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Ohio State in College Football Playoff, campus reacts

Inside the Ohio Union fans nervously wait for the College Football Playoff reveal

The College Football Playoff Committee has put out their final ranking of the year, and its top four included the Ohio State University (11-1, 8-1) for the second time since they were assembled. With the Buckeyes at the third spot, the rest of the playoff will be made up of Alabama (13-0, 8-0) at No. 1, Clemson (12-1, 8-1) at No. 2 and Washington (12-1, 8-1) at No. 4.

The committee, in previous years, has been afforded the luxury of the conference champions to simultaneously be considered the best teams in the nation by the time the final rankings came out. This year, however, there were many different viable candidates to be selected to be in the playoffs.

Students, faculty, players, and coaches alike all patiently waited for the rankings to be released, and while most had a sense that OSU would be in there were no certainties given the fact that Penn State fresh off of a Big Ten Championship held the head to head victory over Ohio State.

“I knew [the committee] had to put us in,” said sophomore Tim McManus after watching the reveal at the Ohio Union. “But until you actually see Ohio State on the screen you never know what could happen.”

McManus was just one of many students anxiously watching on Sunday, but his reaction sums up the tension that had been looming in all of Columbus since halfback Curtis Samuel carried the ball into the end zone to give the Buckeyes the win over Michigan in double overtime. Until Sunday OSU could only hope that their performance in “The Game” would substitute for a conference championship.

Inside of the Ohio Union, you could feel the nervousness continue to grow as 12:30 p.m. crept closer and closer. Many people were gathered in the dining area, eyes locked on one 32-inch television hanging from the ceiling waiting, hoping, wishing for their team’s name to be called. And once it was, and excited sense of relief swept across the room.

Head coach Urban Meyer said that he was filled with a lot of hope and anxiety headed into the selection show after welcoming the birth of a grandchild earlier that morning. Meyer who was in the hospital during the show with his family, felt like they were one of the best teams in the country.

“I remember I found out with Gene Smith and my family in 2014 when America found out, when they flashed our sign on ESPN,” said Meyer. “I found out today when they flashed our sign on ESPN.”

This was not necessarily the case for junior quarterback J.T. Barrett, who will be making his first playoff appearance on the field after being sideline late in the 2014 championship season. Barrett said that he was alone eating chicken wings and watching the selection show on his tv but was nothing but grateful for the chance to play.

“It wasn’t one of those things when I saw it, you know, obviously excited,” said Barrett. “I was telling Adam, our media guy, I’m actually a healthy body. As you see, I’m not on a scooter or anything.”

The biggest snub for a playoff position came from within the same division as the Buckeyes, Penn State. It inevitably was two early losses that decimated PSU’s shot at a top four spot even after nine consecutive wins but that did not stop them from being more than happy to find themselves playing in the Rose Bowl against the University of Southern California, leaving their head coach James Franklin with one focus for the next month:

ESPN analyst Danny Kanell was quick to criticize the committee for keeping OSU in and Penn State out. Kanell felt that it was wrong of the committee to not reward Penn State for winning its conference title and he feels like an unexpected someone would agree with him:

Ohio State will go on to play Clemson in the Fiesta Bowl the night of New Year’s Eve, which could be their toughest test all year long. Clemson has arguably the best receiving corps in the nation along with two-time Heisman finalist quarterback Deshaun Watson, but they do not feel like they are going to shy away from the spotlight.

“We were clearly one of the better teams in America. We work just as hard as anyone if not harder than everyone,” said junior defensive lineman Tyquan Lewis. “We know what it’s like to overcome challenges. Now we’re just excited to get an opportunity. We’re just going to keep pushing forward.”

Clemson looked shaky at times throughout the season, narrowly pulling out a win against Troy University earlier in the year, staving off Lamar Jackson and Louisville by a matter of inches, and their loss to an average Pittsburgh team. But they were able to come out on top of the ACC, however, and they have showed that they are up for the task of playing in a playoff semifinal after beating Oklahoma 37-17 in last year’s game.

While it still remains to be seen how Ohio State will perform once the Fiesta Bowl actually arrives, their trolling level is already at 1000:

#shhhh

A photo posted by JT Barrett (@jt_theqbiv) on

Alternate Final Project

If I had to choose a different topic for my final project it would be about the College Football Playoffs, and how the projections for the outcome of the final rankings has changed in the last few weeks due to top teams losing.

I would frame the story around OSU’s team not only because it is pertinent to campus but also because it is the first time that this CFP committee is going to be faced with the task of deciding whether or not a conference championship is necessary to be in the playoffs through their eyes.

