As college basketball players take their team buses to the NCAA Tournament arenas, many put on headphones, listen to a song and absorb the atmosphere. Coaches also sometimes take a moment to review last-minute scouting reports to escape to a tune filtering through their airpods.

These soundtracks, perhaps unconsciously, also serve a purpose. Music can calm our nerves – or cheer us up. A specific banger can provide a dose of self-confidence. A sentimental song may remind us of our great purpose. “Music is shorthand for emotion,” Leo Tolstoy once wrote.

So now that March Madness is underway, The Athletics wondered what these tournament stars will listen to before competing in some of the most important games of their lives. We asked players and coaches from women’s and men’s tournaments to share their pre-match playlists. The players’ tastes ranged from Nicki Minaj to Veeze and even Elvis Presley. Coaches ranged from Gospel to AC/DC.

You won’t make the same jump as these athletes by listening to their hype music, but these playlists will have you ready (from your couch) for a tip-off.

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Mixtapes of Women’s NCAA Tournament Players

JuJu Watkins

Guard | No. 1 USC

Watkins, the brightest freshman in women’s basketball, has taken the Trojans to new heights this season. The Los Angeles native, who ranks second nationally in scoring with 27 points per game, mainly listens to hip-hop before games. But she always plays a song from the soundtrack to “The Incredibles,” a song that could be used for USC’s 2023-2024 theme song, “Life’s Incredible Again.” It’s definitely in Los Angeles.

“I always play this before a game,” she says, “because I love The Incredibles and it gets me excited.”

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Guard | No. 3 LSU

Q: Who do you listen to before games?

Flau’jae Johnson: Myself.

That’s more annoying. The athlete-rapper signed a distribution deal with Jay-Z’s record label Roc Nation, so why not listen to her own lyrics before games? Maybe she’ll do a mashup of “One Shining Moment” with her song “My Moment” if the Tigers repeat as national champions.

“I’m not trying to be a pluggy, commercial-y person, but they’re all my songs,” says Johnson. “I listen to me before the games. I make really motivational, uplifting music. When I listen to my songs, I feel like I can do anything.”

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Paige Bueckers

Guard | No. 3 UConn

Bueckers is trying to advance to a third Final Four in her four seasons with the Huskies. With an average of 21.3 points and a score of almost 54 percent, she is enjoying a productive – and healthy – season. Her playlist is curated to inspire, packed with gospel and modern hip-hop. Bueckers often plays ‘Thank You For It All’ by Marvin Sapp.

“This is a great gospel song,” she says. “It helps me find my peace and gratitude before the games.”

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Forward | No. 5Utah

Pili, a 6-foot-4 forward, has Utah back in the NCAA tournament for the third straight season. She is one of the best (and most unique) post players in the country, averaging 20.8 points per game and shooting 55 percent. She especially likes hip-hop (from early 2000s to present) before the games.

Her favorite pre-game song is Drake’s “Up All Night” (featuring Nicki Minaj). “It gets me hyped,” says Pili, who calls the 2010 hip-hop single “old-school.”

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Guard | No. 4 Virginia Tech

Amoore, a senior from Australia, is averaging 19.2 points and 6.9 assists per game. She tries to lead the Hokies back to the Final Four. As a feisty guard on the court, it’s no wonder Amoore is looking for songs that fuel her energy.

Her favorite pre-game song ‘Never Lose Me’ by Flo Milli builds her confidence. “I’m trying to get into my mood,” Amoore says. “Like, I’m that girl.” She likes Rihanna’s
‘Love the Way You Lie’ to tap into a little aggression. “I like feeling heartbroken,” she says, “so I go out with my fists clenched.”

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Mixtapes of women’s NCAA tournament coaches

These coaches have sprinkled quite a bit of personal nostalgia into their playlists.

LSU’s Kim Mulkey features Brooks Jefferson’s “Callin’ Baton Rouge.” The former four-time high school state champion, a native of tiny Tickfaw, La., clearly enjoys being reminded of her roots before leading the Tigers onto the field. She also listens to Mel McDaniel’s “Louisiana Saturday Night,” Conway Twitty and Loretta Lynn’s duet “Louisiana Woman, Mississippi Man” and New Orleans legend Fats Domino’s “Blueberry Hill.”

As Mulkey puts it, “I’m a small-town Louisiana girl.”

