Daily Press from Newport News, Virginia • B3

DAILY PRESS 3 COLLEGE FOOTBALL COMMENTARY Celebration Bowl has 125-vear roots SPORTS Organizer recalls first HBCU football game, held in 1892 By Chuck Culpepper The Washington Post Mercedes-Benz Stadium looks futuristic enough that it wouldn't come as a 100-percent shock if it lifted off and began zipping around the Milky Way. On Saturday at about midday, that look will become evocative for anyone who juxtaposes it with what happened 125 years ago. On Saturday, three weeks and two days before it stages the College Football Playoff national championship game, the four-month-old wonder, with its otherworldly video and gargantuan windows on the downtown Atlanta skyline, will stage the third Celebration Bowl, which christens the bowl season and throws back at once. Per custom, it will pit the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference champion (North Carolina against the Southwestern Athletic Conference champion (Grambling State), and it will sort out a national champion among historically black colleges and universities. ABC will air it at noon.

This being almost 2018, the game will have "high-tech uniforms and cleats and more footballs than you know what to do with," said John Grant, the bowl's executive director. It also will come almost precisely 125 years since that game with one waterlogged football, when Biddle Memorial Institute of Charlotte traveled 43 miles to Livingstone of Salisbury, N.C, when a 43-mile journey was so much longer than today. That game, on Livingstone's front lawn, in snowfall, on Dec. 27, 1892, became the first between historically black colleges, and Grant thinks of it repeatedly. He thinks of the "fans who came by wagons, who walked, who came on horseback." He thinks of the fans who "came and stood around the field in snow to watch this game that they had never seen people like them play." He said, "They had to be cold and wet" They saw a game for which players equipped their street TIM WARNERHOUSTON CHRONICLE Grambling State wide receiver Quintin Guice, shown scoring against Alcorn State, is part of a Tigers team facing N.C.

on Saturday in Atlanta. Celebration will become part of Adanta's burgeoning fabric, that it might lure even spectators with no ties to either team. For this time, he'll think of the past, of the end of 1892, when Biddle got a sole touchdown and won 5-0, and an apparent game-tying touchdown by Livingstone, on a fumble return, was overruled as the snow had occluded the sideline, which lent the game another aspect Americans would relish ever since: a refereeing controversy. "I get touched by thinking about 125 years," Grant said. "This is my motivation.

It's a story I believe is important to constantly be told and repeated and reiterated, for fans to understand how powerful their role is. "Hopefully," he said, "when you talk about that, in your mind, you'll have a vision of what it looked like." shoes with cleats. They played in uniforms sewn by the women in Livingstone's industrial department Their football realities mirrored those around the country at the time in a sport that had begun in 1869: They wore no helmets. They wore no pads. They attempted no passes.

To appear upon the front lawn in Salisbury, the team from Biddle (which would become Johnson C. Smith University) traveled by segregated train car, then by horse-led wagons from the train station. The teams had pitched in for the regulation football. Grant tries to picture the fans, huddled around in the cold, surely wearing hats. "Fans carry a sport," he said.

"My hat goes off certainly to the young men who played, but my hat really goes off to the fans who made the journey. They had to stay in houses with friends and family. Today we fill up hotels." For this third edition that happens around the 125th anniversary, the Celebration Bowl hit upon a doozy. It matches an 11-0 team with an 11-1 team (Grambling), and it matches a head coach who used to coach at Grambling Rod Broadway) with a coach (Grambling's Brod-erick Fobbs) whose father (Lee Fobbs Jr.) coaches his running backs but also used to coach It teems with players profoundly unaccustomed to losing, with Grambling unbeaten since its opener at Tulane, and among only two unbeaten teams (alongside James Madison) in the Football Championship Subdivision. For the second straight year, defeated an FBS opponent, this time Charlotte, after Kent State in 2016.

"I think it'll be a long time now (for another MEAC unbeaten team), the way college football is going, having to play those money games," Broadway said in Greensboro this week, referring to those familiar games in which smaller schools collect larger checks by playing at FBS schools. Broadway, 62, who played on the defensive line at North Carolina, is the only coach to win HBCU national titles at three places (counting N.C. Central, Grambling and at the 2015 Celebration Bowl). Saturday's game has the winning programs from the first two Celebration Bowls, in this toddler bowl that tries to follow where bowls such as the Pelican (1970s, three games) and Heritage (1990s, eight games), matching MEAC and SWAC teams, went dormant. By the stat sheets, the Celebration drew 35,528 in 2015, when beat Alcorn State 41-34, and 31,096 in 2016, when Grambling beat N.C.

