Category: Sports

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Dynamic running back Clyde Edwards-Helaire, receiver Justin Jefferson and safety Grant Delpit are among seven players from LSU’s national championship team who’ve stated their intention to enter the NFL draft.

Offensive linemen Saahdiq Charles and Lloyd Cushnberry, and linebackers Patrick Queen and Jacob Phillips also announced their intention to turn pro Wednesday.

Edwards-Helaire rushed for 1,414 yards and 16 touchdowns this season to go with 453 yards and one TD receiving. The Baton Rouge native concluded his career with 110 yards rushing and 54 yards receiving in No. 1 LSU’s 42-25 triumph over Clemson in Monday night’s national title game in New Orleans.

Jefferson led LSU in catches with 111 and ranked second on the team with 1,540 yards receiving, finishing with nine catches for 106 yards against Clemson.

Delpit was a first-team All-American in 2018 whose production also picked up in the closing weeks of the season. He had five solo tackles, a sack and forced fumble in the national title game. He also intercepted two passes this season.

Cushenberry and Charles started up front for the most prolific offense in the 126-year history of LSU’s football program, helping the Tigers total 6,024 yards through the air and 3,806 on the ground.

Phillips was LSU’s leader in total tackles with 113. He had 7 1/2 tackles for loss including one sack and a forced fumble.

Queen was LSU’s third-leading tackler. His 85 total tackles included 12 for losses and three sacks. He also had an interception and fumble recovery this season. He made six tackles in the national title game, including 2 1/2 tackles for loss and a half-sack.

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BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Louisiana State University fans reveling over the Tigers’ College Football Playoff National Championship win can continue the party by snapping a photo with the championship trophy.

The trophy will be displayed for fans in two Baton Rouge locations this week, news outlets reported.

Fans can head to Rouse’s located at 600 Arlington Creek on Wednesday between 4 to 7 p.m. or the Walmart on College Drive on Thursday also from 4 to 7 p.m.

Spectators will be able to view the trophy and have their photo taken with it. The trophy is 26.5 inches (67 centimeter) tall and weighs 50 pounds (23 kilograms). It’s made from 24-karat gold, bronze and stainless steel.

National Championship Trophy Manager Ryan Kasmiersky says the trophy is concluding its season long tour visiting games and public events nationwide. He says the trophy will later go on permanent display at LSU.

LSU defeated South Carolina’s Clemson University, 42-25, on Monday.

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A locker room dance party that included some Louisiana State University football players puffing on cigars was just the start of the celebration for the team that capped off a perfect season with a win against Clemson University in the College Football Playoff national championship game.

Nothing could put a damper on LSU’s excitement after winning 42-25 Monday night in New Orleans, news outlets reported. Not even a police officer who told players they would be subject to arrest for smoking inside the Mercedes-Benz Superdome, AL.com reported. Players laughed off the warning and no one was arrested, according to the report.

Fans celebrated from Bourbon Street in the French Quarter to the Varsity Theatre in Baton Rouge after the game.

New York City honored LSU by lighting up the Empire State Building in LSU’s colors after its victory.

And the celebration isn’t over. LSU football announced that its championship parade will start on campus Saturday at 11 a.m. before a celebration at noon at Tiger Stadium’s championship plaza.

While the LSU Tigers were basking in the glow of being the top team in the country, pity was growing for the Clemson Tigers’ mascot. An LSU fan started a GoFundMe page to buy the tiger a new costume as jokes about its appearance spread online.

“It seems that the University purchased their mascot costume from the clearance rack from TG&Y in 1981,” the page says.

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The Superdome in New Orleans honored two sports journalists who recently died with a tribute Monday night in the press box during the College Football Playoff national championship game between Louisiana State and Clemson universities.

Seats were reserved for Carley McCord and Edward Aschoff, the Lafayette Daily Advertiser reported. LSU won the title game over Clemson 42-25.

