Rock, Paper, Scissors is SO amateur hour by Alaskan standards.

A college education decision is riding on you, buddy...

Sometimes you go the rock, paper, scissors route when deciding things. Sometimes you gun down a bear. But this is Alaska we're talking about, so you get one guess where this is going.

High school senior Chase Ferris of Palmer, AK, had the choice of playing football at the University of Mary or attending the University of Wyoming to hit the books. Sports versus academics. Both had advantages for our young charge here, but both left Ferris confused what to do. So Ferris took the logical step, as the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman reports:


(Ferris) picked a spring bear hunt earlier this year to help him make the final decision. If he got the elusive bear he’d tracked before, Ferris would follow the call to play football at the University of Mary. If not, Ferris would turn his focus to academics at the University of Wyoming.

[...]

"I let it all come down to fate, and fate chose University of Mary," Ferris said Monday after he signed his National Letter of Intent to attend the Bismarck, North Dakota, school and play for the Division II Marauders. "We'd gone up for (the bear) once. We hadn't seen it in two days. I said, we kill it, I'll go play football."


Sure, why not? I'm not sure what the correlation is between bear killing and football, unless you're talking about the anemic Chicago Bear variety. But it's Alaska. This sort of rationale is Ph.D. type material.

No word on how Ferris plans to decide upon future life issues, like marriage, kids, or sensible midsized sedans. Animals have been warned to keep their heads on a swivel though.




The University of Mary football team went 1-10 last year. So a lot more bears need to die for that record to change.