SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 22 , 2020. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ M2 D5
FROM NEWS SERVICES
AND STAFF REPORTSThe game between No. 4 Clem-
son and Florida State was post-
poned hours before kickoff Satur-
day when medical personnel
from both schools could not agree
it was safe to play.
The Tigers learned a day earlier
one of their players tested posi-
tive for the coronavirus, a person
with knowledge of the situation
told the Associated Press.
The ACC announced the post-
ponement, although it did not
detail whether the game at Flori-
da State was called off because of
coronavirus issues.
The person who spoke to the
Associated Press on the condition
of anonymity said the postpone-
ment stemmed from a positive
test Clemson received Friday af-
ter traveling to Tallahassee. That
unidentified player tested nega-
tive on campus this week despite
displaying symptoms.
No makeup date was an-
nounced, but Florida State Coach
Mike Norvell said he hoped it
would be in December.
Late score lifts LSU to victory
The Tigers scored the go-ahead
touchdown with 3:59 to go after
an Arkansas targeting penalty
and held on beat the Razorbacks,
27-24, on Saturday in Fayetteville,
Ark.
TJ Finley found Jaray Jenkins
for a 13-yard touchdown to put
LSU (3-3, 3-3 SEC) ahead by three
points. It was the capper to a
10 -play, 67-yard drive on which
safety Jalen Catalon of Arkansas
(3-5, 3-5) was flagged for a 15-yard
targeting penalty and ejected.
l IOWA 41, PENN STATE 21:
In State College, Pa., Spencer Pe-
tras completed 18 of 28 passes for
186 yards and ran for a touch-
down as the Hawkeyes (3-2, 3-2
Big Ten) won their third straight
while sending the Nittany Lions
to 0-5 for the first time.
l MEMPHIS 56, STEPHEN F.
AUSTIN 14: Brady White became
the Tigers’ all-time passing touch-
downs leader, Calvin Austin III
broke open the game with a
6 4-yard punt return, and host
Memphis (5-2) hammered the
Lumberjacks (5-4).
l ARMY 2 8, GEORGIA
SOUTHERN 27: Quarterback
Tyhier Tyler overcame two disas-
trous fumbles in the early going of
his first start to rush for 121 yards
as the Black Knights (7-2) rallied
from a 14-0 deficit to upend the
Eagles (6-3) in West Point, N.Y.
l EAST CAROLINA 28, TEM-
PLE 3: Tyler Snead scored two
touchdowns, including a 95-yard
kickoff return, to lead the Pirates
(2-6, 2-5 American Athletic) pastthe Owls (1-6, 1-6) in a game
delayed nearly an hour because of
coronavirus concerns in Philadel-
phia.
l ILLINOIS 41, NEBRASKA
23: Brandon Peters threw for one
touchdown and ran for another in
his first game in nearly a month,
and the Illini (2-3, 2-3 Big Ten)
had two rushers go o ver 100 yards
in a win over the Huskers (1-3, 1-3)
in Lincoln, Neb.
l GEORGIA STATE 31,
SOUTH ALABAMA 14: Corneli-
ous Brown IV passed for
334 yards and Tucker Gregg
rushed for three touchdowns —
both career highs — and the
Panthers (4-4, 3-4 Sun Belt) han-
dled the Jaguars (3-6, 2-4) in
Mobile, Ala.
l OREGON STATE 31, CALI-
FORNIA 27: QuarterbackTr istan Gebbia passed for a
touchdown, ran for a touchdown
and was on the receiving end of a
score as the Beavers (1-2, 1-2 Pac-
12) held off the Golden Bears (0-2,
0-2) in Corvallis, Ore.
l NEVADA 26, SAN DIEGO
STATE 21: Carson Strong threw
two touchdown passes and a sti-
fling defense produced a last-
minute goal-line stand as the
Wolf Pack (5-0, 5-0 Mountain
West) edged the Aztecs (3-2, 3-2)
in Reno, Nev.
l MISSOURI 17, SOUTH
CAROLINA 10: In Columbia,
S.C., Connor Bazelak threw for
203 yards and a touchdown as the
Tigers (3-3, 3-3 SEC) upended the
Gamecocks (2-6, 2-6), who were
playing their first game since they
fired coach Will Muschamp last
Sunday.NATIONAL COLLEGE FOOTBALL ROUNDUP
Clemson-FSU clash is postponed late
WESLEY HITT/GETTY IMAGES
Jaray Jenkins (No. 10) and LSU find a bright spot in a down season Saturday with a win over Arkansas.flight home to Dallas was leaving
in 90 minutes. He dashed out the
door, remembering to take his
phone.‘I’m different’
He woke early Monday morn-
ing, anxious to see how he had
done. The reaction on Twitter had
been intense.
Someone said listening to him
and Hellie do the game was like
being in the room with two peo-
ple watching on a couch. He l iked
that. Some said he pointed out
things that they had never seen.
Others said they loved the way he
talked, like he wasn’t j ust another
broadcaster during a long day of
football.
But there were others who
hated it, who didn’t find him
funny or informative. The Twitter
avatars of many of those people
were White, and it wasn’t hard to
see where the divide lay between
those who found Talib refreshing
and those who did not. If this
bothered him, he wouldn’t say.
