Student loan debt surpassed credit card debt in the United States for the first time ever this year and is expected to hit $1 trillion by the end of 2011. As a result of the recession, many students face a dismal post-graduation jobs market, causing concern that the investment in a college education may not bring as strong a benefit as it has in the past.

Many schools have been forced to raise tuition or, as in MU’s case, course fees to fill gaps in funding, and, as a result, more young people today attend college at a higher cost than ever before.

The new federal budget seeks to reduce Pell Grant funding to the lowest level it has been since 1998. The grant will be reduced by more than $2,500 per award for the 2012-13 school year, resulting in almost 1.4 million students losing eligibility for the grants.

Office of Student Financial Aid Director Jim Brooks said more than 57 percent of MU undergraduate students have student loans and many students receive Pell Grants.

“During the 2010-2011 academic year, there are just over 5,600 students receiving Federal Pell Grants,” he said.

Brooks said the average student debt at MU is below the national average.

“The average MU undergraduate student loan debt upon graduation is $20,689,” he said. “Nationally, it is around $24,000.”

Student loans are one of the few loans that cannot be claimed under bankruptcy if the holder cannot pay them. If a student does not repay a government funded student loan, the government can take money out of the indebted person’s salary until the loan is repaid.

Terry Wilson, director of Health Promotion and Wellness at the Student Health Center, said many students come in seeking mental health services because of financial stress.

“I think financial strains and demands are one major component of student stress levels,” she said. “When the recession happened at a national level, many students feared they may have to drop out of school.”

Wilson said mental stress could come from a variety of sources, and it shouldn’t be blamed on financial difficulties alone.

“Stress has many different components, so it’s hard to attribute it to one specific thing,” she said. “It’s really complicated. I can’t say they’ve come in specifically for financial reason, but I do know there are a lot of students who seek our services for anxiety and depression.”

Economics professor George Chikhladze said he believes despite economic hardship and emotional stress, the investment in a college education is worth the return.

“Tuition is a long term investment,” he said. “You have to borrow money now if you cannot afford to pay for college, and you hope that once you graduate you will get a good job and be able to pay for those loans.”

Chikhladze said because of the recession, it is more difficult to obtain a job after graduation that will provide sufficient funds to repay student loans. He said this makes people worry that investing in college may not be worth the debt that follows.

“You have to do a rigorous analysis here to know what’s really going on because a college education does have huge benefits,” Chikhladze said. “The gap between the earnings of someone who has a college education and someone who only has a high school education has been widening in the last 40 years or so. That’s proof in itself that college education does pay off.”

He said the panic surrounding debt and unemployment is a normal result of the recession.

“Every time there’s a recession, jobs are hard to find, so it always raises the question if you can’t find a job after you went to college then why did you take out the loans?” Chikhladze said. “I think the problem is just a temporary result of the recession we’re in now. Of course, we are not going to be in the recession forever, and we’re actually coming out of the recession now.”

Amid a fluctuating economy, it comes as no surprise that some seniors have expressed worry in finding a job after graduation.

In its job outlook update for fall 2011, the National Association of Colleges and Employers found that employers plan to hire 19.3 percent more graduates in the 2010-2011 academic year than they did in the previous year.

Some graduating seniors are encouraged by this statistic.

“The current job market for graduating seniors is in much better shape than we have seen in a long time,” said Christian Garcia, director of the Toppel Career Center.

Although the job market seems to have improved, seniors are still worried about employment. But the employment rate for seniors after graduating with a bachelor’s degree is also dependant on their field.

“Students need to understand their industry. If the industry they are interested in requires a graduate degree, then they may have a hard time finding a job with only a bachelor’s degree,” Garcia said.

Some seniors have already secured job positions.

Senior Romy Portuondo, for instance, will be returning to a Miami company where she has been a part-time employee during the school year. On the other hand, senior Jennifer Safstrom sought out a less familiar job option.

“I will be doing Teach for America in California, I feel fortunate that I was looking for a non-traditional, service-based program; many of my friends who have been looking for full-time employments have not been successful,” Safstrom said.

Other seniors, however, have not even begun their search or have alternate plans.

“I feel like I can take a mini vacation after 18 years of straight schooling,” senior Maury Abascal said. “I have no immediate plans to attend graduate school; even though law school, film school or an MBA are possibilities down the line.”