McCord, 30, died in a plane crash in Louisiana last month while headed to the Peach Bowl to see LSU play Oklahoma in Atlanta. She was a sports reporter for WDSU-TV in New Orleans and appeared as a sideline reporter for ESPN.

She was also the daughter-in-law of LSU offensive coordinator Steve Ensminger.

McCord had also been honored with a reserved seat in the press box at the Superdome when the New Orleans Saints played the Minnesota Vikings in the first round of the NFL playoffs on Jan. 5, according to the Advertiser.

Aschoff died Dec. 24, on his 34th birthday, after battling pneumonia. He was a college football reporter for ESPN.

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This story’s summary has been edited to delete an incorrect reference to McCord’s age.

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — From small-town Ohio kid to Louisiana legend, Joe Burrow capped his record-breaking, Heisman-winning season by bringing a national championship to LSU.

Burrow threw five touchdown passes, ran for another score and finished off one of the most accomplished seasons in college football history by leading the top-ranked Tigers to a 42-25 victory against No. 3 Clemson on Monday night in the playoff final.

“He’s one of the greatest players in LSU history,” Tigers coach Ed Orgeron said. “He’s done so much for the state of Louisiana and LSU. We are so grateful to Joe Burrow.”

The senior quarterback from The Plains, Ohio, delivered the Tigers (15-0) their first national title since 2007 and fourth overall, breaking a few more records along the way in what was already an historic season. His five TD passes and 463 yards passing are the most for a BCS or College Football Playoff title game. So were his six total touchdowns.

“This is what I wanted to do from the time I was 5 years old, was hoist this trophy. And bringing it back to Louisiana,” Burrow said, then caught himself. “I guess we’re in Louisiana, but staying in Louisiana, we weren’t going to let someone come in here and steal this from us in our home state.

“We have a great fan base that came out and supported us. We were going to keep this thing right here.”

Under a shower of sparkling white, gold and purple confetti, Burrow raised the CFP championship trophy toward the Superdome roof. The party was on — no doubt already raging on nearby Bourbon Street.

Burrow became the first major college quarterback to throw 60 touchdown passes in a season and LSU snapped defending national champion Clemson’s 29-game winning streak. For the first time in his college career, Clemson star quarterback Trevor Lawrence was on the losing team.

“I hate how it finished,” the sophomore said. “But man, we did some really amazing things.”

The Tigers (14-1) had won Lawrence’s first 25 starts.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve stood in front of a team after a loss,” Clemson coach Dabo Swinney said.

On this night, Lawrence (18 for 37 for 234 yards) was no match for Burrow — the Ohio State transfer who threw all of 16 TD passes last season with LSU.

His ascent has been dizzying and unprecedented. Running a version of the New Orleans Saints’ offense brought to LSU by 30-year-old assistant coach Joe Brady, Burrow and an array of talented receivers transformed these Tigers into one of the most prolific offenses college football has ever seen.

The Saints’ Drew Brees, Burrow’s idol growing up, could not have done it better.

This was Orgeron’s vision for LSU when he was promoted from interim coach in 2016. There was plenty of skepticism about the Cajun who had failed in his first crack as a head coach with Mississippi.

Orgeron has proved to be the perfect fit for LSU. Just like Burrow.

After tossing his fifth touchdown pass of the night, a perfectly placed jumped ball to Terrace Marshall Jr. from 24 yards out to make it 42-25 with 12:08 left in the fourth, Burrow signaled TD and strolled to the sideline.

The Superdome is LSU’s dome away from home, about 80 miles from the Tigers’ Baton Rouge campus — and it was rocking.

The LSU band broke out its unofficial anthem, “Neck,” and as the Tigers bounced and waved towels on the sideline, Burrow just sat on the bench, bobbing his head and waving one arm.

Joe Cool. Just doing his thing. Next stop: The NFL draft, where he will likely be the first pick in April.

The final score was lopsided, but it was far from easy for LSU and Burrow.