I could also get film of interviewing students on campus about how they feel it would happen. And then since the final rankings come out on Dec. 4th I would get the reaction of how people felt the committee did in selecting the best teams for the playoff.

The committee in previous years has had the luxury of the conference champions to simultaneously be considered the best teams in the nation by the time the final rankings came out. This year, however, there are many different viable candidates for making it in to the playoffs.

The University of Washington is favored to win their conference title over USC but outside of their wins over Utah and Washington St. the Huskies have not had a great out of conference schedule and the Pac-12 is a fairly weak conference throughout.

The Big-12 had Oklahoma make it to the Playoff last year and they are the favorite from the Big-12 again for a chance to get the bid from their conference. Their prospects are hurt since they have two losses on the year, there isn’t a official championship game in the conference and they have a loss to one of the other candidates, Ohio State.

I’d also embed tweets from various people and media outlets with reactions. Players from multiple schools will most likely tweet about it and it would help supplement the article.

Most students dread going to class but Matt Swann hopes to see another OSU classroom

Life has a way of kicking you while you’re down, and before you know it one slip up can lead to a chain of events that can completely change everything around you. This is something that a junior here at Ohio State had to unfortunately learn the hard way late this summer when he learned that he was suspended.

Matt Swann, was one of nearly 60,000 students here, until he wasn’t. Swann was a transfer student to OSU from Ohio University in the autumn of 2016, until he wasn’t. He was a member of the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity, until he wasn’t.

Swann would be the first to tell you that he’s messed up in his past and he’d also say that the only thing he wants from this point is to comeback to school for the spring semester. His initial suspension came after being written up on four different occasions over the course of a year including two underage consumption charges.

“I wanted to tell the university that I f— up yeah and I take responsibility for it, but here’s why you should keep me as a student. I’m here for the right reasons,” Swann said.

On Wednesday Aug. 24, the University held a hearing for Swann’s case and ruled that he be suspended from campus for the entire autumn semester the next day. At that time while things may have not looked great for him, there was nothing deterring him from coming back in the spring and Swann even broke the terms of his suspension by attending classes that he was previously enrolled in.

“I was planning to take the classes I was going to take this semester in the future,” Swann said. “So why not try to get ahead?”

He continued to do this until the professors started to question why he was showing up without being on the roster allowing him to begin to work three jobs simultaneously. During this time Swann was still a member of his fraternity even though he was suspended from going to a majority of their functions.

On one Saturday night in October Swann entered into what he claimed to be completely consensual sex with a young woman that was visiting the fraternity that night. In the days after the encounter the young woman came forward to the fraternity notifying them that she had been sexually assaulted by Swann during the time they spent together.

The chapter of Pi Kappa Alpha dismissed Swann later the same day that the allegations were brought against him. Swann was forced out of the house by midnight leaving him instantly homeless. A former roommate and fellow brother, Nick Sabatino, will be a witness for Swann’s hearing and does not feel like the events of that night transpired exactly how the young women has explained them to occur.

Living in 12 different places that you can’t call home over the span of one month would be hard for anyone at any stage of their life, but having that uncertainty in the face of fighting a suspension from your school, issues stemming from a sexual assault case at your fraternity and trying to balance three jobs can be crippling.

Initially Swann found himself moving from couch to couch of his friends, uncertain during the day where he would be sleeping at night. He was fired from all three jobs that he was working at the time due to his inability to reliably make it to work.

“The first few nights I had never been more shaken up,” Swann said. “It hadn’t really hit me yet but that first night when I was trying to go to bed I just thought, ‘How is this actually happening?'”

Since then Swann has gone back to his home state of Maryland for the duration of this semester working to save up all the money he can for a stable life if he gets the chance to come back to OSU. Currently the case for his sexual assault charge is still open and he has no idea when he will be called back to campus for his hearing.

“Support from my family, friends and getting out and enjoying what you can helps [me get though this],” Swann said.

Final Project

For my final project I wanted to go more in depth with the rise of esports on campus and around the world. For this I would contact buckeyelan for information about their next tournament and go and film b roll and the put together a package with interviews of some players on their thoughts on the recent surge of gaming.

If this doesn’t pan out I came up with 3 ideas for my feature story and whichever ones I don’t decide to do for that I could then create a multimedia package for this instead.

“A Podcast, Once a Passion Project, Is Now Fit for the Met” Structure

This article about the current resident artist at The Met more closely follows the structure of a typically feature story more than the other article we looked at. It starts by telling us who Nate DiMeo is and what he’s passionate about.

Introducing his passion for and knowledge about history and art immediately leads the audience to trust that the work that he is doing is something of a very high quality. The fact that he’s the artist in residence at The Met also goes to prove that.

