After the final game of his college career ended, Tez Johnson waited for his turn once more.

He waited, standing behind Ohio State quarterback Will Howard until Howard had completed a postgame interview following the Buckeyes’ 41-21 win over Oregon in the College Football Playoff quarterfinals at the Rose Bowl. He waited so he could deliver a message to Howard, which was subsequently captured by nearby cameras, that resonated with fans everywhere because of the class and sportsmanship with which it was said.

‘I respect you, boy. Everything you have, bro, you deserve it,’ Johnson told Howard. ‘Go win it all for your team. I respect you. They need you. Keep leading them.’

With that, Johnson jogged off the Rose Bowl field and presumably into the start of his NFL career. Though the outcome wasn’t what Oregon hoped for, it capped a remarkable run for Johnson at the college level. He was an under-recruited three-star recruit from Pinson, Alabama who spent his first three seasons at Troy University before transferring to Oregon to join up with his former high school teammate and adopted brother, current Denver Broncos quarterback Bo Nix.

This year, Johnson became Oregon’s leading receiver and finished with 83 catches for 898 yards and 10 touchdowns. He had 1,182 receiving yards for the Ducks during the 2023 season.

Before Johnson went viral for his gesture towards Howard, ESPN’s ‘College Gameday’ featured a segment during Wednesday’s show about his journey to the CFP quarterfinals and relationship with the Nix family. It even elicited some regret from former Alabama coach Nick Saban on set once it was over.

‘What I’m sitting here thinking about is Tez Johnson is from Birmingham, 45 minutes away from Alabama, and we didn’t recruit the guy,’ Saban said to laughs. ‘Who was recruiting Birmingham? And I should’ve fired their (butt)!’

‘He went to Troy first,’ Saban added, ‘and we didn’t recruit when he left there either.’

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This year’s Sugar Bowl will be filled with emotion that goes beyond the stakes involved on the field when No. 2 seed Georgia and No. 7 seed Notre Dame meet in a College Football Playoff quarterfinal game Thursday afternoon at Caesars Superdome in New Orleans.

Kickoff will be occurring about 36 hours after an armed man drove a pickup truck through Bourbon Street in New Orleans, killing at least 14 people and injuring more than 30 in what the FBI is investigating an act or terrorism. The incident led to the postponement of this year’s Sugar Bowl, which was originally scheduled to take place Wednesday night.

But the game will go on beginning at 4 p.m. ET, and the pregame performance of the National Anthem is certain to hit different in light of the horrible tragedy New Orleans endured this week. Bowl officials announced last week that New Orleans native Samyra, a rising star in the music industry, will sing ‘The Star-Spangled Banner.’

Here’s what else you should know about Samyra before she performs at the 2025 Sugar Bowl featuring Georgia and Notre Dame:

How old is Samyra?

Samyra Miller is 26 years old, according to the Sugar Bowl media release announcing her National Anthem performance at the 2025 game.

Where did Samyra go to college?

Samyra Miller’s emergence as a musician and content creator can be traced back to her days as a student at Harvard. She told BET last year that she served as the music director of the ‘Harvard LowKeys’ a capella group. The 2021 graduate also had a popular Instagram account with students there. The Harvard Gazette described it as the ‘go-to source for all things Harvard in 2020 around the time students left campus due to the COVID-19 pandemic.’

Samyra’s star rose through TikTok

Samyra’s musical career really took off once she became a popular TikTok content creator and body positivity influencer after college. Today, she has more than 2.2 million followers on the social media platform (and an additional 459,000 followers on Instagram). Her first performance to break through, a cover of ‘Supermodel’ from the movie, ‘Clueless,’ landed her on ‘The Jennifer Hudson Show’ in February 2023.

It then culminated over the past year when she self-released her most popular song yet, ‘Plus-Size Freestyle,’ that combined her musical fusion of R&B, rap and pop with a message built around body positivity.

Samyra credits New Orleans for musical roots

Born in New Orleans, Samyra credits the turmoil created by Hurricane Katrina when she was a child for her embrace of music. Her family was displaced to Texas in the aftermath of the storm’s damage and she performed in her new school’s talent show upon arriving there. She initially trained as a classical singer.