“Hey, some people are going to
like it; some people are not going
to like it,” he said over the phone
later that day. “I played the game,
so I know.... The only person I
know how to be is Aqib Talib, so
that’s the person I’m going to be
forever.
“I’m different. We’re from dif-
ferent places; we don’t talk the
same.... I’m going to go up there
and try to talk as professional as I
can on TV because I know there
are a lot of people listening. At the
end of the day, I’m going to talk
what I know and I’m going to talk
what I see. That’s what I was told
to do in the audition, and the
audition was good enough to get
me on Fox, so that’s what I did.”
He watched the telecast for the
first time, while still in bed, ready
to tear himself apart. He noticed
the painful silences early in the
game and cringed when he cut
himself off, w orried he would talk
over the snap. He said “man” way
too much, he thought.
Still, there was a lot he did well.
He didn’t get the defenses wrong
or mix up formations or blame
players for mistakes that weren’t
their fault.
“I was on the money,” he said. “I
ain’t throwing nobody under the
bus or something. Un-uh, every-
thing I said, they did it.”
Later that day, Ullman would
say he found Talib to be “authen-
tic” and “knowledgeable.” He en-
joyed reading the tweets and
hearing the buzz that followed.
“You want a reaction, right?” he
said.
“I don’t know where the next
opportunity [to do a game] will
be,” Ullman continued. “He’s cer-
tainly somebody we would con-
sider. He will do a great job.”
But no Romo. At least not yet.
[email protected]thoughts to fit that timeline. The
game in the booth started to feel
like the game on the field. The old
Aqib started to come out.
He said Lions quarterback
Matthew Stafford had found “the
honey hole” in Washington’s de-
fense.
He defended a penalized line-
man by saying, “I’d hold before I
give up a sack, too.”
He yelled, “Whatcha got,
Jack?!” at Washington defensive
coordinator Jack Del Rio before a
key third-down play.
He was feeling good now, and
people were noticing.
“Loving Aqib Talib on this
broadcast. I feel like he wants to
curse so bad,” former ESPN an-
chor Jemele Hill tweeted.
“Aqib Talib sound like my u ncle
calling a national television
game,” one man tweeted, adding
a meme captioned, “I love it.”
On the field below, Washington
had come back from three touch-
downs down to tie the score at 27.
Overtime loomed. And then sud-
denly it was over, with Detroit
winning on a last-second, 59 -yard
field goal.
Quickly Fox switched to its late
games, which were about to start.
The mic went dead. The TV lights
turned off. Talib was elated, but
there was no time to linger. Hisperson handing notes and a spot-
ter pointing to the number on the
gameboard of the players who
made tackles.
The plays were going by fast,
and Talib was trying to keep up.
At times he said nothing. He
could feel the silence and won-
dered whether people watching
could feel it, too.
Slowly, though, he began to
relax. He imagined himself hav-
ing 12 to 15 seconds to talk after
each play and began to adjust his“I’m not going to be on there
saying some stuff that’s not true,”
he said.‘I feel like he wants to curse’
Then, suddenly, it was show-
time.
Inside Talib’s headset, every-
thing was racing. He could hear
play-by-play announcer Dan
Hellie, to his left, describing the
plays, but there also was Rich
Gross, the producer, talking from
the production truck and a statsEmmy-winning sports media
consultant who has worked with
many of the industry’s top broad-
casters and had helped Talib pre-
pare for appearances on NFL
Network. On a Zoom call that
lasted almost two hours, Matalon
warned him not to talk over the
snap of the ball or the referee
announcing penalties and to stay
away from vague references to
jargon such as cover-two without
explaining what the terms mean.
“Your job is to enhance the
broadcast, not intrude,” Matalon
told him.
As t he game drew closer, Talib’s
phone kept ringing with calls
from network executives and pro-
ducers. There were teleconfer-
ences and conference calls about
logistics and graphics and sched-
ules. It was a lot.
Mostly, Talib wanted to keep
watching the film. As a player, he
used to race home after games to
watch a replay and see what the
broadcasters had gotten right.
Did they show him love, or did
they tear him apart? Often, he
was shocked to realize the ana-
lysts had everything wrong and
were blaming the wrong players.
No way, he decided, would a
Detroit or Washington player go
home and hear Aqib Talib get
something wrong.phone at the hotel and had to go
back.
Former players fill analyst
roles across the television net-
works. But those players tend not
to be like Talib, who was famous
for interceptions, smothering
coverage of opposing receivers,
five Pro Bowls and one Super
Bowl title — and outrageous
statements filled with unprint-
able words, four suspensions and
a handful of off-field incidents.
The word several Fox people
have used to describe him is
“raw.” Still, there has always been
an earnestness about him — a
fierce loyalty to teammates, an
obsession with studying and pre-
paring, and a warmth that always
made him one of the most popu-
lar players everywhere he played.
“He’s infectious and real, and
that’s contagious,” said Jacob Ull-
man, a senior vice president at
Fox Sports.
Which is why Fox was giving
him an opportunity on a Sunday
when the network had an extra
game. It came without promises.