Regardless of the variety of options available after graduation, job searching in today’s market should prove to be a better challenge to overcome than in the past years.

After working on the score for a documentary on sex trafficking, one college student wanted to do something about the dehumanization he saw in his client’s video. Tony Anderson decided he was tired of hearing about injustice. He said he wanted to know why there was so much discussion and so little real change.

So Anderson did something a little unusual to answer his questions. To investigate the issue, Anderson and his friend, Derek Hammeke, decided to take a camera into the most notorious areas for sex trafficking they could find.
“We got a ton of crazy undercover stuff on camera,” Anderson said.

Posing as western sex clients, they went undercover, investigating one of the world’s most lucrative criminal industries. With the footage they collected, they created Unearthed, an organization based in Lexington that describes itself as “a nonprofit that produces media that prompts people to act against injustice.”

Anderson remembers one night during their months of filming when he saw a group of women gathered around an underage prostitution hotspot with a western man in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

“He was groping this girl — maybe 7 years old — almost like you’d see somebody feeling produce at the grocery store to ensure its quality before buying it,” Anderson said. “She was being sold for sex.”

The little girl in Cambodia was just one of thousands the Unearthed team saw while collecting footage.

“We talked to the locals, and they would say where not to go, and we would go there,” Anderson said. “We would basically say, ‘Hey, we want to buy young girls for sex,’ so obviously you find yourself saying things that are really weird and uncomfortable.”

He practiced responses and escape plans to use on brothel owners who wondered why he never actually used the services they were selling. The Unearthed team traveled to Thailand, South Africa, Cambodia and many other locations in Southeast Asia and the United States in 2009 and 2010. Wherever they went, they found eager sellers.
“These girls are like goods,” Anderson said. “A human being is reduced to a commodity.”

After pretending to purchase a sex worker for the night, Anderson and his team would take her to a restaurant and talk to her about her life. They heard stories of horrific abuse, brutal violence and revolting neglect.

They collected information about the age, location and number of people who had been trafficked at each location. Sometimes they would also get information that they could report to local authorities and were able to spearhead many raids of illegal sex businesses and free the workers. Unearthed then produced media to educate Americans about what Anderson said they found to be a global pandemic of injustice. Unearthed serves as a “conduit of resources” that collects donations and funnels them to existing safe houses and human justice organizations.

“You need rescue, healing and human justification,” Anderson said. He explained that the trafficked women need to be removed from abusive situations and provided safe places to go, but the men and women who traffic them must also be prosecuted.

Though the sex trafficking industry is often discussed as a foreign problem, Anderson said many American college students don’t realize “the ties between their private sexual practices and a global sexual pandemic.”
He said most of the demand funding the illegal sex trade comes from sexually addicted clients whose problems began with a porn addiction.

Anderson, a former porn user himself, met with several neurosurgeons to discuss pornography’s effects, and learned that pornographic images must become more and more shocking to satisfy, so users typically progress to more violent or child porn — and most of this pornography is produced with unwilling victims.

“College guys say to me all the time, ‘I’ll help sex trafficking, but I’m not giving up porn,’” Anderson said. “In that moment for them, it isn’t hurting anyone.”

One UK student who learned about the ties between college campuses and sex trafficking through Unearthed was Brent White, a master’s of business administration student who decided to volunteer with Unearthed after watching one of its videos. The injustice he saw on the Unearthed videos inspired him to become involved.

“Working with Unearthed has really opened my eyes,” White said.  “I used to think that my personal decisions and weaknesses didn’t affect others, but they do. When I look at porn, I hurt my future relationships, and I assist in driving the global sex trade. I was a huge hypocrite; there were behaviors and attitudes in my life that I had to man up and take responsibility for if I really was going to stand up for women and become a true gentleman.”
White said pornography addiction is one behavior many college students don’t take responsibility for.

“The biggest lie that I hear from my fellow students is that there’s nothing wrong with porn,” White said. “‘I’m not hurting anyone,’ ‘Those women want to do this stuff,’ ‘See? They’re smiling in all of the videos I watch,’ ‘They get paid really well.’

“The popular understanding of porn around UK’s campus is that porn is ‘my own business,’ and that ‘all the girls working are there on their own will.’ The reality is that most of the women in the porn industry were victims of sexual abuse at some point in their lifetimes. Many have been trafficked, or they’re women in desperate need of money to feed an addiction or provide for children. Drug addictions and STDs are typically the aftermath of a career in the porn industry — not a happy family with tons of cash. If the people using porn knew the back stories about the girls they masturbate to, they’d probably put their pants back on after vomiting.”