“I always say that New Orleans raised me to feel like I can do and be whoever I want to be because the city has a free spirit about it. That allowed people to exist without shame,” Samyra said in an interview with BET last May. ”Even if you walk down the French Quarter, you’ll see people tap dancing and drumming on buckets. People are always doing things to express themselves and their joy. I think that is the most beautiful thing about my city.”

Samyra is from a football family

Samyra’s father, Bobby Miller, played football at LSU, and Samyra played defensive tackle on her high school team. She and her older sister would regularly sing the National Anthem at Lusher High School (New Orleans) games, and ‘the cool party trick was I would sing the anthem, then come out of the booth with my shoulder pads and helmet and go right onto the field for the game,’ Samyra told Sugar Bowl officials.

Hakaraia Wilson, a mixed martial arts fighter from New Zealand, has died at age 26, according to numerous news outlets.

No cause of death has been listed or reported for Wilson.

Wilson was in Gisborne to attend the Rhythm and Vines Festival, which took place from Dec. 29 to Dec. 31. 

‘Haks, your legacy will live on in each of us—your smile, your laughter, your warmth, and your warrior spirit. Rest easy, knowing your time here, though far too short, left a mark that will never fade,’ Oliver MMA and Fitness Gym, a New Zealand combat sports academy, said on social media.

Wilson had a 4-3 record as an MMA fighter in the welterweight division and last fought in October, scoring a first round KO/TKO over Mark Alcoba at Canggu Fight Night 32 in Bali, Indonesia.

Former Princeton football player Martin ‘Tiger’ Bech was one of at least 15 people killed when an attacker drove a pickup truck into a crowd in New Orleans’ French Quarters during the early hours of New Year’s Day.

Bech, a native of Lafayette, Louisiana, graduated from Princeton in 2021 and was working as a stockbroker in New York City and was visiting New Orleans for the holidays when he was reportedly killed while returning to his hotel with a friend. According to his sister, Bech died from internal injuries, including head trauma, several hours after the attack.

Bech played football at the Ivy League school from 2017 to 2019. His younger brother, Jack Bech, currently plays for the TCU Horned Frogs and confirmed on X that his brother was one of the victims.

‘Love you always brother!’ Jack Bech wrote. ‘You inspired me everyday now you get to be with me in every moment. I got this family T, don’t worry. This is for us.’

A GoFundMe campaign has been established to raise funds for Bech’s funeral and to cover the medical expenses of his friend, Ryan Quigley, who was with him during the attack. So far, it has raised over $75,000.

Who is Martin ‘Tiger’ Bech?

Martin ‘Tiger’ Bech was born on January 28, 1997, and his family has deep football roots. Bech’s two uncles played football at Louisiana State University.

Bech played college football at Princeton from 2017 to 2019, where he was a receiver and kick returner. During his time at the Ivy League, he recorded 53 receptions for 825 yards and scored three touchdowns. Additionally, Bech earned two All-Ivy honors for his performance as a return specialist.

‘There was no more appropriate nickname of a Princeton player I coached,’ Princeton football coach Bob Surace said in an announcement.  ‘He was a ‘Tiger’ in every way – a ferocious competitor with endless energy, a beloved teammate and a caring friend. Our last conversation was about how proud I was of the growth he showed during his time at Princeton and the success he was having after graduation. My love goes to the entire Bech family.’

Jack Bech, the younger brother of Bech, played wide receiver for the TCU Horned Frogs and recorded 1,034 yards and nine touchdowns on 62 receptions in the 2024 season. He has since declared for the 2025 NFL Draft.

PASADENA, Calif. – The Ohio State football team may have passed its most important test on the way to a potential national championship.  

No, not the Buckeyes’ 41-21 victory over top-seeded Oregon on Wednesday at the Rose Bowl in the quarterfinals of the College Football Playoff.

“… the players have stuck together and they’re fighting to stay together,’’ coach Ryan Day said during a postgame news conference.

About 30 minutes earlier, Day beamed as fireworks exploded and confetti fell. The scene served as an astonishing contrast to what transpired in Columbus, Ohio, on Nov. 30. That day, the Buckeyes lost to the Michigan Wolverines for the fourth year in a row – a 13-10 debacle that ended with Day looking shell-shocked and his players fighting the Wolverines at midfield.

So how did we get here? Day was under fire. So were the players, expected to make about $20 million this year in NIL deals and contributions from the school’s collective. Then the Buckeyes responded by beating Tennessee 42-17 in the first round of the playoffs and followed that with the convincing victory over No. 1 Oregon.