Central. Grant yearns that the NBA EASTERN CONFERENCE is really important." The VHSCA all-star game, at 2 p.m. Saturday at the University of Virginia-Wise, brings together players from across the state. Several Peninsula District athletes made the western trek to participate, including: Cam Stevenson, Jaquari-ous Bellamy, I'jaughn Gaskins and Juanya Majette from Hampton; Tim Payne and Nigel Simmons from Heritage; and Conrad Oudaw from Woodside. Yanchulis can be reached by phone at 757-298-5176.

attends Bishop Sullivan, offers the closest connection to the Peninsula. Walmon acknowledged the South-side-laden roster makeup but downplayed the competition between the 1-64 Bowl and the 757 All-Star Classic. "Just looking at the 757 area code, from the BRD all the way to the Beach District, there's so much talent," Walmon said. "So there's more than enough talent to go around, and more games means more kids being seen by college scouts. AH of us expose kids to college opportunities, and that's what SENIORS Continued from 1 The 1-64 Bowl also builds on a regional rivalry, with Team 757 representing Hampton Roads and Team 804 representing Richmond.

The contest, which will be played at 2 p.m. at the Virginia Beach Sportsplex, has local organizers, including Denbigh wrestling coach Oliver Walmon. Yet it includes no players from Peninsula-area schools; Hampton native Mondo Walker, who ATLANTIC PCT GB L10 STK HOME AWAY CONF Boston 24 6 .800 7-3 W-l 13-2 11-4 15-5 Toronto 18 8 .692 4 7-3 W-l 9-1 9-7 8-4 New York 15 13 .536 8 5-5 W-3 13-5 2-8 8-9 Philadelphia 14 13 .519 85 4-6 W-l 7-6 7-7 6-6 Brooklyn 11 16 .407 115 5-5 L-l 6-8 5-8 5-8 SOUTHEAST PCT GB L10 STK HOME AWAY CONF Washington 15 13 .536 5-5 W-l 7-5 8-8 7-6 Miami 14 14 .500 1 5-5 W-l 5-7 9-7 9-7 Orlando 11 19 .367 5 3-7 L-4 6-8 5-11 6-10 Charlotte 10 18 .357 5 2-8 L-2 8-7 2-11 5-11 Atlanta 6 22 .214 9 3-7 L-3 3-10 3-12 4-17 CENTRAL PCT GB L10 STK HOME AWAY CONF Cleveland 21 8 .724 9-1 W-3 12-4 9-4 16-6 Milwaukee 15 11 .577 45 7-3 L-l 9-4 6-7 5-7 Indiana 16 13 .552 5 5-5 L-2 10-6 6-7 11-7 Detroit 16 13 .552 5 3-7 W-2 8-5 8-8 9-9 Chicago 7 20 .259 13 4-6 W-4 5-8 2-12 6-8 WESTERN CONFERENCE SOUTHWEST PCT GB L10 STK HOME AWAY CONF Houston 22 4 .846 10-0 W-ll 10-3 12-1 12-2 San Antonio 19 9 .679 4 8-2 L-l 13-2 6-7 9-5 New Orleans 15 14 .517 85 4-6 W-l 8-7 7-7 9-11 Memphis 8 20 .286 15 1-9 L-5 5-11 3-9 8-10 Dallas 8 21 .276 155 4-6 L-l 6-10 2-11 6-14 NORTHWEST PCT GB L10 STK HOME AWAY CONF Minnesota 17 12 .586 6-4 W-l 10-5 7-7 14-5 Portland 15 13 .536 15 5-5 W-2 7-8 8-5 8-7 Denver 15 13 .536 15 5-5 L-l 10-2 5-11 6-8 Oklahoma City 13 14 .481 3 5-5 W-l 9-4 4-10 7-9 Utah 13 15 .464 35 6-4 L-4 11-5 2-10 8-7 PACIFIC PCT GB L10 STK HOME AWAY CONF Golden State 23 6 .793 9-1 W-8 10-3 13-3 11-4 L.A. Clippers 11 15 .423 105 6-4 W-3 6-7 5-8 7-9 L.A. Lakers 10 17 .370 12 3-7 L-2 6-7 4-10 4-10 Sacramento 9 19 .321 135 4-6 L-l 5-7 4-12 7-8 Phoenix 9 21 .300 145 2-8 L-5 4-12 5-9 4-11 NBA WASHINGTON WIZARDS 100, LOS ANGELES CLIPPERS 91 Wizards fend off Clippers Former Cavalier Scott ties season high after third-quarter surge 'late game not included LEADERS SCORING AVERAGE PLAYER FG FT AVG Harden, HOU 253 Antknmpo, MIL 275 James, CLE FRIDAY'S RESULTS Portland 95, ORLANDO 88 Miami 104, CHARLOTTE 98 Detroit 104, INDIANA 98 Oklahoma City at late L.A Cli ppers at washi ngton, late Utah at Boston, late Brooklyn at Toronto, late Atlanta at Memphis, late Chicago at Milwaukee, late New Orleans at Denver, late San Antonio at Houston, late SATURDAYS SCHEDULE Portland at Charlotte, 7 Utah at Cleveland, 7:30 OklahomaCity at New York, 7:30 L.A.