Anderson said casual porn users who start in college can become hooked on endorphins and seek to counteract the increased dissatisfaction with pornography by visiting strip clubs or massage parlors, and may eventually become a “sex tourist” like the western man he saw in Cambodia.

“Men in the west think (sex workers) want to be doing it,” Anderson said. “I’ve seen this happen. They are told, ‘You need to smile or I’ll beat you.’”

The Unearthed team found that sex trafficking industry usually follows a pattern. Poor or vulnerable girls are offered employment in the city, sometimes knowing what their line of work will be, but often not.

They are then “broken in,”  a process Anderson described as “brutally graphic” which usually involves being tied up, raped repeatedly, deprived of food and water, and being administered narcotic drugs to numb the pain.
Anderson said the average age of the sex workers he met was 13, but he saw girls as young as 5 being sold for sex.
“From a business end, what they (traffickers) are doing is brilliant,” Anderson said, pointing out that while other illegal goods like weapons and drugs can only be sold once, people can be sold multiple times, and the average sex worker will produce $250,000 for her pimp in her lifetime. According to the United Nations, illicit human trafficking is estimated to represent a total market value of $32 billion.

“One hundred percent of the women we’ve talked to do not want to be in this,” Anderson said. “What woman grows up thinking, ‘I want to sell my body to random men’? No girl I’ve ever talked to came out and said, ‘I’m really glad I did that.’ You have to talk to these women. You can’t just read books. We have to flip it and say you can’t believe these stupid societal assumptions that women want this. This isn’t the world’s oldest profession; it’s the world’s oldest oppression.”

He said men might be major contributors to the sex trade, but he also sees them as a large part of the solution.
“That’s what being a man is to me,” Anderson said. “You take responsibility for women and children and the things you haven’t caused. Even if it’s not our fault, it’s our responsibility.”

“If men want to do their part to prevent sex trafficking, they won’t look at porn or otherwise support the sex industry,” White said.  “Women shouldn’t put up with men who watch porn or intentionally inebriate women for the purpose of satisfying their own desires. The sad part is that women are beginning to settle for boys that can shave instead of men with ambition, direction and self control.”

“We’re all willing to throw a little money at a cause,” Anderson said. “We’ve got to get thinking differently about how we treat women and children.”
For more information about Unearthed, visit www.unearthedpictures.org.

Finals week is a time when students try to cram a semester of knowledge into three days of studying. This difficult task sometimes prompts students to engage in illegal activities: namely, taking perscription drugs that are not perscribed to them. Many students take psychostimulants, drugs that can create temporary mental changes, like Adderall and Ritalin.

Adderall is a drug that combines two forms of amphetamine-dextroamphetamine and amphetamine-that helps treat attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Ritalin is Methylphenidate, another amphetamine that treats ADHD, a learning disorder. Children and Adults with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (CHADD) is a not-for-profit organization that serves those suffering from ADHD. CHADD says that heredity is the most likely cause of ADHD, noting the strong neurological base of the disorder.

Kevin Frentz, a health educator at Thagard Student Health Center, explained how brain functions can be distributed.

“It’s like a normal distribution curve,” Frentz said. “There are some people that just are always on top of everything. It’s like they’re born that way. There are, of course, other people who have [ADHD] to such an extreme amount that even on medication they’re still all over the place. Majority of people have good days and bad days. ”

Surveys have been done to estimate the number of students using stimulants without a prescription, but these surveys can lack scientific validity due to the lack of incentive for students to honestly answer questions. Less than 5 percent of college students reported to the American College Health Association (ACHA) that they had been professionally diagnosed or treated with ADHD in the last year. Of the 1,796 students that admitted to taking non-prescribed stimulants, 7 percent of men and 5 percent of women took it non-prescribed. Only 834 students said they were prescribed medication to assist with their ADHD. Six percent of students who took the survey-nearly 2,000 students-admitted to taking stimulants that were not prescribed.

Frentz compared psychostimulants to steroids for a student’s brain.