“I talked to these guys about it a couple of weeks ago,’’ Day said. “That’s life. And this team is resilient. And when you surround yourself with great people, with great character, you find yourself working through difficult times.’’

Day also said, ‘We’re at a place where you can hear a lot of noise, but they (his players) didn’t do that.”

“Warriors’’ is how he referred to his players, and like warriors is how they’ve played since the dreadful Michigan game.

The Buckeyes racked up 500 yards in total offense against Oregon. It was the same explosive offense that amassed 473 yards against Tennessee. A team that hardly resembled the one that managed just 252 yards against Michigan despite being a 21-point favorite.

Day praised Chip Kelly, Ohio State’s high-priced offensive coordinator, who had also been under fire after the loss to Michigan. ‘Yeah, I thought Chip called a great game,” Day said. ‘I thought the whole offensive staff worked hard to put the plan together.”

Ohio State’s defense showed championship-caliber ability. The Buckeyes held Oregon to minus-23 yards rushing on 28 carries while sacking Oregon quarterback Dillon Gabriel eight times.

It was the Buckeyes who faced the possibility of being sacked by their own fan base. How did they avoid it? Ohio State linebacker Cody Simon, a team captain, offered insight when he said, “That’s probably the biggest part about football: It’s a game about getting your body, mind and spirit right.’’

There’s also the issue of trust, as quarterback Will Howard connected with star freshman receiver Jeremiah Smith for seven receptions, 187 yards and two touchdowns.

“Will does a great job in practice just trusting us, just throwing the ball out there,’’ Smith said. “We tell him, just throw it out there. We’ll make a play for you. It don’t matter if it’s a bad ball or not, we’ll make our quarterback look good.’’

The Buckeyes are looking good, all right.

“Obviously,’’ Oregon coach Dan Lanning said, “that’s a team I think that has the ability to go win it all.’’

And the biggest hurdle may be cleared.

(This story was updated with new information.)

Welcome to the day the College Football Playoff grew up. 

And also the day that proved once and for all it needs to kick the bowl games to the curb. 

How great is this sport? So great that an Arizona State team held a nation spellbound for a couple of hours on Wednesday afternoon, bringing a March Madness feel to New Year’s Day for the first time in CFP history. 

How frustrating is this sport? So frustrating that while Arizona State was ultimately coming up one play short against Texas, the Rose Bowl couldn’t see fit to delay the kickoff of Ohio State-Oregon by even a few minutes. And by the time Texas had won its quarterfinal, 39-31 in the second overtime, the Buckeyes were already up 7-0 and had the ball again. 

We know the Rose Bowl loves its sunset over the San Gabriel Mountains at the start of the fourth quarter, but come on. College football is this country’s second-most popular sport. It needs to act like it and not leave its programming schedule to a bunch of freeloading bowl bureaucrats who add nothing to the texture and fabric of the game in 2025. 

College football is so much better than that. The Texas-Arizona State game proved it. 

Where’s your pining for Alabama now? 

After all the agenda-fueled handwringing about the first-round mismatches — led by cranky Kirk Herbstreit, of all people, who chose to be loud and wrong rather than reconsider his biases last week — it’s time to separate fact from fanfic. 

The CFP does not need to be expanded to 14 or 16. Adding more teams would be a cynical money grab, and no Playoff-worthy team is getting left out of a 12-team field.
Despite Lane Kiffin’s social media sour grapes, there was no magic bullet team that could have been plugged in to the CFP to change the one-sided nature of most games that have been played so far. Not Alabama, certainly, after its no-show against Michigan in the ReliaQuest Bowl. Not South Carolina. Not Miami. And not Kiffin’s Ole Miss Rebels. 
The reason we have seen a lot of blowouts in the CFP, even in the four-team format, is that there’s a dividing line in college football between the elite and non-elite. It would be in the best interests of the sport to shrink that gap. How do you do it? By putting a non-traditional team like Arizona State on the national stage and letting them show how good they are. 
And yet college football is so wrapped up in the idea of tradition that it has let bowl operators dictate how to run their business. So we get empty seats at Playoff games because fans can’t budget for three road trips, and we get the Rose Bowl kicking off on an alternate channel because delaying by 15 minutes would be a sunset sacrilege. 

