Through an ORANGE LENS

“I was just holding down the button. I had like 30 different shots of him running into the end zone, dropping the ball and celebrating. “And I knew I had the shot. One because I was holding it down, and two, because I could see it in the camera. I was like, ‘There it is, right there.’”

And what a shot for Brewster, the photo for sure, but also the opportunity, as he worked alongside seven other OSU students, past or present, producing mass quantities of content for the CFP’s various social media platforms during a memorable week in San Jose.

Photos. Videos. Graphics. The highs. The lows. The moments that mattered. And some that didn’t.

The Cowboys may not have played in the title game, yet a definite Oklahoma State influence stamped the game and all the buildup to the action, thanks to the OSU communications block spinning stories and visuals across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and more.

Meagan Bordayo, a 2018 OSU graduate added by the CFP as a communications intern, built a crew of 15 for her championship week social media team. She leaned on her past in filling more than half of the spots with familiar faces from her alma mater and the student work force from its athletic department.

“They knew how I operated,” Bordayo said. “They knew how I liked things done.”

Bordayo’s instincts proved true, as the OSU-dominated crew flourished in the spotlight.

The lineup: Baillee Burmaster, Patrick Osborne and Elias Williams, all graduates now working professionally; Brewster, Brady Moore, Matt Villareal and Jacob Derichsweiler, four current students.

“It was almost like a reunion,” Derichsweiler said.

Future reunions may be in order, just to celebrate the experience, and the outstanding work, produced through a tightly orchestrated cast of Cowboys.

MEAGAN BORDAYO 2018 GRADUATE CFP ROLE: SOCIAL LEAD

Originally from Plainview, Texas, some 45 minutes north of Lubbock, Bordayo looked at Syracuse, TCU and others out of high school. Ultimately, she needed to stay closer to home, and Stillwater fit the bill, taken as a last-minute option.

Not that she’d do anything different now.

“Oklahoma State is definitely the foundation for everything I will hopefully do in my career,” Bordayo said.

Early on in her career on campus, Bordayo dabbled in documentaries, live production and other areas of mass media before crossing campus to go to work in athletics communications. That’s where she thrived, given flexibility to stretch her skills while working for Gavin Lang , director of communications for OSU athletics, and eventually Kellie Reeves , the athletic department’s director of social media.

“Looking back now, it was the most fun that I’ve ever had,” she said.

Bordayo specialized in social media, working with men’s basketball, football and baseball.

“Endless opportunities,” she said.

After graduating in May, she landed the internship with the College Football Playoff, a post she’d wanted since the CFP was created in 2012 to update the national championship process. Bordayo even turned down some NFL internship opportunities in favor of her dream scenario.

And the job was a dream.

“The CFP was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity I will be forever grateful for,” Bordayo said. “I tell my boss, Gina Lehe, I’m forever indebted to her because she gave me this opportunity.

“And I know for a fact I will never do anything like it again in my life. I feel really lucky and blessed to have been a part of it.”

Bordayo’s job ran for months, all in preparation for college football’s biggest two weeks, the semifinals and Championship Week, when the four-team playoff unfolds. She attended games, compiled a 222-page program and spun the late-October-on weekly rankings into social media hits for all college football fans.

Championship Week represents an affair all its own, with an array of daily events leading up to the contest, all promoted and featured on the various social media platforms. That takes a team. And Bordayo knew just where to turn.

“The No. 1 thing for me was I better trust everyone on my social team because if something goes wrong it’s not on them, it’s on me for bringing that person in,” Bordayo said.

“I knew I had to bring in some people I trusted.”

Baillee Burmaster

2016 GRADUATE

CFP ROLE: VARIED

Bordayo and Burmaster became fast friends at OSU, although the latter’s time as a communications student wasn’t conventional.

Rather than cover sports, she starred in a sport: soccer.

“I wanted to do the broadcasting route, but because I was an athlete it was hard to do internships,” said Burmaster, who recently took a new position in Green Bay as a reporter and anchor at Fox affiliate WBAY, the market’s No. 1 television station. “I was always training in the summer in Stillwater. It was hard for me to dabble in other things.”

So Burmaster extended her stay, taking on another year of school on her way to degrees in sports media and marketing.

“That fifth year was really the time,” she said. “I wasn’t playing that fifth year so I was able to get the reps I needed as a sports broadcaster.”