But where it begins to lose me is when they start to introduce all of the different people from The Met that are praising him. The audience is most likely in no way as qualified on the subject that they are speaking on but just having them saying that it’s good isn’t quite enough.

From that point on the rest of the article focuses on what effort he puts in to creating his podcast for The Met which could be interesting for some.

Peer Review For News Story 3

Most of the issues with my article that arose through our peer editing stemmed from AP style errors or grammatical issues. To be able to correct these problems I could easily refer to my AP stylebook and correct them, and do a bit of revision to write more correctly.

Silver Bullets Leading the Nation in Red Zone Defense

Coming off of a week seven win over the No.8 Wisconsin Badgers, Ohio State is 1st in red zone defense and 38th in red zone offense.

The Buckeyes defense has been able to hold their opponents to a 62.5 percent conversion rate in the red zone. A number even better than OSU’s 2014 championship season.

In their game in Wisconsin the confidence in their defense allowed them to settle for going into overtime late instead of attempting to try and win in regulation.

“[Our success in the red zone] was part of the reasons why we did what we did,” head coach Urban Meyer said. “Defense is really good down there. That was going through my mind, and I felt like we could move the ball and get in.”

The current overtime format is conducive to the strengths of the Buckeye defense, stopping the run and blitzing with out the worry of getting beat down field, which hadn’t allowed a rushing touchdown previous to Saturday.

“We’re just aggressive, we bend but don’t break,” sophomore defensive line man Sam Hubbard said. “We’re going to make plays and once we get into the red zone we’re going to stay aggressive and we won’t give up a touchdown.”

This Buckeyes defense is fifth in interceptions and second in defensive touchdowns which has been a remedy for easing the pressure on a sometimes slow starting offense.

The offense has also played well in the red zone boasting an 88.6 percent conversion rate inside the 20-yard line. Sophomore wide out Noah Brown, who has been one of quarterback J.T. Barrett’s favorite targets and recipient of the game winning touchdown catch, attributes their success to preparation.

“All throughout the summer, me and J.T. have been working on fades, end zone passes, and just routes in general,” Brown said. “I have a great awareness of the field, so I’m pretty comfortable in that situation because I practice it a lot.”

 

 

 

 

The Secret History of Tiger Woods

The Secret History of Tiger Woods was an article written by Wright Thompson in April of this year. Thompson delved into what had up too this point been a mystery to nearly everyone, who Tiger Woods really is.

The article was heavily research based and Thompson went to great lengths to track down those who had significant encounters with Woods. He used friends of Tiger, people Tiger played with and people he worked around to create a masterful feature. He also had many photos throughout the piece adding another element to his story.

Thompson was able to put together something that even an extreme fan of Woods, would still learn many things they didn’t know which is something I appreciate. The long form of this article allowed Thompson to really include the total breadth of knowledge he gained from his research.

BuckeyeLan Hosts Campus esports Tournament

This past Saturday BuckeyeLan, an organization that seeks to provide a fun place for people to play video games, hosted esports tournaments at the Ohio Union. At the event there were tournaments in the popular games of League of Legends, Overwatch, Super Smash Brothers 4 and Hearthstone.

“The event this past Saturday had a really great turnout,” BuckeyeLan Vice President Josh Clark said, “We were really surprised by the sheer number of people showing up to our first big planned event of the year.”

Sophomore Daaryush Badii competed in the tournament for his first time and said that it was a mind opening experience. Badii said that he watches competitive esports but didn’t understand the amount of dedication participants had to have to compete at a high level. 

“I had played traditional competitive sports before,” Badii said, “but I was surprised when I felt the same type of adrenaline rush before my match started.”

At Ohio State esports has been growing in recent years. On campus there are currently five different clubs and organizations dedicated to esports and gaming.

“We’ve definitely seen a larger turnout in the number of people wanting to compete in tournaments for a variety of different games,” Clark said, “it used to be that really only the most popular games, like League of Legends, really got a decent turnout for tournament competition.

On campus Clark said that some of the larger esports companies and game developers have been beginning to invest in the sport at the collegiate level.

“We’re seeing larger collegiate tournaments,” Clark said, “and with the help from companies like Tespa, we’re able to translate that popularity into better campus events here, through event sponsorships and the like.”

Professional video gaming, commonly referred to as esports, has continued to grow in size and popularity, so much so that their teams have drawn the recent interest of major sports owners.

Most recently, Team Liquid was acquired by an ownership group which included Los Angeles Dodgers minority owner Magic Johnson, Golden State Warriors co-owner Peter Gruber and Washington Wizards and Capitals owner Ted Leonsis.