“Some people still want the easy way out,” said Frentz. “They feel, just like people on steroids for sports, you might be gifted or you might be a good athlete, but you’re thinking, ‘Well, I don’t need to take those steroids but that guy who’s really gifted and better than me without steroids is on steroids and I’m going to fall behind-I need to take them.’ The same mentality comes about with people taking Adderall.”

Ilese Weingarten, outreach coordinator for the FSU counseling center, said that many of these students have misconceptions about this drug.

“Students think that, because it’s prescribed to people, it’s a safe drug,” said Weingarten. “Well, it’s a safe drug under a doctor’s supervision prescribed to you because someone has gone through a lot of assessment to say that this is a medicine that can help.”

This medication can definitely help, but it only helps if there is a legitimate need for it. It does not come without some significant risks.

“It can be potentially dangerous,” said Weingarten. “For people who don’t have ADD, it’s an amphetamine.”

Not only does the amphetamine of Adderall have a similar effect to speed, it also gives students a false sense of confidence, according to Frentz.

“For people who need Adderall, it really has a place and it really does help them focus, but when you get a person who doesn’t need it taking it, the drugs show a small effect,” Frentz said. “More often, researchers come up with negative findings, unable to show a clear cut across the board improvement on any of a wide variety of tasks. Adderall, researchers found, makes you think you’re doing better than you actually are.”

Side effects can be serious. An 80 milligram bottle of Strattera (the only non-stimulant ADHD medication on the market) comes with warnings of “serious cardiovascular events (e.g., sudden death stroke, myocardial infarction), serious liver damage and major effects on blood pressure and heart rate.”

“Even a small dose makes you very shaky, and you could end up in the hospital,” Frentz said. “Kids have been hospitalized from taking too much. They think they’re having a heart attack.”

These health risks are not the only risks that come with taking a psychostimulant without a perscription.

“I think the health issue is the primary concern; the secondary concern is getting arrested,” Weingarten said. “It is a felony charge to have amphetamines in your possession not prescribed to you.”

Maj. Jim Russell of FSUPD said that Adderall is not an uncommon drug when it comes to student arrests.

“Ritalin is less common, but Adderall is often used as the ‘study drug,’ ” said Russell. “What we normally find is a student in possession of a single, or a few pills. Dealers do operate on campus, [but] are harder to catch.”

According to the ACHA, the only type of prescription drug more college students took unprescribed were painkillers (e.g., Vicodin, OxyContin).

“Mark” (whose name has been changed to maintain anonymity), an FSU sophomore majoring in marketing, admitted to taking Adderall on occasion during this time of year.

“I take it because I feel as though it helps with concentration-helps you stay up,” Mark said. “It gets me in a zone where I actually enjoy what I’m studying.”

When asked about the risks, Mark said he was not very concerned, because it’s so infrequent that he actually takes the stimulant.

“I only take it maybe once a month for just one class, say financial accounting,” Mark said. “After this class, I probably won’t do Adderall again for school classes unless it’s the equivalent to organic chemistry or something harder. All in moderation, I say.”

“Sarah,” a senior graduating this week with a degree in art history, also admitted to taking Adderall on occasion. She said that she used it to help her finish a paper.

“It helps me stay focused; it doesn’t help me study,” Sarah said. “It helps me stay focused on studying. I’m not really concerned with the risks because I’ve only done it once or twice; I try to avoid it when I can.”

An agreement between the North Carolina and U.S. departments of transportation provided the state with $461 million to enhance the rail system and construction will affect Alamance County.

“Railroad construction will make Piedmont North Carolina closer to the Northeast, to New York, Washington and Boston in peoples’ minds, as well as in time to get there,” said Tom Tiemann, economics professor at Elon University.

The agreement contributes to President Barack Obama’s vision for a high-speed rail system that will connect 80 percent of the population, according to a press release issued by the U.S. Department of Transportation.

A portion of the federal funding will be used to construct a railroad between Charlotte and Raleigh.

“It is a step in the incremental project that connects Charlotte with Washington and all the way up to New York and Maine,” said Patrick Simmons, NCDOT rail division director.

The project will create 4,800 jobs related to the railway construction and enhance the state’s prestige with respect to economic and industrial growth, Simmons said.

“It will connect North Carolina with the richest, most productive part of the country,” Tiemann said.

Although the high-speed rail project enables North Carolina to become more closely associated with production in the Northeast, Simmons also sees the project as an opportunity to facilitate economic growth within the state.