Here’s the point: Nobody likes to complain about college football more than people who love college football, but often their angst is misdirected. 

For all the hate directed at the NIL and transfer portal environment, nothing in the history of college sports has done more to spread out talent and give dozens of programs a chance to compete for something significant. 

Despite all the calls for the CFP to include the ‘best’ teams over the most-deserving — as if Herbstreit or anyone else could accurately define what that means — how do you explain dismissed Big 12 champion Arizona State providing one of the best underdog performances in playoff history when the elitists never wanted the Sun Devils in the first place? 

It’s time to stop nitpicking and let college football do its thing. Does that mean every game is going to be great? Does that mean every underdog is going to look like it belongs? Of course not. 

But if you just let the sport breathe a little bit, the talent gap is going to continue to close and you’re eventually going to get to a place where a game like Texas-Arizona State is more the norm than the exception. Even Boise State kept things interesting Tuesday night, competing credibly with Penn State for a good portion of the game before falling 31-14.

That’s all you can ask for.

Should there be some tweaks? Of course. 

Oregon, as the No. 1 seed and the nation’s only unbeaten team, should not have had to face Ohio State in the quarterfinals. That can be fixed by a small tweak that allows the CFP selection committee to seed the teams by their true rankings rather than giving priority to the top four conference champions. 

There should also be a lengthy conversation about whether quarterfinal games should be on campus rather than neutral sites. But regardless of how that decision goes, it’s time for SEC commissioner Greg Sankey, Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti and their colleagues to make it clear that the bowl games have no leverage anymore over this sport. 

Think about the absurdity of this: Arizona State has a quarterfinal site in its backyard with the Fiesta Bowl but gets shipped to Atlanta to play Texas. Meanwhile, Georgia has a quarterfinal site in its backyard with the Peach Bowl but gets sent to New Orleans to play Notre Dame because of old contracts that tie conferences to particular bowls. 

Meanwhile, because the Rose Bowl apparently has to kick off at 5 p.m. Eastern — and not a minute later — most people wrapped up in a truly great game on Wednesday didn’t even know Ohio State-Oregon had started. Talk about giving the fans a middle finger. 

But for so many years, rather than treating college football like a real sport, the powerbrokers, talking-heads bowl stooges have been in the beauty pageant mentality. It’s all about “creating matchups” and “the brands” rather than, you know, playing games and showcasing new stars like ASU quarterback Sam Leavitt or coach Kenny Dillingham.

And guess what? In a real sport, you just can’t predict when a game is going to be awesome or when it’s going to end up lopsided. Who could have guessed that Arizona State would be Cinderella for a few hours on New Years, while Oregon would fall flat on its face? 

Lessons need to be learned from the Peach Bowl. Yeah, the Big 12 may not have been a great conference this year, but its champion went blow-for-blow with the second-best team in the SEC. And even though college football is never going to have the same upset dynamics as the NCAA basketball tournament, it’s the Arizona States of the world that are going to grow this sport and turn the CFP into something magical — if they’ll just leave it (mostly) alone. 

That’s the potential we saw on Wednesday. That’s the parity the CFP can help grow. That’s the excitement fans yearned for when they finally turned it from an invitational into a real Playoff. 

It’s time for even the skeptics to admit that this thing is working just fine. 

NEW ORLEANS — Silence. 

That’s what strikes you while standing next to Caesars Superdome on a glorious Wednesday afternoon. Silence reaches up and shakes you, suffocates you, reminds you not so subtly that sometimes there are more important matters in this world than four quarters and 60 minutes and a College Football Playoff quarterfinal game. 

They were supposed to play one, a big one, New Year’s Day night at the Superdome between Notre Dame and Georgia. 

Three-plus hours before what would’ve been kickoff, Poydras Street should have been, would have been, a cacophony of crazy. In a good way; in the best of ways. Cars crawling through pregame traffic. Whistles of officers directing vehicles into the proper Superdome garages. Georgia fans decked in red and black and of course, Mardi Gras beads, walking to the Dome. Notre Dame fans sporting blue and gold and, of course, Mardi Gras beads walking to the Dome. 

Everyone, for then, friendly and happy and optimistic that their team would win a football game and see their season extended for another week. 

