Thursday, January 16, 2020

DC ExtraTime: Team MTV and Tigers at the College Football Playoff

BY DC CUEVA                        
■ @DC408DXTR  @ IG/YT/SC/TB

For as long as we can remember, there is something about turning the page to the new year and a sport that has been ingrained in Saturday Americana for what is now a century & a half. Sure, the sport of college football has changed quite considerably in the course of the past several decades: conference alignment pushing traditions aside for more money, universities taking advantage of that financial reward in a landscape where the highest hierarchy of the NCAA has often frowned upon student athletes being paid, and many other intricacies that put college athletics in the front page for things that happen outside the courts and fields.
   But when you get to the heart of it, it's on the field where it all counts. And once the calendar turned to December, so began the assortment of the many bowl games which punctuate a college football season that began in the heat of summer. They are, in essence, exhibition games that give teams with a decent record a reward at season's end to relax in its host city, and play in front of a national TV audience with NFL draft prospects as well. But once the last weekend of 2019 came, so began the juicy stuff: the College Football Playoff and the New Year's Six -- the Cotton, Orange, Rose, Sugar, Fiesta and Peach -- which, on an annual rotating basis, serve as semifinals to determine who plays for the National Championship, and the fourth iteration of college football holding a true championship game in the only sport in the entire NCAA system not governed by the collegiate bureaucracy, and thus not have the same kind of sanctioned national championship as their basketball counterparts.

The 2019 college football season marked the 150th anniversary of the first college football game between Princeton and Rutgers that took place in 1869, and this season began back in August with Florida beating Miami and Auburn beating Oregon in a split week of opening games before Labor Day. Off the field, laws were altered in college athletes' battle for compensation and for fair pay for play, while Missouri and Ole Miss paid the price with probation being handed down for off-field violations, and UConn flee to the Big East. But as always, the attention was on the field where Clemson, Ohio State, Oklahoma, Louisiana State and Oregon won the conference titles of the Power Five conferences (SEC, Big Ten, Big 12, ACC, PAC-12), while Georgia and Wisconsin were the victims of major upsets as were Central Florida when their nation-leading 25-game winning streak was snapped, and Nick Saban's Alabama faltered in the annual Iron Bowl against Auburn.
   For this season's College Football Playoff postseason, top-ranked LSU was matched with Oklahoma in the Peach Bowl and the first semifinal in Atlanta, while Ohio State and defending national champion Clemson faced off in Phoenix in the other semi of the Fiesta Bowl. In both games, the two teams whose nickname of Tigers would win those battles - the ladder in a thriller, to then go up against one another in the CFP National Championship Game in New Orleans at the Superdome, the home of the Sugar Bowl. On Monday, LSU and Clemson faced off in that national championship, and on the back of an impressive performance by Heisman Trophy winner Joe Burrow, his Tigers bested the defending champions 42-25 for its fourth consensus national championship and first since 2007, all the while completing an undefeated perfect season along the way.
   Louisiana State University is located in the state capital of Baton Rouge, a 75-minute drive north along I-10 from New Orleans, and as it was when the Tigers won their last two national crowns in '07 and '04 (a disputed split national title with USC during the maligned era of the Bowl Championship Series) this year's National Championship amounted to a mere home game for those by the Bayou. The state capital is also home to two of those who've made their marks on The Challenge in recent years as both a regular and a special guest athlete, and a third member of the MTV family also has experience covering the Tigers along the sidelines at Tiger Stadium during the football season.

With the recent remerger of MTV's parent Viacom and CBS, the Eye network brings to the company a sports portfolio that includes its decades-long heritage of covering the NFL and golf, as well as the NCAA basketball tournament, the Bellator MMA promotion, Ice Cube's BIG 3 league and other, smaller properties. And recently, one of ViacomCBS' first deals was the company scoring rights to UEFA Champions League soccer for its next broadcast cycle, where matches will air on the broadcast network, its cable channels and the CBS All Access streaming service following next season.
   CBS's stable also includes football games of the Southeastern Conference, which has not only LSU, Alabama, Auburn and Georgia under its wing, but also Florida, Arkansas, Kentucky, Tennessee, Ole Miss, South Carolina, Mississippi State, Vanderbilt and, thanks to conference realignment, Texas A&M and Missouri. And SEC schools have won 11 of college football's 20 national titles in the 21st century... and CBS has aired its games during this era with the great Verne Lundquist, successor Brad Nessler, color man Gary Danielson and its theme offering the soundtrack.
   As we told you here last year, there is a link of sorts among CBS, LSU and MTV: before she went onto last year's revival of The Real World which MTV Studios produced for Facebook Watch, Meghan Melancon worked as a sports reporter for WAFB, Baton Rouge's CBS affiliate (and thus, the station in town that airs the Tigers football games whenever CBS slots them in its late Saturday afternoon TV window or in prime time on occasion). As such, Meghan covered many games on fall Saturdays at Tiger Stadium, basketball nights at the Maravich Assembly Center and other sports happenings for the station that leads the news ratings in the 97th largest ranked TV market.
   This time though, Meghan got to follow the Tigers as just a fan as they made their way on the road to the Playoff Championship. But before she made it onto the Real World, here she is doing what is called in the TV news jargon the "Lead" - an introduction to a brief preview of the 2018 rivalry game between LSU & Alabama, much ballyhooed in the past decade for that the Crimson Tide is coached by Nick Saban, who coached LSU to their 2003 national championship and, after a brief NFL stint with the Dolphins, was lured to its rival up in Tuscaloosa and has won five national titles there.




