EZCNN 易英网

One high school's connection to the College Football National Championships  January 20, 2026

 

Rise up, sunshine, hope you had a wonderful long weekend.I'm Corey Wire coming to you from beautiful Miami, where last night the Hurricanes faced off against the Indiana Hoosiers in the College Football National Championships. Big congrats to the Hoosiers for a hard-fought win, their first ever national title.

 

face off: to compete

hard-fought 艰苦努力得来的；浴血奋战得来的

 

Now ahead of the game, I asked both star quarterbacks, Indiana's Fernando Mendoza and Miami's Carson Beck, their keys for success for anyone out there chasing their dreams. Here's what they had to say.

 

No matter what star recruit you are, if you're too big, too little, you're not high-ranked enough, you can do it.

 

You can do it. You got to put the work in. And as a kid, I always heard these messages.

 

I'm like, okay, does that really mean that? You know, a little bit of self-doubt. But now having lived that experience and lived that journey, it really has come full circle to me. And I always want to share the same message to those youngsters.

 

self-doubt 缺少自信,自我疑惑

 

Especially in these, you know, big moments where the pressure is super high, the expectations are super high, you know, I'm calm, I'm cool, I'm collected. It's, you know, you've been in these moments before. That's what I tell myself.

 

collected [kəˈlektɪd] adj. 镇静的

 

And, you know, just go out there, have fun and enjoy it again. You know, regardless of what happens, it's a game of football. You're out here having fun playing the game that you've loved since you were five years old.

 

Now Miami's football roots run deep, but one local high school's incredible connection to last night's championship game was next level. From Heisman-winning Mendoza to Miami head coach Mario Cristobal, seven players and coaches on both teams share a common alma mater. Miami's Columbus High School.

 

alma mater 母校

 

Our Brynn Gingras had the chance to visit the school ahead of kickoff for a look at the school's storied football program.

 

Go 25 miles south of Hard Rock Stadium in Miami, where college football's biggest showdown is set for Monday night, and you'll land here. Columbus High School, a school that's, well, got some skin in the game.

 

skin in the game 切肤之痛; 有切身利益/利害关系

 

We have seven people with Columbus or Columbus alums that are all tied to this game. Welcome back. Oh, thank you.

 

That's Columbus' football coach, Dave Dunn. We first met last year when we came to chat about Fernando Mendoza, Indiana's breakout quarterback, a Heisman winner who played for Dunn.

 

breakout [ˈbrekaʊt] adj. 突破性表現的

 

Last time I saw you, wait, Fernando hadn't yet won the Heisman.

 

IU hadn't yet won the Big Ten. They certainly weren't playing for a national championship. Yes.

 

What a rise. Yes. What do you think? It's been an unbelievable month.

 

A fairytale season that will be capped off when Fernando and his brother Alberto, his backup quarterback at IU, return home to take on Miami. They'll face France. Three high school teammates play for the Hurricanes.

 

cap off: finish or complete

take on 与…作战; 与…比赛

 

Miami's head coach Mario Cristobal and assistant coach Alex Mirabal round out all Columbus High alumni who will be on the field.

 

round out 使…更完整; 凑齐(最后的人数)

 

And I coach with Coach Mirabal here. He was an offensive line coach here at Columbus.

 

offensive line 进攻锋线

 

And Coach Cristobal's nephew was on our staff and his two sons are on our team. All five players played for me here.

 

What does it just feel like as a coach? It's like a proud father moment almost.

 

How many times am I going to get a chance to see seven of our people compete for a national championship in our backyard?

 

Are you getting text messages from friends saying, hey, coach, you should brush your shoulders off? This is pretty cool that you got this many players playing in a national championship game.

 

brush one’s shoulders off 对成就感到自豪

 

A few of those, but probably more ticket requests. I've got more of those than I have accolades, but it goes with the territory.

 

accolade [ˈækəled] n. 荣誉；赞扬

 

Let's go way back. This is 1986 and 1987 school year.

 

The connections to this school run even deeper.

 

The Mendoza brothers' dad also played football at Columbus alongside Mario Cristobal.

 

Fernando was an offensive lineman and there's Mario Cristobal leading the team onto the field.

 

It's always special when you get to play against with or against guys that you know or knew growing up.

 

This is Haley's Comet. This will never happen again. A Heisman Trophy winner from Columbus High School playing his hometown university, which he was a fan of, coached by two guys who played with his father in high school.

 

And the game is in Miami. Figure that.

 

What makes this school so special?

 

It becomes part of your DNA. And I think it is passed on from generation to generation.

 

So do you cheer for the person that thanks you in their Heisman speech or do you cheer for the side where you're friends with the coaches and you coach some of those players?

 

It's like trying to pick your favorite kid. It's not an easy question to answer. So I'm just I'm there to root for both everybody, both teams on.

 

root for 為…加油

 

Do you have a shirt that's like split in half? No, I don't yet. If someone asks me what color you're wearing, red or green, I go, I'm wearing blue.

 

Ten second trivia.

 

Southern Chile is part of which larger geographic region?

 

Amazon Basin, Altiplano, Patagonia or Gran Chaco?