Her fifth-year duties included a stint in Orange Power Studios. An internship in Lubbock led to a full-time job at a local station.

Still, when Bordayo called about a CFP position, Burmaster answered. She served as a reporter, photographer, videographer and assisted Rachel Baribeau , a national radio personality.

“It was a really hard and long week and not a lot of sleep, but when you get there on game day and see Clemson upset Bama,” Burmaster said, “and being around that atmosphere, it’s truly a memory you will hold onto forever, especially when you get to do it with people with whom you enjoy working.”

Oklahoma State people.

“Oh, Go Pokes, baby!” she said. “It’s a straight testament to how that journalism school has set everyone up to be successful. I have a lot of interns come in and say, ‘Did you know this when you were interning?’ And I say yeah, I did, because Oklahoma State and that sports media program did an amazing job to prepare me for the real world. To show me the potential I did have. That’s something I think we can all say we have in common.”

PATRICK

Osborne

2017 GRADUATE

CFP ROLE: SOCIAL MEDIA ASSISTANT

Patrick was the first in his family not to go to the University of Oklahoma.

No regrets, either.

“I’m the outlier of the family,” Osborne said. “And it’s the best decision I ever made. The sports media program there completely changed my outlook on things. And it did nothing but set me up for success.”

Osborne spent two years working for OSU athletics, propelling him to his current job in communications at the University of South Carolina.

Bordayo plucked him from there.

“As a kid who grew up watching every national championship,” Osborne said, “instantly I said, ‘I will be there. Whatever you want, whatever you need, I’ll do it.’”

Osborne and Williams worked in tandem, mostly providing captions for the flow of content going out over all platforms. He’d dreamed of attending the national title game since watching Vince Young’s Superman effort against Southern California in 2006. And the joy of getting there this time was only elevated by the company around him.

“It was already a special week,” Osborne said, “but to have the Oklahoma State family there with me, people I grew up with in college, I can’t tell you how special it was.”

Elias Williams

2017

GRADUATE CFP ROLE: SOCIAL MEDIA ASSISTANT

It takes a lot for Elias Williams to get star struck. He worked a lot of big events working for OSU athletics as a student, and continues to do so now as an assistant director of athletic communications at Arizona State.

Still, Media Day during championship week sucked him in.

“It was really cool to see Nick Saban center stage,” Williams said of the Alabama coach. “And there was a horde around him. I’d never seen that many media members before. And Nick Saban is put on this pedestal in college football, and there he is up there.”

The wide eyes didn’t end there, either.

“Going into the press box for the first time — I’d never been in an NFL press box before — and seeing what the 49ers had, man,” Williams said. “And all the media there for just one college football game. And probably not many of them had any connection to Alabama or South Carolina, but they had to be there for this one game. And it’s incredible that college football has that big of a pull.”

CFP ROLE: VIDEOGRAPHER

A good relationship with his high school guidance counselor led Villareal out of Albuquerque, N.M., to Oklahoma State. Didn’t hurt that the counselor was also his mom.

“I grew up playing sports and loving sports,” Villareal said. “The hope when I was a kid was to be a commentator on TV. My mom did some research and said, ‘There’s a sports media program in Oklahoma. And it’s really specialized.’

“As we did more research on it, we found that it was one of the most specialized, if not the most specialized program for sports media in the country. I applied and got accepted into six schools. But none of them had the program that OSU had so when it came down to the curriculum and the degree itself, OSU was definitely a no-brainer.”

For OSU athletics, Villareal is the primary communications publicist for men’s tennis and contributes with other sports. It was his video efforts that documented the Cowboy basketball team’s trip to Europe last summer.

During championship week, Villareal and Brady Moore shot and edited video, capturing everything from puppies to tailgaters to college bands to pop concerts. And, oh, the game.

“We pumped out I don’t know how many videos that week,” he said. “It was a blur. But it was an amazing experience.”

On game day, Villareal collected for a special behind-thescenes video, capturing many scenes from many angles.

“From the moment I got there, I gathered things from the whole day,” he said. “People working. People setting up. I got to go to every corner, every nook and cranny of the stadium — the very top row of the very top corner, down to the locker rooms — and it was honestly so fun.

“I was like a kid in a new playground.”

