Football + Art = Beauty

From the Deseret News comes a report of a couple from Huntsville, Utah that have taken their passion for college football, combined it with art, and made something very beautiful. Behold the wonder:

If you look closely, you'll see that this scene from the 2006 BYU vs. Utah football game isn't a painting or a photo - it's a mural made entirely from painted golf tees.

That's right painted golf tees. Don't worry, I didn't believe it either until I saw the close up.According to the Deseret News story, the mural is 232 rows by 451 collumns of tees and took something like 400 hours of work to complete. And it's shear beauty brings a tear to my eye.

Best Cities to Live, Work, and Play: #10 Provo?

Yahoo.com, Kiplinger.com, and the Martin Prosperity Institute (a "think tank that studies economic prosperity") have released a list of the top 10 cities to "Live, Work, and Play". In doing this they used factors such as population and salary growth, cost of living, percent of workers in what they deemed the "creative class" ("scientists, engineers, architects, educators, writers, artists and entertainers"), and a number of other factors. Guess who came in at #10 on their list?

If you guessed Provo, Utah, you are smarter than me. Don't get me wrong - I enjoyed going to school at BYU and living in Provo, but if I were to make a list of the top 10 places to "live, work, and play" in the U.S., Provo would not be on it.

However, they do give some very interesting statistics on why Provo is so great. From their survey:

10. Provo

Population: 474,351

Population Growth Since 2000: 20.6%

Percentage of Workforce in Creative Class: 32%

Cost-of-Living Index: 97.7 (100 being national average)

Median Household Income: $50,583

Income Growth Since 2000: 12.2%

So maybe Provo isn't so bad after all, however, I'm still not quite ready to buy into Provo-topia quite yet. You can see the full story here.

BYU Beats Utah on Last Play!

This was definitely a game of momentum. BYU came out in the first quarter with a 14-0 lead over Utah. The offense seemed unstoppable and John Beck looked like a magician on the field. It looked like BYU just could not be stopped. Unfortunately for BYU, Utah was able to convert on fourth down with a fake punt. That was just enough to fire up the Utah offense to drive in a touchdown.

Once Utah got some momentum, it turned into a hard second quarter for BYU. In fact, John Beck did not complete a single pass in the second quarter. The half ended with BYU winning 14-10. In the second half Utah returned with their second quarter momentum pulling ten points ahead of BYU.

But the momentum was about to swing back to BYU. John Beck then repeated his first quarter performance with back to back touchdowns. This should have put BYU up by four points but Utah was able to block the second extra point. Utah then was able to march down the field and score putting them ahead by four with one minute left in the game. John Beck and the rest of the offense then marched the ball clear down the field and with three seconds left in the game Beck completed the game winning touchdown. What a game!!! BYU wins 33-31.

Well, I have to admit I was pretty happy. We beat Utah my freshman year and it is good to take it to them my senior year too. I really think this BYU team is better then it was my freshman year. My freshman year we went 11-1 and our only loss was for the last game of the season. Going into that game, at least in one poll we were #6 in the country. This year we will be lucky to get much better then #20 but I still think this team is better. My freshman year half the games were close. This year we crushed nearly everyone. In addition, John Beck is a much better quarterback than Brandon Doman was,(at least has better stats) and Curtis Brown is BYU's all-time greatest rusher and Luke Staley was not. Our defense has not given up very many points this year whereas my freshman year they gave up enough that again it was often close.

With all that said I would like to thank the BYU Football team. Here are my players of the year. John Beck: He is second only to TY Detmer for total passing yards. Curtis Brown: BYU's all-time leading rusher. John Harline: though a tight end, probably BYU's most effective receiver Fui Vakapuna- BYU's most aggressive offensive player and one mean rusher himself. Cameron Jensen- Main linebacker who was a very effective leader on defense. Ben Criddle: A walk-on who made big defensive plays game after game.

Congratulations BYU. Last week you became Mountain West Conference Champions and this week you gave the University of Utah yet another reason, as if they didn't have enough, to feel their inferiority.

Top Image: The game winning catch by John Harline. Middle Image: Beck being carried by his teammates after delivering the game winning pass. Bottom: John Beck and Cameron Jensen, the teams captains, holding up the Mountain West Conference Championship Trophy.