Clemson pushed LSU into the deepest hole it had to climb out of this season in the first half. Two weeks after Lawrence ran for a career-best 107 yards against Ohio State, he opened the scoring with a 1-yard jaunt around right end in the first quarter.

After B.T. Potter kicked a career-long 52-yard field goal for Clemson to make it 10-7, the Tigers sprung receiver Tee Higgins on a 36-yard reverse for a score to make it 17-7 in the second quarter.

It took LSU 5:19 to wipe that out and take the lead, with Burrow and his favorite receiver, Ja’Marr Chase, doing most of the damage. The Heisman winner hit the Biletnikoff Award winner with a long ball to set up a quarterback draw from 3 yards out to make it 17-14.

Burrow and Chase hooked up for a 14-yard touchdown with 5:19 left in the second quarter and LSU fans erupted as their Tigers took the lead for the first time, 21-17. They never looked back.

Chase finished with nine catches for 221 yards.

The SEC Tigers weren’t done. Burrow led LSU on a 95-yard drive, taking a hard shot on a long run before finding Thaddeus Moss, son of former NFL star receiver Randy Moss, standing alone in the end zone. That made it 28-17 with 10 seconds left in the half.

Clemson defensive coordinator Brent Venables flummoxed LSU for most of the first quarter, with tight coverage and hard-to-decipher blitzes. Burrow, Chase and Co. put up 269 yards in the second quarter.

“Coach Venables is great at what he does, it just took us a while to get it figured out,” Burrow said.

Did they ever. LSU dropped 628 yards and six touchdowns on a Clemson team that came in allowing 264 yards and 11.5 points per game.

“Weapons all over the field. We’ve been seeing it all year,” LSU safety Grant Delpit said. “Just seeing how many weapons we had on offense is just crazy.”

Over the last three games of his spectacular season, against Georgia in the Southeastern Conference championship game and Oklahoma and Clemson in the playoff, Burrow passed for 1,305 yards and 16 touchdowns. LSU won those games by a combined score of 142-63.

When it was all over, Burrow puffed on a victory cigar as he made his way from the locker room to the postgame news conference. No one was about to tell him he couldn’t smoke inside.

This season, LSU’s newest football hero has done just about whatever he wants.

“I don’t know about the whole hero thing,” Burrow said, “but I know this national championship will be remembered for a long time in Louisiana.”

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Follow Ralph D. Russo at https://twitter.com/ralphDrussoAP and listen http://www.westwoodonepodcasts.com/pods/ap-top-25-college-football-podcast/

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LAROSE, La. (AP) — A cardboard likeness of Ed Orgeron, wearing a purple polo with gold LSU lettering, stands in an entertainment parlor at the home of one of his childhood friends.

The life-size cutout was displayed a couple years ago at a celebration dubbed “Coach O Day” in the predominantly Cajun south Louisiana community where Orgeron grew up, a place where everyone seems to have a nickname and shares stories in the same Cajun French-influenced accent synonymous with the raspy-voiced coach.

Don “Noochie” Adams now has the keepsake in his house, which is surrounded by towering cypress trees and sprawling live oaks just down the street from Bayou Lafourche — a slow moving waterway where the distinctive outriggers of shrimp boats rise above the banks.

This is home, where Orgeron’s long, circuitous football life began.

“Bebe loves the community,” said Adams, referring to Orgeron by his childhood nickname, pronounced BAY-BAY. “He never forgot about the bayou. It oozes out of him.

“He never changed. That’s how you know it’s Bebe.”

Cajun pride is swelling in Lafourche Parish now that the former two-way lineman at South Lafourche High School, who won a 1977 state title with the Tarpons, is on the brink of capping off arguably the LSU Tigers’ greatest season in the program’s 126-year history with a national title.

No. 1 LSU plays third-ranked Clemson on Monday night in the College Football Playoff championship in New Orleans, about 60 miles northeast of where Orgeron grew up.