Brady Moore

2019 GRADUATE

CFP ROLE: VIDEOGRAPHER

Championship week wasn’t all fun and games. It was a load of work requiring early wakeups and late nights.

Game day provided the payoff.

“There’s something about that adrenaline when it kicks in,” Moore said.

Moore, who publicizes equestrian, among other duties, for OSU athletics, was assigned a significant CFP project: the Playoff Playlist Live, a three-day concert series. He shot video of a variety of acts: Logic. Alessia Cara. Leon Bridges. Jay Rock. Brynn Elliott. And more.

“It turned out really well,” Moore said, “one of my proudest videos I did while I was there.”

The game day adrenaline was needed, as Moore and Villareal, roommates in Stillwater, spent the entire day providing video content for social media.

There were team arrival videos, preview videos, in-game videos and postgame videos. And they all had to be shot and edited and readied for immediate sharing on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

Moore found time for some favorite shots, too: “Nick Saban walked off the bus, and I was right there. (Clemson quarterback) Trevor Lawrence walked right by me, and his hair is literally flowing in the wind. And the pyrotechnics coming up during the national anthem.”

Jacob Derichsweiler 2019 Graduate

CFP ROLE: PHOTOGRAPHER

Full disclosure: T.C. Brewster is Deirichsweiler’s roommate, and a Clemson fan.

“All season I would have told you I was pulling against Clemson, just to mess with him,” Derichsweiler said. “But I kind of wanted to see Clemson do it, just because I knew it would be really cool for him to see his favorite team win a national championship in person.”

The favorite team delivered, too, 44-16, in a stunning domination.

The experience was cool for Derichsweiler, too.

The roommates were a photo tag team for the title game. Brewster worked the first half on the field, Derichsweiler the second. When one was shooting, the other was editing photos for social media content.

“We went out to the field afterward,” Derichsweiler said. “All the people were gone, and there was confetti all over the ground. And it was like, ‘We really just did that. We got to work the national championship.’”

Brewster got his money shot. Derichsweiler’s was different, yet glorious.

“The golden moment shot for me was I got this awesome picture of Trevor Lawrence holding the trophy, and he’s got this smile on his face,” he said. “I love that photo. That was my favorite.”

T.C. BREWSTER 2021 GRADUATE CFP ROLE: PHOTOGRAPHER

Brewster’s path to the College Football Playoff was different, routing not through OSU athletic communications, but the O’Colly, the school’s student-run newspaper.

Friendships with Derichsweiler and others clearly paid off, as he found himself in a group message, with a request from Bordayo asking him to reach out.

Even before responding, he knew he wanted in. It was the national championship game. And Clemson would be there. T.C.’s dad, Kevin, went to Clemson. And the family had been Tigers fans forever.

“I know for a fact that it would have been an exceptional experience regardless, but it was super cool with Clemson there,” Brewster said. “Being there, it was cool, because I knew that all my family was watching, all my friends were watching and then seeing the team I grew up watching win a national championship was cool.”

Besides, Brewster got the shot. And it wasn’t by accident. A photographer with the O’Colly, he’d shot enough games in the tight confines of Boone Pickens Stadium to know how crowded things can get on the field. And this was the national championship game. So Brewster claimed his spot behind the end line and never budged.

“I got out there really early because I wanted to get a good spot,” he said. “Covering Oklahoma State, I know the sidelines get really crowded. And there were three times the amount of media.

“I stood in that spot during warm-ups, with one guy from USA Today on one side, another from ESPN on the other.”

One exhausting week. One huge game. One talented group from Oklahoma State putting their stamp on the College Football Playoff National Championship.

“I couldn’t be prouder of that group, going to work the College Football Playoff was an opportunity that each of them earned,” said Lang. “I’m happy to see good things happen to good people.”

Good people doing good work.

“We kind of had a moment before the game started,” Bordayo said. “We were all on the field in the morning, we had just had our social debrief and we made a point that all the Oklahoma State people get a picture taken together.

“And that night, there was a moment in the hospitality room where we thought, ‘Look at how many of us are here.’ It had us take a step back and say, ‘I can’t believe we just did that.’

“These kids, from Oklahoma State, creating content on the biggest stage in college football. Never would have thought it.”

STORY BY JOHN LANGHAM PHOTOS BY BRUCE WATERFIELD & MELISSA MORALES