. When a player is involved in some action that is not viewed as acceptable to society, the leaders of the NFL use politics to step in and make sure that everyone knows what actions will be done to assure that this player is punished and learns their lesson. The NFL tries to single on a specific player when situations like this occur because they don't want fans to stop following  or lose respect for the team that they love. The NFL wants to assure that they don't lose too many viewers and fans when an controversial event occurs and could potentially damage the reputation that the NFL has. As a fan of sports I've never really thought that the NFL could be punishing a player to save their reputation but now that I think about it more and more, and the amount of politics that play a role in sports, it actually makes perfect sense.