Two weekends ago I was part of the biggest football game in college football this year. University of Southern California vs Ohio State. I wasn’t suppose to shoot this game but some things changed in my schedule and Saturday September 12, 2009 was wide open. After OSU flew to USC to get their ass beat OSU wanted redemption at home in front of 105,000 screaming fans.
This being the prime time game on ESPN at 8pm I had to get to Columbus super early. I headed down to the game with a couple of my friends, WTOL videographer Matt Pawuk and BSCN report Ken Watlington. We left for the game at 9 am and the game was at 8 pm. We hung out a Buffalo Wild Wings for a while to watch some of the other college football games that were on through out the day. Around 4pm we headed over to the stadium where we would fight traffic and drunk people. We found the media parking and made the walk to the stadium and up to the media room. We saw this awesome buffet of food all lined up, so we set down our gear and grabbed a plate until this lady game from know where and was like “this is for the ESPN crew only”. We all looked at each other like… OK! So we had to settle for eating hot dogs and popcorn instead of chicken breast and pasta. After scarfing down the food we headed down to the field to get all of our gear set up and start shooting feature stuff.
Just as I was walking onto the field USC starting quarterback Matt Barkley was running back into the locker room and I fired off a few shots of him.
I walked up the tunnel and shot of of the players running into the locker room.
The both teams game back onto the field to start warming up so I got photos of both head coaches:
Jim Tressel
Pete Carolle
Then the all and mighty Terrelle Tryor was warming up.
I started walking to the other end of the field to shoot USC but I heard some one yell my name from the stands and it was my good friend Joey Ackerman who is part of the TRESSEL group.
Taylor Mayes #1 safety in the country and is expect to be a number one draft pick next year.
The game was about to start so I head to make a quick decision, do I want to shoot Ohio State coming into the field or USC. So I set my self up by the Ohio State tunnel and got head coach Jim Tressel leading his team onto the field.
I sprinted to the USC tunnel but all I was able to get was Taylor Mayes taunting the OSU fans.
Both teams were on the field getting ready to start the game. I headed to the corner of the end zone to get ready. I got goose bumps as I heard all the fans starting to scream and go crazy. It was the loudest thing I have ever heard before which made the shooting atmosphere amazing.
I am going to just post all of my favorite photos until I get to 1:05 left on the game clock.
1:05 left on the game clock and USC needs to score to take the lead. Star running back Joe McKnight lead the USC down the field for 88 yards and Pete Carrole decided to put in back up running back to give McKnight a rest.
McKnight finishes the drive.
Then Stafon Johnson lined up in the backfield took the handoff from Matt Barley and ran right towards me in the endzone. I was shooting with my 400mm at the time and I had to quickly put that down and pick up my 80-200. Johnson high stepped into the endzone right in front of me which made for an awesome photo. At the time I didn’t think it was a big deal until I kind of looked around and saw there were only a few other photographers around me. I didn’t transmit any photos the while game until I got that shot.
I downloaded the photo to my computer on the sidelines sent it off to my editor where he quickly got it posted. At first I was like this picture wont sell at all. Continue reading in a little bit.
After the game was over it was time for the made scramble of find the coaches and starting quarter back on the field to get photos of them.
Here are some clips of my on ESPN running around following Matt Barkley. Since the game was on national television all of my friends and family saw me so my phone was blowing up with text messages and missed calls.
Back to the photo of the game winning touchdown. The game had ended I packed up all of my gear waited for Matt and Ken to get down with their press conference and we headed home. We were starving so we wanted to get something to eat and headed over to Steak and Shake at 2:30 am and we sat down waited and waited and after 20 minutes we just left after not getting served. So we finally got home around 4 am I wasn’t really tired so I worked on editing some of my photos. Then Sunday at 9am my managing editor called me told me Leading Off Editor from Sports Illustrated had called and they were going to run my game winning touchdown as a double truck in Sports Illustrated. He said its about 90% but it has a good chance. The magazine came out on Wednesday and the wait from Sunday to Wednesday seems like for ever. On Wednesday I headed over to the bookstore to pick a copy, well a lot of copies. I saw the issue on the stand and was kind of scared to look at first but when I opened the issue and saw my picture I was in complete shock that my photo ran as a double truck in Sports Illustrated!
That wraps up my day shooting the biggest game in College Football this year. Be sure to check out my next blog where my double truck get some media attention.