 

If you said Patagonia, you can move mountains. Chilean Patagonia is most famous for its enormous granite mountain peaks, Torres de Paine and its glacial fjords.

 

granite [ˈgrænɪt] n.花岗岩

 

A series of deadly wildfiresis wreaking havoc across Chile's southern region right now. Firefighters are working around the clock to contain at least 24 active fires, which, as of this taping, have killed at least 18 people and forced more than 20,000 evacuations.

 

Chilean President Gabriel Boric has declared a state of emergency in two of the country's regions after the fires consumed more than 21,000 acres in just days.

 

Fire officials say strong winds and high temperatures are helping the fires spread and complicating their ability to control the fires. Both Chile and neighboring Argentina have experienced extreme heat waves to begin the year with devastating wildfires breaking out in Argentinian Patagonia earlier this month.

 

break out 突然冒出; 爆发

 

Now to an extreme feat of endurancein one of the world's most frigid regions.

 

Take a look at these wild images out of Russia's Yakutia region, where distance runners from around the world took on the 7th annual Oymyakon Pole of Cold Marathon. The Oymyakon region is known as one of the coldest inhabited places on the planet, and runners battled bone-chilling temps as low as 41 below zero as they traversed the frozen terrain.

 

But there were no cold feet to be found for these extreme athletes, and a pair of homegrown Yakutian runners took home top prizes in both the full and 50K ultramarathon distances.

 

cold feet 临阵退缩;胆怯

 

Next up, the story of figure skater Maxim Naumov, whose life changed forever in an instant and whose resilience is now carrying him all the way to the Olympic stage. We caught up with Max just as he earned a spot on Team USA.

 

in an instant 頃刻間; 轉眼間

 

Life, unfortunately, you know, made me grow up really fast.

 

On a fateful night in January of 2025, Maxim Naumov's life changed forever.

 

Breaking news tonight, an urgent search for answers after a midair collision killed 67 people in the nation's capital.

 

Maxim's parents, Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov, were aboard American Airlines Flight 5342.

 

After their tragic deaths, he was left devastated, but he found returning to the ice to be therapeutic.

 

Lacing up those skates for the first time was one of the most difficult things I've ever done in my life. But as soon as I stepped onto the ice, I mean, again, just the overwhelming support, the hugs, you know, the tears.

 

lace up 系上

 

The path to healing was in doing the difficult things, so I knew I needed to pursue that if I wanted to get through. You know, one of the most difficult things in my entire life. That's when I knew I had to, and it was for them as well.

 

I know they would have said the exact same thing.

 

A year after losing his parents, 24-year-old Maxim's perseverance is leading him to the Winter Olympics in Italy. He won't be going alone, though.

 

perseverance [ˌpɝsəˈvɪrəns] n. 坚持不懈

 

He held up pictures to honor his parents while waiting for his scores at the U.S. figure skating championships.

 

I really wish anything in the world for them to be there, so I just told them that we did it. We did it, and we made it.

 

wish anything in the world 愿意付出世界上任何代价

 

I pray they're smiling down on me now. The value of resilience in our family, never giving up, pushing and gritting your teeth and fighting tooth and nail for every single thing that you possibly can. And I know that whatever it is that life throws at me, I'll be still standing.

 

grit your teeth 咬紧牙关，下定决心（去应付棘手的局面）

grit [grɪt] v. 在…上撒沙子; 下定决心

fight tooth and nail 竭尽全力

 

Today's story, getting a 10 out of 10. A student-athlete who just set an Arizona State record, scoring an eye-popping 100 points in a single basketball game.

 

eye-popping 令人大开眼界、瞠目结舌、或极度令人惊奇

 

As of right now, I'm still trying to wrap my head around it.

 

wrap one's head around 努力理解、想通、弄明白

 

Maryvale High School senior Adrian Stubbs isn't new to big games, but this night felt different from the opening tip. Once the score crossed the triple digits, the milestone was within reach.

 

opening tip: jump ball

 

You could feel it. Every time he touched the ball, you knew it was going in. It was a lot of jumpers. A lot of people did assume, oh, he was cherry-picking, oh, no comp, whatever. It was a lot of tough buckets.

 

jumper [ˈdʒʌmpɚ] n. 跳投 ("Jump shots" 的简称)

cherry-picking 在防守端不回防，而是留在对方篮下等着队友传长传球来轻松得分

no comp: no competition" 的縮寫

tough bucket (高难度进球); really good or difficult scoring

 

During the game, they just kept telling me to shoot, keep going, keep telling me that I'm hitting shots, keep being supportive.

 

The opposing team's fans delivering him the final tally, sealing a moment his teammates say couldn't have happened to a better person.

 

tally [ˈtælɪ] n. 总分

 

All right, that's all we have time for for now, but we do have time for one shout-out. This one goes to Mr. Morris at Terralinda Middle School in San Carlos, California. Thank you for making us a part of your day.

 

Tomorrow's Your Word Wednesday, so submit your vocabulary word and definition in the comments section of my latest post on Instagram, @Coywire, or @CNN10, and we're going to choose a winner to work into tomorrow's show. Bring it. We'll see you tomorrow.

 

I'm Coy Wire, and we are CNN10.