“The public investment is an economic development tool that has been used for centuries to help stimulate the economy,” he said.

The construction of a high-speed rail connecting Charlotte and Raleigh particularly benefits North Carolina residents, Simmons said, as 60 percent of North Carolina’s economic and population growth will occur between Raleigh and Charlotte.

“It’s where our people live, it’s where our economy is, it’s where our growth is going to occur,” he said.

With the federal funding, the state plans to complete 24 projects throughout 11 counties. Projects in Alamance County include a realignment of the railroad tracks from Graham to Haw River and an extension to the Burlington train station platform.

“Technically speaking, North Carolina is now the seventh largest state in the country in terms of population and it’s going to add 4.5 million people by 2030,” Simmons said. “This project helps us prepare for that and ensure long term mobility for commerce and citizens.”

The railroad track construction will eliminate a 22-mile bottleneck and increase train speed from 55 mph to approximately 79 mph. The Burlington Station platform extension will allow all passengers to board without repositioning the train, reducing travel time as well.

“Modernizing our highway and railroad infrastructure will better prepare us for when the economy returns,” Simmons said.

Individuals who ride the passenger trains will have more travel opportunities, which is characteristic of a more robust transportation network, he said.

“Those that don’t use the train will still see improved safety and mobility through safety projects, and the economy will recover just an ‘nth’ degree faster because we have made investments in our infrastructure that have not occurred anywhere else in the region,” Simmons said.

The construction of a dozen bridges will also improve safety, according to Simmons. Bridges would elevate the street level, eliminating the number of crossing collisions between cars and trains.

The improved transportation network and increased job opportunities will contribute to North Carolina’s economic growth, he said.

The construction projects will also directly create 4,800 jobs throughout the state, according to Simmons.

“The economy will recover just an nth degree faster because we have made investments in our infrastructure that have not occurred anywhere else in the region,” Simmons said.

Nevertheless, Tiemann predicts the economic benefits will influence more than those directly employed for the construction projects.

But Tiemann predicts the economic benefits will influence more than those directly employed for the construction projects.

“It’s the multiplier effect,” he said. “Every dollar you spend on this, if you look at it nationally, causes $1.50 or $2 expenditure somewhere else.”

The UConn teaching assistant accused of making racial slurs in his anthropology class said that his lecture about the N-word was important because it dealt with a universal phenomenon and the categorization of people in society.

Graduate student Benjamin Purzycki said that he used the profane term during his Anthropology 1000 class, “Other People’s Worlds,” three weeks ago to address racism and ultimately eliminate it. “The argument of the lecture was how insignificant groups of people can be when grouped under a certain category,” he said.

To illustrate this point, Purzycki put a Richard Pryor album cover with the word “Super N*****” and a poster of the Pope saying “N***** Please” in his power point presentation. He then showed a portion of a Chris Rock skit called “N****** vs. Black People.”

“My playing it points to the dynamics of the issue,” Purzycki said.

The rest of Purzycki’s lecture focused on the stereotyping of other ethnicities, such as Native Americans, and classification of in-groups and out-groups based on politics and class. He also delved into the history of the N-word. He said that the Dutch first used it as a way to describe black people. Later, the term evolved to become a racial slur.

Nowadays, we make assumptions about the word, and either abuse it or shy away from it, Purzycki said. For example, when people sing along to rap songs and only leave out the N-word, they contribute to the stereotypical, repulsive nature of the term. But this kind of discrimination cannot be simply explained, Purzycki said – it has to be confronted.

Purzycki said that he was “never motivated by shocking people.”

Therefore, he only said the N-word once in class to quote a friend. He said that the first half of the semester was a disclaimer for all the sensitive issues that the class would be learning about. Furthermore, Purzycki said that he encourages his students to voice their opinions in their discussion sections, and in lecture as well. He also said that he wishes that the student who filed the complaint had talked to him or one of the TAs before going to the associate dean and the newspaper.

Purzycki said that his work is entirely non-racist. As an undergrad at the University of Milwaukee, he put together rallies and other events to support the victims of racist police brutality. He has analyzed changes in Native American culture that have been direct results of U.S. government policies, and has published an article about how humans are constantly subjugating each other.

The teaching assistant said that in the past he has gotten only positive feedback on his presentation.

