Greetings Readers, sports fans or otherwise.

Every week for at least this semester, I will be penning my thoughts, observations and yes, occasionally my opinions about sports for Washburn Student Media. For the 21 years of my life, I have lived and breathed the world of sports.

From the time I was in Kindergarten, I played organized sports. Now that my playing days are over, I need to keep myself in the sporting arena, so to speak, and I thought, “What better way to do it than write about my sporting observations?” My goal with this column is to talk about issues and topics around the world of sports and give each and every one of you something to think about.

Some of you may agree with some of the things that I say, and some may disagree. Either way, I don’t want you to read this column because you agree, or skip past it because you disagree. I want you to read it and take a second out of your daily hustle and bustle and have a little sports time.

Some time to reflect on what’s happening in sports and how it affects your favorite sports, teams or players. Now that we have introductions out of the way, let’s open up this bad boy and start the semester right.

As I drive home from a basketball tournament I turn on my radio to find someone to take along for the ride. I flip through and decide to listen to President Obama address Congress and the nation in the annual State of the Union Address. Listening to the President address topics such as the economy, Community College, Mars and well, the economy again, I begin to think of what the fictional President of the United States of Sports would say if he or she had to address the nation regarding the State of the Sports Union. I would imagine that it would go something like this:

“To the people of the United States of Sports,

What a long, strange trip it’s been. We have had our ups and downs, our ins and outs, and all that is just in College Football. We have come a long way in the last couple years in representing ourselves to the world, no thanks to running backs and lying homerun hitters.

Nonetheless, people outside of the sports realm are taking notice of how we in the realm have handled these negative situations and they see that we are not all criminals and cheaters; instead we are hardworking and dedicated to providing the highest level of completion for the entertainment of all who watch.

We are doing well to make money whenever we need it. I’m looking at you, college athletes that work seven days a week to bring in money for your schools and not seeing any of that. You the real MVP.

In closing, I would like to remind everyone that with all of the hate and the strife that goes on in the world, sports provide a place for the rich and the poor, black and white, big city dweller or small town farmer to come together, forget about their problems and just enjoy the spirit of competition. It’s a place where two people, even rivals, can just enjoy a few moments of peace in their lives. So remember to enjoy yourself during competition and knock ‘em dead in 2015. But please NFL, not literally.

To end the column, I’ll leave you, the reader, with possibly a bit of wisdom that I heard during the week or a question to think about until the next week or it could be a mixture of the two.

So for the first column, I want to challenge you to think a time when sports made you feel on top of the world or a time when sports gave you a refuge from what was going on in your life.

After you soak in that moment, think about who made that moment possible. It could have been a teammate, a coach or as it was in my case, my parents who made all of my sports memories possible.

Give that person a call, go visit them, just let them know what that moment meant to you. Thanks for reading and I can’t wait to go on this sports journey with you.