I finally did it. I quit my job. 2 years and 5 months after taking a job i didn't really want in the first place I finally got the balls to walk out the door so I can start something new in my life.
Why did I take the job in the first place? I graduated from BYU in April of 2007. At the time I was a student employee in an on-campus job and I could no longer work there after graduating. It was a great job. I was senior designer in an on-campus creative marketing firm. I made quite a handsome wage for a student employee, but I had to find a job in the real world, so I took an offer I got with PDC.
In many ways PDC was a downgrade. The computers and software was out-of-date, the building had no windows, and I took a 9% pay decrease to work there. However, they offered a permanent full-time position and benefits. I was able to steadily earn money to pay off some of my student loans, get some dental work done and buy a car among other things.
A year after taking the job, I started to seriously search for a new job. Though several companies seriously considered me, none of those prospects panned out and I found myself another year later working in the same dead-end job with the same starting wage.
The last straw came the tuesday before halloween. I saw a posting on craig's list from my company advertising an opening for my same position. They were offering $2 an hour more for a starting wage than I was currently getting. This was kind of a kick to the balls especially since I had never had a pay raise in the 2 years I had been working there.
I then decided it was time to make an ultimatum. I told my boss I wanted a $2.50 raise or else I was leaving. They could only offer me a $1 raise so I decided it was time to go. It was time to get out of phone books.
So here I am now looking for a new job and freelance work.
I figured the only way I will be able to build my portfolio and learn new skills would be to get out of that dead end job. As soon as I decided to quit I knew it was the right decision and I've felt good about it ever since. I'll admit it's a bit scary wondering if i'll be able to replace that income on freelance work alone, but I've got good people to help me. The way I see it, it will be like being a student again. I just won't have tuition to pay for.
So if you know anyone looking for a freelancer to do some graphic design work, I would greatly appreciate the reference. Here's my online portfolio: jnlybbertdesign.blogspot.com.
So Steven and Kenny are coming back on the air and rebranding the show as World Football Daily. I was pretty happy to hear this. They won't rely on advertisers for their revenue for a while. I'll be paying about $10 a month to listen to it, but it will be well worth it.
After a long battle with angry Liverpool fans, World Soccer Daily was going off the air.
I was completely devastated. For the last two years, I listened to this 2 hour show every day. It has been the lifeblood of my football fandom.
Steven and Kenny, both passionate fans of the game, would just talk football. They would cover the latest happenings around the world. They would have knowledgeable guests call in. They would have listeners call in. They would provide insight and opinions about teams. They would give opinions about certain issues with the game. Callers would participate in many very interesting and thought-provoking discussions. It was funny a lot of the time and always very entertaining.
Almost everything I know about English football I learned from these guys. I'm a lonely American soccer fan and to me a lot of the time Steven and Kenny were the only ones talking football that I could listen to.
Two years ago I didn't follow the English Premier League. I didn't know about Tottenham Hotspur, or Jose Mourinho, or Old Firm Derbys, or Terraces, or Trebles, or the Busby Babes, or even Hillsborough. Now I could tell you about all the biggest transfers in Europe, which teams are looking the best, who's really going to struggle to stay in the top four, or which managers I think are going to get sacked by the end of January, even though I've never been to a european football match in my life. I am the educated football fan I am now because of a little radio show called World Soccer Daily.
Now that this lifeblood of football knowledge has been ripped from me. I am completely gutted…devastated…dejected—however you want to say it. I just don't know what can possibly replace this for me.
I am really disgusted at the selfish attitude of the Liverpool supporters who effectively shut this show down. Yes, the things that Steven said about the Hillsborough disaster were very offensive to many and he probably should have kept quiet about such a sensitive topic. But did such a fantastic show really deserve to be driven to the ground by an endless harassment of sponsors? Did american soccer fans deserve to lose their best source of insight and knowledge on the game? I think the real losers in this whole battle is the budding community of american soccer fans.
