The MVP of the BCS Championship was in the Superdome but Didn’t Play
By Blake Johnson with quotes and background from Nakia Hogan’s article in the Sunday edition of The Times-Picayune.
Alabama long snapper Carson Tinker bent over the football as he has done hundreds of times before Monday night at the BCS Championship at the Superdome in New Orleans.
“There’s the snap and it is good,” said the announcer.
The perfect snap, laces out and end over end through the uprights. 3-0 Alabama in the lead, then a missed attempt and another field goal made and another made and another missed and another made, 6-0, 9-0, 12-0, 15-0. For a team that lost at home to LSU earlier this season on missed field goals, it was like Alabama had help from above. Maybe they did..
Ashley Harrison, the girlfriend of Carson Tinker, told the long snapper that he and the rest of his teammates would be playing in the BCS Championship game. But Ashley would not live to see her prediction come true.
A little more than eight months earlier on a warm Wednesday afternoon, Ashley, her boyfriend and other friends were watching TV in Tuscaloosa, Ala. The weatherman came on and said a tornado was headed in their direction. They hid holding each other in a closet of the home but the winds were too much, pulling them out of the house and prying them apart. When the storm had passed Carson had suffered a concussion, broken wrist and injured his ankle. Ashley’s body was found 65 yards from the house.
In the months following the tornado, the state of Alabama worked to recover. So did Carson, returning to practice in the Fall. The team placed a plaque above his locker at Bryant-Denny Stadium in Ashley’s memory.
“She always wanted me to play my heart out,” Carson Tinker told The Times-Picayune’s Nakia Hogan. “She always told me she wanted me to play in the NFL. She always told me she wanted me to play for the Cowboys. I always keep that with me and hold on to that.”
Tuesday would have been Ashley Harrison’s 23rd birthday. As Alabama’s Trent Richardson ran into the end zone with 4:36 left on the clock, Carson Tinker trotted out on the field one last time for a PAT attempt to make the score 22-0. The PAT hooked right hitting the upright and falling to the ground. Alabama would go on to win 21-0.
Life will not be easy. We lose games at home. We get blocked or our lives hook left, right or hit the goal post. But there are those in our loves that love us. They cheer us on and help us make the field goals in life that give us success. We must enjoy the moment, saver the time with loved ones and love them back.
For more on this story, read the basis of my article, Nakia Hogan’s article in The Times-Picayune. http://www.nola.com/bcs/index.ssf/2012/01/alabama_players_girlfriend_dre.html
Tags: Alabama, Ashley Harrison, BCS Championship, Carson Tinker, tornado
