Football coach Gary Patterson held his first media luncheon of the year Tuesday afternoon and discussed Saturday's game at Virginia with reporters from several media outlets.Patterson said he is ready for the season opener.

"For me, because of watching everyone else play (last weekend), it raised my intensity for this ballgame because I got to watch everyone else play plus had a little bit more time (to prepare,)" Patterson said.

The women's soccer team will face a stiff test against the Texas Tech Red Raiders on Friday night in Fort Worth.

"We're going to have to be very composed and organized defensively," said TCU head coach Dan Abdalla. "Competing for every ball will be the key for us."

Texas Tech has demonstrated an explosive offensive attack in its last couple of matches. Redshirt freshman midfielder Dawn Ward leads the Red Raiders with four goals, and sophomore midfielder Taylor Lytle is tied second on the team with senior forward Brittney Harrison with two goals.

Student Publications is coming together this season to compete in the Skiff College Football Pick'em contest. Each week, six members of student publications staff will make their picks on who will win key college match-ups and also pick one upset. Also, a different member of the TCU staff will make their picks and take on the student pickers. The pickers from the Skiff are sports editor Travis L. Brown, news editor and former sports editor Michael Carroll, editor-in-chief David Hall and reporter Mary Sue Greenleaf.

The recent displeasure expressed by the university's administration over Anheuser-Busch's marketing of purple and white Bud Light beer cans to students is warranted, but the fact remains that college-age people are going to drink it regardless of color or team affiliation.

The university makes a valid argument that it doesn't want the visual connection between its team colors and alcohol, considering all of its connotations to binge drinking and alcoholism. After all, the university is supposed to be an institution based on education.

Chancellor Victor Boschini said Thursday the university has hired an executive search firm to find a replacement for outgoing athletics director Danny Morrison, who announced his resignation Wednesday to work as team president for the Carolina Panthers of the National Football League.

Boschini said he is not putting any time constraints on finding the new director.

"I'm just trying to get the best person I can," Boschini said.

After changes were made to state regulations for early childhood education certification programs, the university implemented new courses for its students this fall to comply with the new standard, an associate professor of education said.

Cecilia Silva, an associate professor in the College of Education, said this change to state standards restored the EC-6 program, which certifies students to teach grade levels from early childhood to sixth grade. The earlier EC-6 program had been replaced by the EC-4 program, which qualifies students to teach through the fourth grade.

Alumni of the sociology, criminal justice and anthropology, Spanish and radio-TV-film departments may be confused if they search for those department names any time soon, as each underwent a name change during the summer.

Faculty in these departments, however, said they find the changes necessary to better reflect what they teach.

Nowell Donovan, provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs, said the name change to department of Spanish and Hispanic studies helps people get away from the idea that the department just teaches the language.

Wyatt Kanyer's "Christians unfit to judge" was difficult to understand because he never defined terms, and it was splattered with his own judgments. In any opinion article or argument, one must always define the terms he or she is arguing.

Nowhere in the article was Kanyer's definition of "judgment" clearly identified. Another term that was not clearly defined was "homosexual lifestyle." This may have been because there is no single definition of a homosexual lifestyle. Just as there are uncountable heterosexual lifestyles, there are innumerable homosexual lifestyles.

Apparently, the "small government" conservative state of Texas feels as if driving isn't hard enough without a lot of laws to worry about. In case you haven't heard, Texas just passed some new traffic laws that went into effect Tuesday. Two that caught my attention include banning drivers from using handheld wireless devices in a school zone and that everyone in a car, regardless of age, must now wear a seat belt.