After his out-of-hand remarks in April, Steven Cohen issued a formal apology and vowed never to discuss the Hillsborough disaster on the show again. Though it wasn't a heartfelt apology and he insisted on standing by his opinions, which people are allowed to have in this country, he was for the most part true to his resolution not to discuss Hillsborough any more. Why couldn't Liverpool fans have just left it at that? Why couldn't they have just accepted that Steven Cohen is just as human as the rest of us and can learn from his mistakes? Why couldn't they have just stopped listening?
It seems to me that these Liverpool supporters are out for blood in any chance they can get. They want revenge. They want to see their enemies suffer. That's why they felt they had to go after his sponsors. And when this wasn't working well enough many of them felt they needed to send hateful remarks bearing anti-semitic slurs. They went so far as to issue death threats to Steven and anyone else associated with him or the show, including his two step-daughters. It was when it came this far that Steven finally decided to pull the plug. He quit the show when he seriously felt the safety of himself and his family was in danger.
What baffles me is to see how many Liverpool fans see this as their victory even though it was achieved on such a disgraceful level. How can they feel vindicated for their efforts when their goal was achieved by threats to children? How can anyone say Steven Cohen got what he deserved when his children were threatened? No one deserves that.
The real losers in this whole debacle, however, are the American soccer fans. It is in my opinion that World Soccer Daily has been one of the biggest contributors to the increasing popularity of the game in this country over the last few years. Americans have had a way to become educated about a game that has previously been so foreign to us. Let's face it—we didn't know about Hillsborough in 1989 and we don't care about who was at fault for the tragedy. It is the game of football that we love. That's it. I didn't share Steven's hatred for Liverpool fans just because of things he said. I just love listening to passionate life-long fans talk about the beautiful game.
Things are a bit different now. I have a bad taste in my mouth about Liverpool Football Club because of a few of the people who associate themselves with them. They shut my show down. They took something from me. It has become personal. Liverpool and everything about it disgusts me. I hate the red jerseys. I hate Carlsberg—whatever that is. I hate Torres and Kuyt and Gerrard. And the sad thing is it has nothing to do with football. My impression of Liverpool supporters has become tarnished with a reputation of hatred, hypocrisy, racism and terrorism. I can no longer view anything remotely associated with these vile people with any amount of respect.
It was extremely selfish for Liverpool supporters to want Steven Cohen off the air. They don't care about the growth of the game in America. They don't care about the American sports fan. They don't care to share their game.
They say someone else will just come in and take his place. But who? and how long will it take? It took Cohen 7 years to build that show up to what it was. Now after 5 months of tearing it to the ground, who is just going to step in and out of thin air create a two hour daily football show with all the interviews, insight, entertainment and humor WSD had? I just don't see it happening.
In my mind World Soccer Daily is irreplaceable. Yes, the format of the show was bound to be offensive at times, but that's the thing that made it so great. I tried listening to 606, the 5 Live daily, and the Gaurdian, but those shows are boring. They are informative, but they lack personality. They lack people that talk from their own passion. That's why people like Glen Beck, Oprah, Colin Cowherd, and Jim Rome are so popular. Yeah, people hate them, but the things they say come from their own love of whatever they talk about and that's what makes it interesting. It's thought provoking. Yeah, I hate Jim Rome because he hates soccer and will take whatever chance he gets to bash it. But do I try to shut him down? No, because other people like him and he can say what he wants. Besides, I have what one calls a job and other more important things to worry about—such as helping other people. I know—it's a concept not many Liverpool fans are quite able to grasp.
Steven Cohen's remarks about the Hillsborough disaster may have been offensive, but they were thought provoking. How is that such an evil thing? You may call them lies or what you will, but they got us thinking about the topic. American soccer fans aren't idiots. We are sophisticated intellectuals capable of thinking things through and forming our own opinions about them. What used to be an event we were completely ignorant about became a topic of great importance to us because of Steven Cohen. Wouldn't the 96 want us to talk about this topic and address solutions to how we can continue to prevent such a tragedy from ever happening again?