This announcement came just one day after the Philadelphia 76ers released that they were acquiring two esports teams, Dignitas and Apex, becoming the first sports franchise to invest in professional gaming.

BuckeyeLan staff member Cameron Dorsey believes that these recent purchases spell nothing but success for the growth of esports.

“I think this is where the world is headed within the next 10 years,” Dorsey said, “it’s on its way to become really big and with the support of these new owners teams will only grow.”

What many may not know is that esports is one of the fastest growing sports industries in the world. According to Newzoo, a global data analytics firm, esports is projected to grow 43 percent in 2016 after netting $325 million in revenue last year.

“While most people might be familiar with large national competitions that show up on ESPN, there’s also plenty of campus groups like ours, whose main goal is to set up a fun environment for everyone to compete.” Clark said. “Some people may think it’s all really competitive and serious, but really if you come to any of the campus esports events, it is all about having fun and meeting new people.”

First Presidential Debate

For the story on content one of the most popular issues discussed were the candidates economic plans. Also spurring from the question posed they talked about NAFTA and the ramifications of the agreeement.


 

Clinton Quotes:

Clinton: “And the kind of plan that Donald has put forth would be trickle-down economics all over again. In fact, it would be the most extreme version, the biggest tax cuts for the top percent of the people in this country than we’ve ever had.”

Clinton: “I call it trumped-up trickle-down, because that’s exactly what it would be. That is not how we grow the economy.”

Clinton: “Independent experts have looked at what I’ve proposed and looked at what Donald’s proposed, and basically they’ve said this, that if his tax plan, which would blow up the debt by over $5 trillion and would in some instances disadvantage middle-class families compared to the wealthy, were to go into effect, we would lose 3.5 million jobs and maybe have another recession.”


Trump Quotes:

Trump: “So we have to do that. We have to renegotiate our trade deals. And, Lester, they’re taking our jobs, they’re giving incentives, they’re doing things that, frankly, we don’t do.”

Trump: “And now you want to approve Trans-Pacific Partnership. You were totally in favor of it. Then you heard what I was saying, how bad it is, and you said, I can’t win that debate. But you know that if you did win, you would approve that, and that will be almost as bad as NAFTA. Nothing will ever top NAFTA.”

Trump: “You are going to approve one of the biggest tax cuts in history.You are going to approve one of the biggest tax increases in history.You are going to drive business out. Your regulations are a disaster, and you’re going to increase regulations all over the place.

And by the way, my tax cut is the biggest since Ronald Reagan. I’m very proud of it. It will create tremendous numbers of new jobs. But regulations, you are going to regulate these businesses out of existence.”


 

For the story surrounding the debate I think it was clear which candidate prepared and which candidate did not. And that is something that needs to be highlighted for the public.


Trump Quotes: 

Trump: “So we have to get very, very tough on cyber and cyber warfare. It is — it is a huge problem. I have a son. He’s 10 years old. He has computers. He is so good with these computers, it’s unbelievable. The security aspect of cyber is very, very tough. And maybe it’s hardly doable.”

Trump: “As far as the cyber, I agree to parts of what Secretary Clinton said. We should be better than anybody else, and perhaps we’re not. I don’t think anybody knows it was Russia that broke into the DNC. She’s saying Russia, Russia, Russia, but I don’t — maybe it was. I mean, it could be Russia, but it could also be China. It could also be lots of other people. It also could be somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds, OK?”

Trump: “We came in with the Internet, we came up with the Internet, and I think Secretary Clinton and myself would agree very much, when you look at what ISIS is doing with the Internet, they’re beating us at our own game. ISIS.”


Clinton quotes:

Clinton: “But the larger point — and he says this constantly — is George W. Bush made the agreement about when American troops would leave Iraq, not Barack Obama.

And the only way that American troops could have stayed in Iraq is to get an agreement from the then-Iraqi government that would have protected our troops, and the Iraqi government would not give that.”

Clinton: “And, in fact, his cavalier attitude about nuclear weapons is so deeply troubling. That is the number-one threat we face in the world. And it becomes particularly threatening if terrorists ever get their hands on any nuclear material. So a man who can be provoked by a tweet should not have his fingers anywhere near the nuclear codes, as far as I think anyone with any sense about this should be concerned.”

Clinton: “And one of the worst things he said was about a woman in a beauty contest. He loves beauty contests, supporting them and hanging around them. And he called this woman “Miss Piggy.” Then he called her “Miss Housekeeping,” because she was Latina. Donald, she has a name … Her name is Alicia Machado.”