Ole Miss coach Yolett McPhee-McCuin’s playlist is filled with South African Amapiano music and West African Afrobeat artists, while the rhythms remind her of similar music from her childhood. McPhee-McCuin was born and raised in Freeport, Bahamas, before coming to the US for college. “I’m an island girl, so I love anything that has a Caribbean vibe.” The seventh-seeded Rebels are looking to pull off some upsets to advance to the Sweet 16, just like they did last season.

Veteran coach Vic Schaefer led Texas to a Big 12 title and aims to win the top-seeded Longhorns’ first national title since 1986. A little piece of his heart still seems tied to Mississippi State, where he coached for eight seasons. moving to Austin. A favorite pre-game listen is Johnny Cash’s “Starkville County Jail.”

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Mixtapes of Men’s NCAA Tournament Players

Wing | No. 1 North Carolina

It takes strengths at multiple positions to win an NCAA tournament, and Ingram’s playlist resembles a full roster. He draws from multiple eras and genres: a 2023 Veeze hit, a 2004 Snoop Dogg earworm and a 1972 Elvis Presley classic. “I just shuffle, and whatever’s playing, I just vibrate,” he says.

Averaging 12.1 points and 9 rebounds per game, Ingram will work to return the storied program to the Final Four.

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Chance McMillian

Guard | No. 6 Texas Tech

The junior is one of five Red Raiders averaging double figures with 10.6 points per game. McMillian hopes to help Texas Tech return to the Sweet 16 after losing in that round last season. There’s no need to be intimidated if you want to participate well into March, and his music choices reflect that understanding. Listening to Youngboy’s “War With Us,” he says, “gets me ready to go out and play and just be fearless.”

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Center | No. 4 Chestnut brown

The SEC tournament MVP wants to keep the good atmosphere going. Nasty are he best listens to music that makes him feeling like the best. At 6 feet tall, it’s no wonder he loves the song “The Biggest.”

“He just talks about being the biggest and one of the best and just letting your stuff pop,” Broome says. “It gets you hyped, and the beat is pretty good.”

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Men’s NCAA Tournament Coaches’ Mixtapes

Boy, do these coaches love the 80s?

UConn’s Dan Hurley is aiming for a championship repeat in the NCAA Tournament. Perhaps one of his favorite pre-game songs – “Dream On” by Aerosmith – could be dedicated to the underdogs who dream of upsetting his No. 1 seed Huskies?

Hurley says he’s listening as tip-off approaches for another reason. “To get my energy going,” he says.

Once Baylor players are on the floor for warmups, Scott Drew listens to Christian-themed music in the locker room for a few moments of pre-game comfort. But don’t misunderstand him; he will get excited too. Like Texas women’s coach Vic Schaefer, AC/DC’s thrasher “Thunderstruck” is a game day favorite.

One line in Scandal’s 1984 hit “The Warrior” particularly ignites Drew: “And the victory is mine.”

(Illustration: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletics; Photos of Paige Bueckers and Harrison Ingram: Paige: Jessica Hill/Associated Press, Grant Halverson/Getty Images)

You can find more of it The athletic’S coverage of the men’s NCAA tournament here and the women’s NCAA tournament here. Catch live coverage of the first round of the 2024 Men’s NCAA Tournament

On Wednesday, I boarded a flight from San Francisco to Las Vegas for the express purpose of watching college basketball.

Not to attend an actual basketball game, mind you. Those flights were headed to Omaha, Neb., and Charlotte, NC. In my case, I spend hundreds of dollars for the privilege of sitting (or standing) in various sportsbooks and watching parties to watch NCAA Tournament games that are readily available on the television in my living room.

If the high hotel prices and $250 tickets for reserved seats are any indication, hundreds of thousands of other sports fans are doing the same.

For many of them, betting is probably the draw, but these days you don’t have to fly to Vegas to place a sports bet. Alcohol consumption may be another, but that too is easily available for much less than a plane ticket.

The appeal of Vegas for March Madness is much the same as it is for millions of people filling out brackets and cheering their heads off for schools and players they had never heard of two hours earlier. That’s because the NCAA tournament is one of our country’s increasingly rare communal experiences.

New audible!

Special guest @rodger fills in Bruce. We mainly talk about football, but the man is also an expert at tackling NCAA Tournament issues.