The loss of World Soccer Daily is a huge setback to the growth of the game in this country. I hope everyone who contributed to its demise realizes this. I really hope we can get it back in some form or another. I give my respect to the memory of the 96. I also have a deep love for the game of football and want it to flourish in this country. I want people to be able to speak their mind without having to worry about their family members paying the consequences. Steven Cohen and Kenny Hassan deserve to be on the air. They are the best we've got. I wish everyone else could see that.
You can express your support for World Soccer Daily by signing this petition.
So the LA Lakers have successfully pulled off another world championship. This is what cracks me up about American sports. The title champions just isn't enough for the winners of our professional sports leagues. Somehow they are also qualified to be dubbed world champions. The Pittsburgh Steelers became world champions in January with the Super Bowl and the Philadelphia Phillies did it when they won the baseball World Series last October. It may just be me, but this seems a bit arrogant.
Granted, the NBA, NFL, and MLB are the biggest competitions in the world for their respective sports, but here's my suggestion: If you really want to be world champions, do it in a sport that the world gives a crap about.
When I was a kid I invented the sport played in my grandma's backyard known as Hill Soccer. It was a game where you had to kick a ball up a hill and make it stick in some bushes. I was dang good at this game. No one ever beat me, including my little brother. Since I highly doubt anyone else in the world even knows what hill soccer is, I guess technically you could call me the World Champion of Hill Soccer.
Yeah, you don't give a crap and neither does the majority of the world about Kobe Bryant.
So if you're really interested in knowing what sports really matter on the world stage take a gander here. Yes, cricket, field hockey, tennis, and even volleyball are much more widely played and watched around the world than basketball, baseball or American football.
Isn't this kind of an eye opener to how arrogant and apathetic Americans are in relation to the rest of the world?
All I'm saying is we shouldn't make too big of a deal out of what goes on in our own back yard. You should just take things for what they really are. LA Lakers—world champions? Probably not. National Basketball Champions?—That's a bit more like it.
So yesterday I saw this show on HGTV called "Man Land" where they show different manly things people do with their homes. Well last night, i hung out in quite a man land with my friend Mike. He works for a design firm in Salt Lake City and in their studio they have a room with two x boxes and two full sized HD televisions side by side. We both played call of duty together online side by side with separate televisions. It was fantastic. We didn't even need to use our headphones.
You know how I said I was going to take a break from coaching for awhile? Well I'm not. At least not now. We had tryouts this weekend for Utah FC. I got so excited with the great turnout, I decided I love coaching too much to quit. I love being a part of the player's development. To see so many of my players returning and playing so well made me not want to miss the opportunity to grow with them.
However, coaching is not all roses and sugar pops. It is a learning experience. And the biggest thing I keep learning again and again about running any kind of organization is you can't please everyone all the time.
I had to cut a player today and it was not fun. I felt it was for the good of both the team and the player, but that didn't change the fact that I had to tell it to his mother.
I also had an incident today where a high school player called me out on the phone for an email I wrote. I had sent an email to some of my former players, which was intended to encourage them to come try out for the club. In it I made some negative comments that I probably shouldn't have. And though I sent out an apology I can't get over the fact that people who respected me so much saw such an immature and proud side of me.
These experiences remind me of yet another experience I had a couple years ago when I benched a couple players an entire game because it was against a tough team I thought we had a slight chance of beating. I'll never forget the look of those players at the end of the game and the reprimand I got from the father of one of them who was also a coach. That is one thing I will never do again.
Well these experiences go along with many other experiences that help us become wiser and better people.
I talked with another coach the other day who said that in coaching winning is not his number one priority. He said it's the development of the players. Coming from a coach who's team is the best in the state, that says a lot to me.
This has become my philosophy as well. I try to make it so that every decision I make, whether people like it or not, is intended to improve the development of the players.
I love coaching. Days like today are tough, but there is so much reward that comes out of it in the end. It would take a lot to get me to stop.