Instead of any of that, instead of all of that, there was only silence. So few cars. Too few people. No traffic snaking down Poydras to the massive structure that stands for what this city has long been. Resilient. Tough. Strong. 

This city has bounced back before. This city will bounce back again. Not yet. Not Wednesday. Everything was still too raw, too painful, too real to play a game at the Superdome. That’s why it sat silent. It had to sit silent. 

Early that morning a terrorist attack killed at least 14 and wounded dozens nearly a mile away on Bourbon Street. That forced the Sugar Bowl, what has become the city’s annual showcase sporting event, to be postponed to 4 p.m. ET on Thursday. 

At the corner of Poydras and LaSalle Streets, where there should’ve been bumper to bumper street traffic and shoulder to shoulder pedestrian traffic, there were only the flashing blue lights of a parked police car. In the last 12 hours, it had become a common and somewhat unsettling sight in these streets. Nearby was a Jefferson Parrish Sheriff’s Office mobile command center. Above Garage 6, was a drone taking aerial recon of the area. 

It all seemed surreal. 

The show of shear law enforcement force was everywhere. On the ground. In the sky. Along the curbs of the surface streets that surround the dome. City police cars here. A fleet of state police SUVs over there. Unmarked SUVs. 

A New Orleans Tour Bus rolled slowly by the Dome, empty except for the driver. The ride share pickup/drop-off area by the Dome was vacant. Nobody needing a ride; nobody getting a ride. No reason to be around the Dome. Not on this day, which should be the day of all days for sports fans in this city. 

You stand near the Superdome — as close as authorities will let you stand — for five, 10, 15 minutes and don’t see another soul. A car here, a car there. Then, there at the intersection of Poydras and LaSalle, Mike Grace, a 1985 Notre Dame graduate from Macomb, Michigan, and his four sons, all wearing Notre Dame gear, appear. 

They had planned to walk to the game around that time, anyway, so they wandered over from their hotel on Saint Joseph Street just to get out and get a look at the Dome. They looked like pre-teens seeing a roller coaster for the first time. 

“It sure is big.” 

All are long-time Notre Dame fans who have seen their share of Irish home games. Like the Louisville game in September. Wednesday was supposed to be their first bowl game. 

That the men were even in New Orleans was by coincidence. They attended a family wedding in Cleveland the day after the CFP first-round playoff win over Indiana, so the home game in South Bend was out. Grace found tickets, found a flight and found a hotel so it was New Orleans for New Year’s. Love, Santa. 

“I surprised these guys for Christmas,” he said. 

Three of Grace’s four sons drove down from the family home in Michigan. They picked up their brother, who lives in Canton, Ohio, and continued to New Orleans. Grace flew in from Michigan. All five arrived late Tuesday — too late that no one wanted to go out for New Year’s. Not even in New Orleans. Not even to Bourbon Street. 

“We were talking about going out,” Grace said. “They were just too tired. By the grace of God … It’s surreal.” 

Surreal because Grace’s youngest son, Sam, was a sophomore at Michigan State when a shooter opened fire “two buildings” away on Feb. 13, 2023, and took the lives of three students. 

“I,” Sam said, “was stuck in the library for like, seven hours.” 

The Graces didn’t learn what happened on Bourbon Street until about 6:15 a.m. Wednesday when the boys’ mother — Grace’s wife — frantically contacted them. 

“We were shocked,” Grace said. “It was like, ‘Wow. This is crazy.” 

After seeing the Dome, the five hoped to find a place to decompress and eat and maybe have a cold beverage or two and watch the Rose Bowl. They still planned to stay for Thursday’s game but travel plans will have to be altered. Instead of flying home, Grace will hop in the car with his sons for the ultimate father-sons 15-hour road trip back to the Midwest. 

“We’ll do a marathon drive back,” he said. 

Before then, the Sugar Bowl. Maybe Thursday afternoon will look and feel and be different around the Superdome. Maybe the juice of a Sugar Bowl, of a CFP quarterfinal, of college football, will return. Maybe those who didn’t have flights to catch or hotel rooms to vacate would figure out how to stick around another night so they could do something that nobody wanted to do Wednesday. 

Have fun. 

On this afternoon, there was none. Only silence. 

Follow South Bend Tribune and NDInsider columnist Tom Noie on X (formerly Twitter): @tnoieNDI. Contact Noie at tnoie@sbtinfo.com