As for what happened at the Superdome on Monday night, the capacity crowd of almost 77,000 saw Joe Burrow pass for six touchdowns and 463 yards that night. Along with 493 passing yards and 7 TD's in the Peach Bowl semifinal, Burrow ended his senior year with an even 60 TD tosses, 5,671 passing yards, a passer rating of 202.0 and a record voting margin in winning college athletics' most prestigious individual award to make him the likely #1 pick in the NFL Draft... and of course, there was that cigar moment, too... all seen by a crowd that included Drew Brees, Vince Vaughn, Randy Moss, the President, and those two aforementioned Challengers.
Instagram @T_Raines
   It was five years ago at this time that we were watching Tony Raines in the season 30 Real World house, where he moved up to Chicago to be on the cast of the second of the twist seasons called Skeletons. He definitely wasn't prepared for what would come his way in the Second City: him having a year-long relationship with roommate Madison Channing-Walls which led to his first baby Harper, two of his exes coming as Skeleton visitors to the house including one who would eventually become his fiance Alyssa & the mom to his second kid Isla, and what would come afterwards. There, a Challenge career that began shaky with him getting sent home for injuries and bad behavior in his first two starts, but once he flipped the switch to #TonyTime, it ended with him making two finals, joining CT to win Champs vs. Stars II, and proposed to Alyssa on the Final Reckoning reunion.
   As Tony now embarks on that wonderful challenge of being a daddy to two kids, he was lucky enough to make that trip down to the Crescent City to watch the coronation of his Tigers winning the National Championship, and he posted on Instagram a video of the Tigers' entrance to the field of the Mercedes-Benz Superdome, and him wearing that purple & gold too.



And finally, there's the athlete. Running concurrent with the Dirty 30/Vendettas/Final Reckoning trilogy was that Champs vs. Pros/Stars special exhibition series that Tony was a part of, where Challenge champions and finalists faced off against, and later competed alongside, athletes and celebrities from the TV, movie and music industries for charity. Olympic athletes were a prominent part of the lighter trilogy of The Challenge of a couple years ago, where we saw Gus Kenworthy, Lindsay Jacobellis, Shawn Johnson and the most successful of those, British Olympic heptathlete Louise Hazel.
   But perhaps, the one who had the biggest competitive impact during the Champs/Stars trilogy, as far as Team USA was concerned, was Lolo Jones, who grew up in Johnson's hometown of Des Moines, Iowa but decided to enroll down at LSU in following the lead of role model and top hurdler Kim Carson in competing on the Tigers' track team. There, she won three NCAA national titles, six SEC conference golds and 11 All-American honors in both outdoor and indoor meets in both the sprint hurdles and 4x100m relay. But when she did not qualify for the 2004 Athens Olympics, she worked at the local Home Depot and a restaurant among many part-time jobs to earn much needed money during a dire financial situation.
   In not retiring after her Athens failure and after some indoor success, Lolo would get another shot at Olympic glory four years later and this time was the favorite for gold in the women's 100-meter hurdles. But in the final and seemingly en route to a certain gold - and in an encore of what happened to the great Gail Devers nearly two decades earlier, she clipped the penultimate hurdle and stumbled to finish next to last while American Dawn Harper passed her to win gold. Jones was in tears afterwards in saying, "You hit a hurdle about twice a year where it affects your race. It's just a shame that it happened on the biggest race of my life," and asked "why?" many times.
   It's been the closest Lolo has ever been to tasting that holy grail of Olympic gold: after an indoor world title in 2010, she got another shot in the 2012 London 100m hurdles final but finished in the always dreaded spot of 4th and off the podium... and didn't make Team USA for Rio 2016 at the trials. But between that, Lolo got another chance for Olympic glory, this time in the Winter Games: in being introduced to the sport by Olympian Elana Meyers, she became a brakewoman in bobsledding and was chosen for Team USA's 3rd sled for the Sochi 2014 Games, finishing just outside the Top 10.
Instagram @LoloJones
   Lolo competed on Champs vs. Pros in 2017 with Gus, Lindsay, CM Punk and other athletes facing off against Bananas, Cara Maria, CT and their fellow champions. From the start, Lolo saw herself as the outcast when the Brit picked a lime with the American's name on it and went into elimination several times during that season. But in every instance, Lolo had an answer and won those battles, including an endurance test against Ashley M., but fell short of going to the final. That's only part of a reality resume Lolo has chalked up that has seen her go onto Dancing with the Stars and last year's Celebrity Big Brother where she finished 3rd behind Ricky Williams and Tamar Braxton.
   As a proud alum of LSU, Lolo was in New Orleans to cheer on her alma mater Monday night and was in both points of view inside the Superdome. She was in the stands watching the Heisman winner's incredible night and got to turn five of the Texas A&M Aggies' biggest fans -- the lovable quartet of best friends who do incredible trick shots in Dude Perfect -- into one-night-only fans of an SEC rival of theirs when they hung out in Twitter Sports' suite overlooking the field. And when the clock struck double zeros, she went down onto the field to celebrate with the national champions... part of a memorable night for #GeauxTigers.













- I AM DC
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