LSU has won three national championships before, but the Tigers have never gone 15-0.

Orgeron, 58, is only the third Louisiana native to coach LSU since the Tigers joined the Southeastern Conference in 1933. The coaches of LSU’s national title teams all came from out of state: Paul Dietzel (Ohio) in 1958, Nick Saban (West Virginia) in 2003 and Les Miles (Ohio) in 2007.

Not that the people of Lafourche Parish need any football history lessons.

The quarterback of Orgeron’s state title team was Bobby Hebert, who also became the first quarterback to lead the New Orleans Saints to the NFL playoffs. Although the area has a small-town feel, the high school stadium, comprised of two large concrete pavilions on each sideline, holds about 6,600 spectators. Traffic on football Friday nights can get backed up for miles on the two-lane roads along each bank of the bayou.

Like virtually everyone in his community, Orgeron was a big LSU fan growing up and accepted a scholarship to play for the Tigers, but struggled with his adjustment to college life away from home and dropped out. Later, he finishing his playing career at Northwestern State.

“I watched LSU football since I can remember,” Orgeron said after practice this week. “I knew one day I’d get a chance to represent LSU and just representing all the guys that played in the purple and gold. This is what we live for.”

Lane Fillinich, a former high school teammate of Orgeron, said the vibe in Lafourche Parish created by the LSU coach’s recent success is like “going to the Holy Land and just that feeling when you’re there that comes on you.”

“You grew up as an LSU fan, but we’ve got a horse in the race now,” Fillinich said. “We’ve got the key to the city now, the Cajuns.”

The sentiment is widespread in Orgeron’s old stomping grounds. On the front lawn of a one-story brick home a few miles up the bayou from where Adams lives is a purple and gold eye-of-the-tiger emblem resembling the one emblazoned on the 50-yard line at LSU’s Tiger Stadium.

The home belongs to Cornelia “Coco” Orgeron, Ed Orgeron’s 77-year-old mother. She said an artistically inclined neighbor painted it on her lawn and a few others in the area. Motorists often tap their horns in approval as they pass by.

“I go to the store and everybody says, ‘Our boy did good,’” Coco Orgeron said. “Let’s put it this way, he has a lot more cousins than he ever had.”

Coco Orgeron still speaks French to her older friends and laments how Cajuns felt pressure to assimilate during war times in the first half of the 20th century, and often felt unfairly looked down upon as unsophisticated people who knew little of life outside the swamps and marshes. Cajuns, she said, should be known as resourceful, hard-working people with generous hearts.

Historically, the local economy revolved around trapping for pelts, sugar cane or the seafood industry. Shrimp, crabs, crawfish and oysters are favorites found at restaurants with names like Cher Amie’s (Dear Friend’s). More recently, the off-shore oil industry has been an economic driver, albeit in boom-and-bust cycles related to oil prices, and it has struggled recently.

“We were ridiculed all our lives,” Coco Orgeron said while trying to explain why her community is so overjoyed by her son’s success.

Coco said people she meets while running errands or attending church even compliment the various shirts they see her son wearing on the sideline from week to week.

“Just little things like that they observe, they’ll tell me everything that they see,” she said. “I love it.”

Ed Orgeron wasn’t necessarily LSU’s top choice to replace Les Miles, who was fired during the 2016 season. Although Orgeron had been successful in interim stints at USC and LSU, he went 10-25 in his only other head coaching job at Mississippi from 2005-2007.

When Orgeron insisted he’d learned from past mistakes and was ready to return LSU to national prominence, no one believed him more than people he’d grown up with, like Tommy Gisclair.

But Gislair said what Orgeron has done goes beyond football, saying the coach projects a positive aura that, for example, has made Cajuns less self-conscious, if not more proud, of the distinctive way they talk.

“He’s turned it into a positive and people gravitate to him and they love it,” Gisclair said. “They love to hear him.”

Chances are, football fans will be hearing a lot more from him for seasons to come.

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