Clippers at Miami, 8 Milwaukee at Houston, 8 Phoenix at Minnesota, 8 Dallas at San Antonio, 8:30 Boston at Memphis, 9 SUNDAYS SCHEDULE Sacramento at Toronto, 3:30 Orlando at Detroit, 4 Indiana at Brooklyn, 6 Cleveland at Washington, 6 MONDAYS SCHEDULE New York at Charlotte, 7 Boston at Indiana, 7 Miami at Atlanta, 7:30 Philadelphia at Chicago, 8 Utah at Houston, 8 Portland at Minnesota, 8 Denver at Oklahoma City, 8 Phoenix at Dallas, 8:30 L.A CI ippers at San Antonio, 8:30 Golden State at LA. Lakers, 10:30 THURSDAYS RESULTS Detroit 105, ATLANTA 91 New York 111, BROOKLYN 104 MINNESOTA 119, Sacramento 96 CLEVELAND 121, LA. Lakers 112 GOLDEN STATE 112, Dallas 97 home team in CAPS 203 31.6 186 29.9 128 28.1 139 26.3 184 26.3 169 26.1 100 26.1 128 25.5 149 25.1 109 24.3 120 24.3 113 24.0 127 23.8 169 23.7 143 23.7 107 23.6 Curry, GS Lillard, POR Cousins, NOR Durant, GOL Porzingis, NYK Davis, NO Oladipo, IND Booker, PHX Irving, BOS Beal, WAS Embiid, PHL Griffin, LAC through Thursday By Bob Bancroft The Associated Press WASHINGTON Mike Scott tied a season high with 22 points while Bradley Beal added 20 as the Washington Wizards held off the Los Angeles Clippers 100-91 Friday night. Scott, a former standout for Deep Creek High and the Virginia Cavaliers, scored 10 points in the third quarter, hitting four of his five shots from the field. Scott, who averages 8.4 points per game, made 9 of 10 from the field and has made 34 of 43 over the last six games for the Wizards.

John Wall scored 15 points on just 5-for-16 shooting in his second game back after a nine-game absence, but he scored seven points as the Wizards closed the game on an 18-9 run after Los Angeles had come back to tie the game at 82 on a 3-pointer by Lou Williams. Williams led the Clippers with 23 points, while rookie Jawun Evans had a career-high 15 points as Los Angeles had a three-game winning streak snapped. Despite trailing by double digits at some point in each quarter, the Clippers twice tied things up down the stretch in the fourth quarter. The Clippers are 0-8 when trailing after the third quarter on the road and just 2-13 overall. The Wizards' Otto Porter Jr.

left the game with 8:56 remaining in the first half after picking up two fouls. A few minutes later, Porter went to the locker room with a trainer and missed the rest of the game with a right thigh bruise, finishing with a season-low NICK WASSAP Clippers guard Sindarius Thornwell fouls Wizards forward Mike Scott (30) during a shot in Washington's 100-91 home win over Los Angeles. Scott, who grew up in Chesapeake, equaled his season high with 22 points. Anthony preparing for return to N.Y. Three months after trading him to the Thunder, the Knicks welcome Carmelo Anthony back to Madison Square Garden on Saturday.

Anthony, who led the Knicks to three straight playoff appearances after arriving in 2011, always made clear that he loved New York and didn't want to go. So how might Knicks fans react to his return? "I don't think he deserves to be booed, but you never know," Knicks forward Lance Thomas said. "Regardless, he is going to bring his A' game and we're going to bring ours." Anthony is more concerned about making things work in Oklahoma City, where the Thunder have yet to get into sync. "Guys are trying to be unselfish and figure this thing out," Anthony said, "and we're sticking with it." An MRI confirmed no further damage to the left knee of Heat Justise Winslow than the strain reported by the team. LeBron James' 59th triple-double Thursday tied him with Larry Bird for sixth on the career list.

AP while guard Austin Rivers was out in the concussion protocol. Coach Doc Rivers used his 11th different starting lineup in 27 games. Wizards: Forward Markieff Morris returned to the starting lineup after missing Wednesday's win over the Memphis Grizzlies with right hip soreness. Wall missed his first two free throws after going 0 for 4 from the line against Memphis and finished 3 for 5. three minutes and two points.

Los Angeles erased the majority of anl8-point deficit to pull within 48-43 at the half. The Clippers shot just 31 percent in the first quarter but brought that number up to 40 percent for the half. Tip-ins Clippers: Guard Milos Teodosic was out with a minutes restriction from an earlier plantar fascia injury,.