“Students of all colors have come up to me over the years and thanked me for the lecture,” he said. But Purzycki will consider rethinking his approach to the topic if told so by the anthropology department. Still, he said, “we need to understand racism to do something about it.”

USG Vice President Donald Richards, who also works at the African American Cultural Center, said that he spoke with both Purzycki and the student who filed a complaint against him. After weighing both sides of the issue, he said that he is forced to agree with Purzycki.

Richards said that a “growing concern is that there is a lack of African American history being taught in our educational system and particularly on this campus.” Therefore, he believes that the N-word should be the subject of discussion and debate in UConn classrooms. “If the use of the word ‘n*****’ has not been resolved within the black community for decades, it cannot and will not be resolved on this college campus,” Richards said. “However, it is a very important aspect to the conversation and must be mentioned when discussing race.”

Since Will Muschamp took over as Florida’s head football coach in December, cornerback Janoris Jenkins isn’t the only player to run into trouble with the law.

As was first reported by the Palm Beach Post, two other Gators have been arrested during that span—both for possession of marijuana, like Jenkins.

Defensive end Chris Martin and linebacker Kedric Johnson were both arrested for possession of fewer than 20 grams of marijuana – a first-degree misdemeanor – in separate incidents this year.

As of Monday afternoon, a UF spokesman could not be reached for comment regarding the arrests.

Martin was cited on Jan. 29 after a Gainesville Police Department officer saw Martin sitting in his vehicle at 104 N. Main St. and detected the scent of fresh marijuana. After the officer approached, Martin, 19, produced approximately 2 grams of the substance and was cited.

Martin is a redshirt freshman who transferred to UF last summer from California. He was rated as a five-star recruit out of high school by Rivals.com and sat out last season due to transfer rules.

Johnson’s incident occurred on Jan. 9 after he was pulled over at 3000 NW 83rd St. by a GPD officer for speeding.

According to the citation report, the officer smelled a strong scent of marijuana emanating from the vehicle and asked Johnson if he had any illegal substances on him. Johnson told the officer he had a small bag of marijuana in the glove box.

After searching Johnson’s car, the officer found a small plastic bag with approximately 2 grams of marijuana in it.

Johnson, 20, is a sophomore from Palmetto who recorded four tackles in 13 games last year. This spring, Johnson missed the remainder of camp after spraining his knee in late March.

Both Martin and Johnson consented to six-month deferred prosecution agreements. Martin signed his on Feb. 9 and Johnson agreed to one on Jan. 26.

As part of the deferred prosecution agreements, both had to pay a nominal prosecution fee as well as either register 10 hours of community service or donate $100 to Project Payback, a juvenile, restorative justice and restitution program.

The two arrests, combined with Jenkins’ two citations, make four arrests already under Muschamp’s watch.

Former coach Urban Meyer came under scrutiny during his tenure because his players racked up a total of 31 arrests while he was in charge.

Approximately five months remain until the start of the college football season, but dissent is always prevalent in the controversial world of amateur sports.

The latest complaitant is Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff. He plans on filing a federal lawsuit against the Bowl Championship Series for violating antitrust laws,claiming that it is a monopoly.

“This isn’t about bragging rights,” Shurtleff said to USA Today. “It isn’t some kind of frivolous deal, there are serious antitrust violations that are harming taxpayer-funded institutions to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.

“And the right thing to do, regardless of whether teams in your state benefit, is to go after the antitrust violations.”

This draws similarities to 2008 when Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas proposed a bill that would prohibit the NCAA from calling the last game of the season the “national championship.”

What Barton was after, and what Shurtleff is striving for is the implementation of a playoff system in college football.

One of Shurtleff’s inspirations for the lawsuit stems from the 2007-2008 season when the Utah Utes went 13-0. They were the only undefeated team in the NCAA, but because of the BCS formula, Utah still did not qualify for the national championship game.

Part of that was because Utah was in the Mountain West Conference, a non-automatic qualifying conference.

Instead it was the 13-1 Florida Gators who won it all, beating the Oklahoma Sooners, who were 12-1 prior to the loss in the championship game. The Utes received an at-large bid to the Fiesta Bowl and ended their season ranked second overall, and were left pondering “what if.”

“It’s an illegal monopoly, a restraint of trade,”Shurtleff said to the Salt Lake Tribune. “It benefits the few at the expense of others.”