NFL analyst slots on the three
main networks are so coveted
that Ullman said someone
“would have a better chance to be
an NFL quarterback than an NFL
analyst.”
But a chance was a chance. At
the stadium, phone in hand, Talib
— butterflies twirling in his stom-
ach — began to prepare in the
broadcast booth only to look
down and realize he didn’t have
his gameboard, a giant card filled
with information about each
player that all announcers use. It,
too, was back at his hotel. This
time, Fox sent a runner to fetch it.
‘Enhance the broadcast’
Back in the spring, Fox asked
Talib to do color commentary
while watching half of a San
Francisco 49ers-New Orleans
Saints game. Talib’s audition was
not perfect, but there was enough
for Ullman to see “something
there was different.” The network
told Talib it would try to find him
a game or two in the fall.
When the assignment for the
game came in early November,
Talib started preparing by watch-
ing one of each team’s past three
games every day. Not knowing
exactly how a television commen-
tator studies teams, he decided to
watch the way he did as a player:
first the main broadcast, to hear
what other analysts were saying,
then the condensed version of the
game stripped of everything but
the plays and the “All 22” version
shot from behind the end zone —
like a coach’s tape — so he could
look for team tendencies.
But there was so much else to
learn.
He called Gerry Matalon, an
TALIB FROM D1
Talib wasn’t Romo, but he was himself in debut as analyst
PHOTOS BY JOHN MCDONNELL/THE WASHINGTON POST
Aqib Talib was nervous when he got to Ford Field. Some fans found him engaging, but some were critical. F ox executives were encouraged.ASSOCIATED PRESSPedros S antos, D arlington Nag-
be and Gyasi Zardes scored, and
the host Columbus Crew beat the
New York Red B ulls, 3 -2, on Satur-
day to advance t o the MLS Eastern
Conference semifinals.
Third-seeded Columbus will
play next Sunday against the win-
ner of the Tuesday night match
between second-seeded Toronto
FC and N o. 7 Nashville....
Benji Michel’s goal gave host
Orlando City a 6-5 win in a shoot-
out a gainst N ew York C ity FC and a
berth into the E astern Conference
semifinals. The game was tied 1-1
after r egulation.
No. 4 seed Orlando next plays
Nov. 29 against top-seeded Phila-
delphia or N o. 8 New England.
l ENGLAND: With h is t eam on
top of the Premier League, Jose
Mourinho enjoyed bragging
rights over Pep Guardiola in their
long-standing coaching rivalry as
Tottenham beat Manchester City,
2-0, i n London.
Chelsea got an own goal and a
score from Tammy Abraham to
win at New Castle, 2-0, and move
into second p lace....
Bruno Fernandes scored a s host
Manchester U nited beat West B ro-
mwich Albion, 1-0....
Host Aston Villa lost, 2-1, t o
Brighton i n Birmingham, its t hird
defeat i n four league games.
l ITALY: Cristiano Ronaldo
scored two more g oals as host
Juventus beat Cagliari, 2-0, in Tu-
rin to move into second i n Serie A,
a point below AC Milan, which
visits Napoli o n Sunday.
Ronaldo has scored eight goals
in his past five matches....Atalanta and Lazio are among
four clubs on 14 points, three few-
er than Milan. Lazio won, 2-0, at
Crotone, and Atalanta was h eld,
0-0, by host Spezia in Cesena.
l GERMANY: Erling Haaland
scored four goals and Youssoufa
Moukoko, 16, became the young-
est player in B undesliga history as
Borussia Dortmund beat host
Hertha Berlin, 5-2, to move into
second place....
Bundesliga leader Bayern Mu-
nich fought back to draw with
visiting Werder Bremen, 1 -1....
Aleksandar Dragovic scored
late as unbeaten Bayer Leverkus-
en prevailed, 2-1, o ver host Armin-
ia Bielefeld....
Ten-man Augsburg also scored
late to draw at Borussia
Mönchengladbach, 1-1; host
Schalke’s club-record winless
streak stretched to 24 games after
losing, 2-0, to Wolfsburg in
Gelsenkirchen; h ost Hoffenheim
conceded late to draw with Stutt-
gart, 3 -3, in S insheim; and Leipzig
drew, 1 -1, a t Eintracht Frankfurt.
l SPAIN: Yannick Carrasco
scored after d efensive blunders a s
host Atlético Madrid ended a de-
cade-long winless streak against
Barcelona in the Spanish league
with a 1-0 victory.
A tlético is tied with Real Socie-
dad for first place....
Goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois
gave away a penalty as a Real
Madrid side missing several play-
ers drew, 1 -1, at V illarreal....
Two late goals gave S evilla a 4-2
win over host Celta Vigo in Seville
to dampen the debut of Coach
Eduardo Coudet....
l FRANCE: Saint-Etienne lost,
4-1, at Brest f or a seventh straight
French league defeat u nder Coach
Claude Puel....
Marseille’s home game vs. Nice
was called off because of an c oro-
navirus o utbreak i n the visitors.SOCCER ROUNDUPColumbus, Orlando City
reach Eastern semifinals
CREW 3,
RED BULLS 2