By Cristian Mitchell | Thursday, February 6th, 2025 | Arlington, Texas
For the first time ever, I had the opportunity to experience the Offense-Defense All-American Bowl as a content creator/media personnel.
When I had first gotten notice that I would be traveling down to Arlington Texas for the game I had a bit of excitement and nerves hit my body all at once. It was the most eventful 4-day stretch in my young life. I’ll never forget the feeling of initially walking into and onto the field of AT&T Stadium.
Things kicked off with registration and there was a lot of opportunity for media spotlight and creation right off the bat in the beautiful Sheraton hotel we were stationed in. Offense Defense had control of pretty much the entire second floor including multiple ballrooms and offices that we operated in for the week.
As players filed into registration and lined up for pictures, I realized just how big of an event this was. Later that night, the first episode of the OD Night Cap was produced and released giving insight into the future of the event. The excitement carried over into day 1 of practice at Oak Ridge High School.
The first day of practice came and provided ample opportunity to get pictures and video to help further build up the bowl game. On this day, the rest of the content team and I went to work and hopped on Instagram and YouTube live as players got their jerseys. The hype was at an all-time high for the players after seeing their names on this year’s All-American Bowl uniform.
After that, it was finally time to go into Cowboy Stadium. This was the moment that my team and all of the players had truly been waiting for. The stadium was absolutely unreal, the amount of attention to detail in every little thing was insane. From the Dallas star being on door handles, to elevator buttons, to box seats, to wall art, you could tell that you had entered Jerry’s World. After some touristy moments, we made our way to the press box and field level to provide coverage of all 7 games throughout the day. Personally, I started on the field by getting b-roll and creating content for Instagram. After the first game, I switched up and went into the booth to hop on the broadcast of the games. Commentating on the games with such great coworkers made things smooth and I especially wanted to shout out the production crew and Caleb and Cade Williams.
The broadcasts went smoothly and we fell into a rhythm while watching the best of the best at this level compete. We were treated to a variety of good games such as the Raider’s 21-20 win over the Seahawks. The phenomenal athletes and competition made it easy to work with.
I can’t wait for next year’s Offense-Defense All-American Bowl!