But that was then. Utah was one of several opportunistic schools to upgrade its league, by accepting an invitation to the Pacific-12 Conference, an automatic qualifier. The Utes will begin Pac-12 play this year, and another unblemished season would likely land them in the championship without any debate.

Even though Utah should not get slighted again, Shurtleff continues his crusade against the BCS, for all of the other schools in non-AQ conferences.

Shurtleff is not even a Utah alumnus. He attended Brigham Young which is one of Utah’s chief rivals. While there surely has to be more pressing matters in the state of Utah, he is trying to do a deed that would benefit his entire constituency.

He deserves a salute for standing up for the little guy. With allegations of corruption and special treatment rampant across college sports, Shurtleff’s involvement shows that he thinks the NCAA is not capable of governing itself, and that politicians must get involved.

The general makeup of college football fans do not favor the current BCS system, Shurtleff is just the latest spokesman crying foul against the BCS.

While he is taking up a noble cause, Shurtleff is wasting his time and resources — and the odds will be stacked heavily against him.

The BCS system is successful as it exists today, even if its selection process is considered to be questionable. NCAA administrators do not want football season to be a two-semester sport, and a playoff system would make the tradition of annual bowl games obsolete.

He should shift his focus to other items, like the BCS contract with multiple television networks expiring in 2013. Bringing more attention to the subject, and educating fans before 2013 could be a starting point for a movement that has not yet to picked up any true momentum.

More big names and groups need to voice their displeasure with the BCS if they feel it is unfair as a unified front to protest the extension of the BCS contract.

At a minimum, Shurtleff’s activity has sparked more discussion about the BCS — he has already done a good job of making a sport in its offseason relevant. Unfortunately for him, it may be a losing battle.

It’s no secret that quarterback Terrelle Pryor has his shortcomings, but it’s also no coincidence that the recruitment of the most polarizing player in the history of OSU football coincided with the boom of a little social networking site named Facebook.

In 2007, as word spread that the Buckeyes were in the running for the successful recruitment of the top high school quarterback in the country, Facebook groups began spreading, too, like one called “Bring Terrelle Pryor, The #1 QB in the Country to The Ohio State University.”

The group contained at least 6,000 members at one point, and it wasn’t the lone page on Facebook that served as a shrine to the 18-year-old from Jeanette, Pa. Facebook pages encouraging Pryor to attend Michigan, Texas, Penn State, Pittsburgh, Oregon and Florida popped up as the schools’ recruitment of Pryor heated up.

Would you be able to keep your ego in check if 10,000-plus people asking you to come to their respective school were available with a click of the mouse?

The cyber-love for Pryor wasn’t limited to his recruitment. After Pryor’s arrival at OSU in the summer of 2008, multiple Facebook groups popped up supporting the benching of senior quarterback Todd Boeckman in favor of Pryor. Once that wish became a reality in the fourth week of the 2008 season, several “Pryor for Heisman” groups were created.

As of right now, there are eight fan pages dedicated to Pryor on Facebook, which combined have received about 6,700 “likes” from users. Two pages dedicated to Pryor’s trademark stiff-arm have received more than 200 “likes.”

And then there’s Twitter.

Putting players on a pedestal is nothing new in football-crazed Columbus, but never before have we had the access to the city’s biggest celebrities that we’ve had in the Twitter era. Every day, hundreds of fans of all ages, backgrounds and walks of life beg Pryor to retweet them. I know this because Pryor usually obliges.

In doing so, Pryor is acknowledging that he’s aware of the support that he’s receiving from his nearly 40,000 Twitter followers. Sure, there are those who follow the OSU quarterback for the unintentional comedy or to add fuel to their fire against the Buckeyes, but do a quick search of @TPeezy2 on Twitter, and you’ll see that the love far outweighs the hate for Pryor.

Twitter is a double-edged sword, however. Just as the website gives fans the opportunity to shower the quarterback with praise, it also gives Pryor the opportunity to speak his mind. And that’s not always a good thing.

Pryor has used his favorite social networking tool to speak out against abortion, to call former OSU quarterback and ESPN analyst Kirk Herbstreit a “fake Buckeye,” to contemplate retiring from football after not being named to an All-Big Ten postseason team and to assure the world that he paid for his tattoos, a day before being suspended for the first five games of 2011 for other NCAA violations.