— Stewart Mandel (@slmandel) March 20, 2024

In these polarizing times, when even the most innocent topic can spark outrage, there is still one thing that people from all parts of the country enjoy equally: supporting the underdog. There are no two sides to No. 16 seed Fairleigh Dickinson knocking off No. 1 seed Purdue (unless you’re a Purdue fan). There is no political agenda behind the disturbing St. Peter’s in Kentucky.

It’s nothing but pure, pure joy to watch for two hours as a team of complete unknowns, who play most of their games in front of 800 people, take on a bunch of future professionals from a power conference and come out on top. Or when, with a team’s season on the line, 19-year-old sophomores drain a 3-point buzzer-beater to etch themselves into “One Shining Moment” lore for the rest of their lives.

No other sporting event manages to deliver so many indelible moments year after year. Sure, there are “glitches” in professional sports. But if the New York Giants beat the New England Patriots in a Super Bowl, it will ultimately be one multi-millionaire team beating another team. Not exactly Oral Roberts beating Ohio State.

College football has had its share of Cinderella moments, like Appalachian State stunning Michigan or Boise State toppling Oklahoma. But when it comes to the biggest late-season games, it’s almost always Alabama, Georgia or Michigan beating another Alabama, Georgia or Michigan.

The NBA has LeBron, Giannis and Jokić. But there is no Sister Jean.

But above all, in all these sports there are no teams that the entire country supports. People don’t suddenly turn into Philadelphia Eagles fans once the NFL playoffs start. But if you’ve ever been in an arena where No. 13 is still hanging around in the second half, you know the buzz of 20,000 people suddenly turning into rabid Furman fans for the rest of the game.

The only thing you can compare it to is events like the World Cup or the Olympic Games, where an American team or athlete participates. But even the women’s national soccer team has become politicized, with the men causing collective fear mainly because they are so mediocre. And chances are you don’t even remember the names of most of the gold medalists from the last Olympics.

While every college basketball fan will forever remember the likes of Bryce Drew, Tyus Edney and Kris Jenkins.

That brings me back to Vegas. Although it doesn’t have to be Vegas. It could be your local Buffalo Wild Wings. Or the dive bar in your neighborhood. Or a sports bar close enough to sneak into on your lunch break.

March Madness is the one sporting event that is best enjoyed in the company of others. Experience the rollercoaster of scoring droughts and momentum swings in a room full of other captivated viewers as your Final Four pick tries to survive a first-round scare. High-five random people around you when Vermont sinks a 3-pointer and is nine points ahead of Duke.

Or running around the room screaming and hugging strangers when a kid from Long Beach State puts one at the buzzer to take down Arizona.

Enjoy the flight, wherever you go.

Get ready for March Madness:

(Photo: Carmen Mandato/Getty Images)

He appeared in the dock at Manchester Crown Court like a familiar-looking stranger, a vivid memory from a distant past.

Jamie Cassidy had once been one of the most promising young footballers at Liverpool, England’s most successful club, a player deemed good enough to train with his national team ahead of the 1996 European Championship.

Today, Cassidy was jailed for 13 years and three months for his part in a conspiracy involving South American drug cartels that saw 356kg (784lb) of cocaine with an estimated street value of £28million ($35.8m) flood cities across northern England.

Cassidy, now 46, did not have a “pivotal” role like his 50-year-old brother, Jonathan, who received 21 years and nine months, but it was nevertheless “significant”, according to the judge, Sir Ian Dove.

Jamie’s job was to “ensure things ran smoothly” once the drugs arrived in Liverpool from the Netherlands, hidden in modified vehicles. He acted upon instruction, being paid a wage for his “managerial” input, which involved taking care of collections and deliveries that amounted to around 150kg of the drug.

Huge profits were laundered every month but the Cassidys’ operation was stopped after the EncroChat messaging service, once the preferred tool of communication in the criminal community, was intercepted by French authorities.

Jonathan Cassidy and Nasar Ahmed, 51, pleaded guilty last month to conspiracy to import and supply class A drugs and to launder money, while Jamie admitted to supply and laundering. Like Jonathan, Ahmed received 21 years and nine months.

Having been held on remand since November 2020, former footballer Cassidy had more than three years to consider his future.

It might explain why on Wednesday, as he emerged from the steps that led from the cells in Manchester Crown Court, he seemed relaxed and focused, as the scale of the charges against him were laid bare in a legal setting for the first time.

In his closing notes, the judge suggested “it seemed likely” that Jamie had been drawn by his brother into a “business” that was also described as “sophisticated”.

