Rookie Barkley has top-selling NFL jersey
NCAA powerhouses Wolverines and Fighting Irish meet again on the gridiron after three-year hiatus
Nice job, rookie.
A guy who has yet to take a snap in a real NFL game has the bestselling jersey in the league. Saquon Barkley, the All-America running back from Penn State selected second overall in the draft by the Giants, is the leader according to Dick’s Sporting Goods Jersey Report. Barkley is one of two rookies in the top 10; top overall pick Baker Mayfield, Cleveland’s quarterback, is ranked ninth.
Only one defensive player makes the top 10: Denver linebacker Von Miller. Eagles quarterback Carson Wentz ranks second, followed by Tom Brady.
A year ago, Cowboys QB Dak Prescott was first, followed by Brady. Prescott is fourth this year. Along with Barkley and Mayfield, popular rookie jerseys belong to Buffalo QB Josh Allen, followed by Denver DE Bradley Chubb and Cleveland DB Denzel Ward. Joining Miller on the defensive list are Carolina LB Luke Kuechly, Houston DE J.J. Watt, Cleveland DE Myles Garrett, and Chubb. The NFC East dominates sales on the Jersey Report with the top three teams: the Giants, Eagles and Cowboys, New England is fourth, Denver fifth. San Francisco is the least-popular club, though if Jimmy Garoppolo remains unbeaten as a starting quarterback, who knows if that will last.
The story of the Philadelphia Eagles’ first NFL championship since 1960 has been told in many ways and with many angles.
None has been as refreshing or unique as the theme taken by AP Football Writer Rob Maaddi in his new book, Birds of Pray. Maaddi’s book examines how the strong faith and religious devotion in the Eagles’ locker room helped drive them to the highest achievement in pro football. Maaddi chronicles the ups and downs of the team’s title season with a pinpoint focus on the power that belief — whether it be in God or each other — can bring. “The real story of the Super Bowl champions can’t be told without talking about the strong faith and the unique bond many of the players shared,” Maaddi says. “I’ve never seen a team that was more united than the 2017 Philadelphia Eagles, and their faith is what created that special brotherhood, and their faith is what allowed them to persevere and overcome so much adversity and ultimately become champions.”
The Dallas Cowboys are the NFL’s No. 1 team, while the Jacksonville Jaguars and San Francisco 49ers are coming on strong?
Who says?
Ticket buyers on the secondary market, according to StubHub. For the fifth straight year, demand for Cowboys tickets is the highest in the league. StubHub sees an increase of nearly 300 per cent in sales over the average when the Cowboys are the visiting team. “The Cowboys are an iconic franchise with a reputation that continues to draw a crowd, season after season,” says Scott Jablonski, StubHub’s general manager of NFL, NBA & NHL.
But a Cowboys contest is not the most-sought ticket heading into the season. That game actually is in London, where the Jaguars host the Eagles on Oct. 28. It’s the first time an international series game has appeared in StubHub’s top 10 most in-demand games. “Eagles fans have always been passionate, but their Super Bowl win has truly ignited the fan base to unprecedented levels,” says Jablonski. “We’re seeing Eagles fans willing to travel long distances to watch their team play, including internationally for their game in London.” The Jaguars and 49ers have seen large demand growth compared to last season; San Francisco has moved up from 19th to sixth, while sales for Jacksonville games are up 318 per cent, following the team’s run to the AFC title game last January.
Josh Rosen is impressed by the career and stature of LeBron James. The rookie quarterback of the Arizona Cardinals, who has drawn criticism for being arrogant because of his frankness and willingness to take a stand, has strong praise for the latest venture of the NBA’s biggest star. Asked by Adam Schein on his SiriusXM satellite radio program how Rosen sometimes has been perceived, the 10th overall selection in this year’s draft noted: “I think it is always about crafting the message. There is always a good intention at heart; anything I do or say in putting myself out there is for the sake of helping others and trying to give people a voice who don’t actually have one.
“And on that topic, LeBron’s new show, ‘The Shop,’ it is exactly what this country means when they talk about ‘We need to have a conversation.’ And people are like, ‘What does that even mean, it’s conceptualist.’ This show and that concept of athletes taking a lead and taking a role of sort of progress is really admirable, and that is exactly what we all should be rooting for, not criticizing.”
When I researched and wrote what the Chicago Tribune has called the ‘definitive history’ of the Michigan-Notre Dame football rivalry, Natural Enemies, in the early 1990s, the two fabled universities could boast a lot. At the time they ranked No. 1 or 2 in U.S. college football history in victory totals, best winning percentage, most consensus all-Americans produced, most Associated Press poll appearances and most national championships claimed.
Those days are gone.
And yet, as Michigan and Notre Dame get set after three years to resume their once scorching-hot football series Saturday night in South Bend, this rivalry remains special. For these reasons:
No lasting major U.S. college football rivalry is older, which means Michigan-Notre Dame predates almost every North American sports rivalry, period. The series dates back to 1887 when there were 38 states in the Union. When Canada was 20 years old. When the fastest ways to travel were still by train or horse. When electrified homes and businesses, light bulbs and bicycles were new things. When the Stanley Cup would not exist for five more years and the Grey Cup for 22. When the first World Series and first Yankees-Bosox baseball games were 16 years away. When the sport of basketball would not be invented for four more years, nor the NFL formed for 33. And when dozens of top-level U.S. college football teams had yet to even take up the sport, including Ohio State, USC, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Florida, Florida State, Tennessee, Miami and Georgia. Army had yet to even play Navy.
2 Its origins
Michigan literally taught Notre Dame how to play football. Name another sports rivalry where one archrival taught the game to the other.