Pryor’s tweets have been the basis of the criticism that he’s received from the media and fans alike, who refer to Pryor’s 140-character-or-fewer thoughts as an “embarrassment” to the university.

But do you really think that Pryor’s the first (or only) Buckeye to have a pro-choice or pro-life opinion? Do you think that Herbstreit’s comments that he wouldn’t let his college-aged son play for Jim Tressel went unnoticed by the 2004 Buckeyes? Do you think that former Buckeye receiver Santonio Holmes, who, at 26, told a fan to “kill himself” before proclaiming that it was time to “wake and bake,” would have been any more responsible with a Twitter account as an 18-year-old at OSU?

Pryor’s sentiments and views on life aren’t anything new, but their availability is. And they’re a product of a monster that we helped create.

Tom Osborne hears you Husker fans, and he’s not loving what you have to say.

It’s not that Nebraska’s athletic director has anything against rivalries. He just isn’t too interested in them.

“I get all these suggestions for what we should name the rivalry with Iowa, what kind of trophy we should have,” Osborne said. “It usually revolves around corn stalks or cornfields, stuff like that.”

He’s never been all that into hyping up rivalries or defining them with historic relics, especially not back when he was coaching.

“I was always interested in how good the opponent was, how you block and tackle them,” Osborne said. “Some of the pageantry around the game was never really a part of my experience for all those years. I was always in the locker room.”

So forgive him if he isn’t in a hurry to figure out who Nebraska’s future rivals and enemies will be. He’ll leave that up to NU’s marketing department.

The topic of rivalries does matter a great deal, though, to the rest of the conference. The Big Ten’s reputation as a prestigious conference is rooted in large part to its long history of and passion for trophy games.

The conference has the nation’s oldest rivalry trophy in the Little Brown Jug, a tradition between Michigan and Minnesota that began back in 1903.

The Big Ten also has its fair share of strange relics. The Paul Bunyan’s Axe is more than 6 feet long and goes to the winner of the annual Minnesota-Wisconsin game, and Purdue and Indiana have been battling for the Old Oaken Bucket since 1925.

There are 12 traveling trophies in all, and every Big Ten school has at least one to compete for. Minnesota even has four different trophies on the line every season.

But these relationships have developed over many decades. How will Nebraska fit in to this culture?

To Osborne, it’s a unique new experience. Though Nebraska did have the Nebraska-Missouri Victory Bell rivalry with a tradition that dated back to 1892, he never felt the Big Eight or Big 12 placed a big emphasis on rivalries or trophy games.

The logical first rival will be Iowa, especially since the Hawkeyes will replace Colorado as the Huskers’ Black Friday opponent in 2011 and 2012.

“From time to time, there’s always been that question: ‘Why doesn’t Nebraska play Iowa on a regular basis?’ Huskers Illustrated contributing editor Mike Babcock said. “I think the Iowa game will be a very good rivalry right away. You don’t even have to ease into that one.”

Babcock has been covering Nebraska football for more than 30 years, and he’s skeptical of the idea that Penn State will become another natural rival. Osborne is too, simply because “they’re so far away.”

PSU leads the all-time series 7-6 and is locked in to face Nebraska as its annual cross-division opponent.

“I just don’t know,” Babcock said. “I look at that and say, ‘Can you just designate somebody a rival and then make it be that way?’ I don’t think it’s quite that easy.”

But then again, that’s how the Nebraska-Colorado rivalry began in 1982. When Bill McCartney took over, he proudly declared he was making Nebraska his No. 1 enemy.

“Nebraska people didn’t really buy into that, but Colorado did,” Babcock said. “That was one of the motivating factors as McCartney built that program.”

But Nebraska’s best rival was always Oklahoma, and that relationship forged on the football field and never required a trophy prize.

“That was based on excellence,” Osborne said. “They were always good and we were good.”

That’s why Osborne sees a potential rivalry with Legends Division foe Michigan, and Babcock expects to see one develop with a Leaders powerhouse like Ohio State or Wisconsin.

“If Nebraska is consistently in the running for the Big Ten Championship, whatever team in the other division that’s consistently in the running for it is probably where the rivalry is going to evolve,” Babcock said.

And as for traveling rivalry trophies? Osborne’s heard lots of ideas. He hasn’t exactly fallen in love with any of them.

“Some of them are bizarre, some of them are…interesting,” he said. “We’ll work it out when the time comes.”