It was in November 1887 when two former Notre Dame students — Billy Harless and George DeHaven — convinced their teammates on the Michigan varsity to stop off at South Bend en route to Chicago for a big Thanksgiving Day game, to teach their former schoolmates this new Americanized brand of rugby. Squads were mixed for the first half of the game, to help the ND boys get it.
“So we played gently with them that day,” DeHaven recalled, “and carefully taught Notre Dame how to play modern football.” Until then, football on the ND campus had consisted of a hundred boys to a side, all scrambling to get a round ball over the opponent’s fence by any means. Seven years later, Michigan fulfilled Notre Dame’s request to send along its first coach: ex-Wolverine James L.D. Morrison, who soon filled in Michigan athletic director Charles Baird on the nuances of the sport. “Thanks old man for this position,” Morrison wrote. “I arrived here yesterday morning and found about as green a set of football players as ever donned a (uniform). They want to smoke (tobacco), and when I told them that they would have to run to get up some wind they thought I was rubbing it in on them.”
Moose Krause, Fighting Irish athletic director from 1949-80 and known widely as Mr. Notre Dame, told me in 1990, two years before he died that “we owe a lot to Michigan.”
3 Its popularity
Pick your barometer. Tickets? Take it from someone who most years winds up scrounging. They’re hard to get, even with Michigan Stadium’s nation-leading capacity of 107,601 and Notre Dame’s 77,662. Usually a handful of unwanted tickets wind up back at each school’s ticket office for resale the day before the game, but not this year. And how about this. By the early 1990s, the rivalry had become so intense, and important, it briefly eclipsed each school’s top traditional rivalry — Michigan’s against Ohio State, Notre Dame’s against Southern Cal. Don’t believe it? Well, Michigan quarterback Elvis Grbac said in 1991 that if the Wolverines were to go 1-10 that season, he’d want the one win to come against the Irish. Perhaps more than anything, there’s this. The two schools’ helmets, uniforms, fight songs and stadiums remain as legendary as any in the sport, or in any sport for that matter.
4 The thrilling games
Most matchups in the modern era (18-of-31) have been one-score games. Five of the first 15 from 1978-94 went down to a game-ending field goal. Of those, two missed wide, one was blocked, and two were made: by Notre Dame’s Harry Oliver, who eked out a 51-yarder over the crossbar to win the 1980 classic, and Michigan’s Remy Hamilton, who returned the favour at Notre Dame Stadium with a 42-yarder to win in 1994. Nail-biters were less frequent once the series resumed annually from 2002-14. Still, three of the first four tilts this century were one-score affairs. And three in a row from 2009-11 weren’t decided until the final 30 seconds, with Michigan each time improbably pulling out victory.
5 The iconic moments
Depending on your age, if you’re a fan of U.S. college football you can probably cite several other stunning, memorable moments from this series. Ricky Watters’ punt-return TD and unorthodox Reggie Ho’s four field goals, as Notre Dame rallied late to win the first game of its last nationalchampionship season, 1988 … Or a year later, when ND’s Rocket Ismail returned two kickoffs for touchdowns, the first and only such scores allowed in coach Bo Schembechler’s 21 years in Ann Arbor … Or QB Rick Mirer’s prime-time debut as Irish starter in 1990, when he rallied No. 1 ND to victory from 10 points down late in the final quarter … Or the ballsy, long, 4th-and-inches touchdown pass from Grbac to a flat-out-diving Desmond Howard at the back of the end zone as Michigan ended ND’s fourgame series win streak in 1991 … Or Mario Manningham’s three first-half touchdown catches in Michigan’s blowout win in 2006 … Or the ultimate Irish heart-crusher, Michigan quarterback Denard Robinson, who ran in for the winning TD with 27 seconds left in the 2010 game, in setting the series single-game rushing yards record of 258, only to top that the next year by throwing the winning TD pass with two seconds left in setting the series single-game passing-yards record of 338.
6 The even-handedness
Notre Dame’s longest series win streak is four games, from 1987-90. Michigan’s is three, from 2009-11. And while Notre Dame can say it has won two of the last three, Michigan has been victor in six of the last nine. But the series over the longer haul could not be more even. Over the past 30 years Notre Dame has won 11 times, Michigan 11 times and they tied once. Over the past 100 years, Notre Dame has won 16 times, Michigan 16 times.
7 The under-handedness
Until Notre Dame in 2012 opted to pull the plug on the series after 2014, despite a handshake agreement in the 1990s to make it permanent, Michigan without exception always had been the one to break off the series and balked at resuming it. First in the late 1880s. Then from 1903-07. Then for 32 years from 1910-41, until Michigan athletic director Fielding H. Yost, late in his life, mellowed and transformed from the man who hated Notre Dame most, to the man most in favour of a Michigan-Notre Dame game. And finally for 34 years from 1944-77, when Michigan’s longtime anti-religious athletic director Fritz Crisler refused to schedule Notre Dame in football or basketball. Yost and Crisler in their eras did petulant things — always behind the scenes — to undermine Notre Dame’s football success.
The great irony of that, however, is the Yost-and Michigan-led boycott of ND in football by all Midwestern powers in the 1910s forced the “Fighting Irish,” as they were starting to be called, to travel to other regions to find quality opposition.
That onus eventually became a glorious bonus. That is, by the middle of the 1920s the most successful coach the sport has known, Knute Rockne, won almost every game — often in large, packed, legendary stadiums from coast to coast.
That’s how Rockne turned the Fighting Irish from a littlerespected team from a denominational school in backwater Indiana to perhaps the most famous, popular sports team America has known.
So Notre Dame can thank Michigan for that, too.