Each of the offenders will serve half of their sentence before being released on licence.

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Across a hearing that stretched over two days, there was only a brief mention of Cassidy’s life as a footballer whose talent was so vast that his name sometimes appears in the same sentences as true Liverpool greats.

In 1994, two summers before Cassidy lined up with future internationals Michael Owen and Jamie Carragher in the Liverpool Under-18s team that won the FA Youth Cup by beating a West Ham United side that featured Frank Lampard and Rio Ferdinand, he played for England as they reached the quarter-finals of Under-16 European Championship in the Republic of Ireland.

As a centre-forward, the regard in which he was held was reflected by the fact he was given the No 10 shirt in that England squad while Emile Heskey, who six years later would join Liverpool from Leicester City for a record £11million fee, had to make do with No 12.

Carragher became a legendary figure at Liverpool, making 737 appearances, second on the club’s all-time list behind Ian Callaghan’s 857. Yet when it came to England junior selection, Cassidy was called up ahead of him and David Thompson, who later featured in 56 Liverpool first-team games before fruitful spells in the midfields of Coventry City and Blackburn Rovers.

Thompson came from Birkenhead, which is separated from Liverpool by the River Mersey. In the early 1990s, Cassidy and Carragher, born in the same school year, were regarded as the best two young players in the city for their age group.

While Carragher came from Bootle and went to Savio Salesian College, representing Sefton Boys, Cassidy played for Liverpool Boys having attended the Alsop comprehensive where future Liverpool manager Gerard Houllier taught when he lived in the city in the late 1960s and early ’70s.

Cassidy’s home turf was Walton and the warren of streets near City Road, close to Everton’s Goodison Park stadium, which became infamous in 1993 because of its proximity to the old railway line where two-year-old James Bulger was murdered by two 10-year-old boys.

Much of the reporting that followed painted an unremittingly bleak picture of the area and an “urchin” culture where children roamed freely after dark, causing havoc. There was little attention or sympathy given to a district that had been compared, in a paper published by the European Union, to some of the poorest parts of southern Italy and the old East Germany.

Before he joined Liverpool, Cassidy played for a Sunday league team affiliated with a pub called The Pacific. This brought him into contact with Carragher for the first time, because he was signed to another team in the same league, Merton Villa. Other young boys from The Pacific, such as Jon Murphy, Ged Hennigan and Dominic Morley, would make it into the youth systems of Liverpool and Everton. Yet Cassidy went the furthest.

In his early years with Liverpool, he played up front with Carragher. The pair were so good that the coaches at Liverpool allowed them to play two years above their age group, even though they knew they were not quite physically strong enough. This meant that, sometimes, one would replace the other at half-time.

To his family, Carragher is still “James”. He is only known as “Jamie” to the wider world because Steve Heighway, Liverpool’s academy director, started referring to him and Cassidy as “the two Jamies” when they were both selected for Lilleshall, the FA’s residential School of Excellence in the Midlands.

Upon returning to Merseyside from a visit to Lilleshall in 1995, Heighway wrote in his Liverpool match-day programme column, “Both boys are super players.”

David Thompson, Jamie Cassidy, Michael Owen and Jamie Carragher, Liverpool 1996 @Carra23 pic.twitter.com/CmHI8RTIaF

— Angies Liverpool (@angiesliverpool) April 15, 2020

Cassidy was also ‘Cass’, a player team-mates wanted on their side because of his subtle leadership qualities. His presence provided reassurance because of his consistency and his maturity. Some looked up to him, not only because of his talent but also because of his dress sense.

His football associates from the time – all of whom spoke to The Athletic on condition of anonymity due to the severity and scale of his criminal case – describe Cassidy as an “elegant” footballer, with a shot as ferocious as his tackles. If a challenge was there to be won, he relished it. In conversations, comparisons are made with Steven Gerrard, then three years his junior, and now one of the greatest players in Liverpool’s history.

While he was good in the air and an able runner, Cassidy was also left-footed, which gave him an added grace. Those who watched the youth teams at that time describe a footballer who had it all — one good enough to be invited to train with England’s senior squad, under Terry Venables, in the build-up to Euro 96.

The Liverpool team who won that FA Youth Cup is described by Carragher in his autobiography as a group of “scallies”, not necessarily high on talent but full of desire. Cassidy fitted right in, albeit playing on the left of midfield. That success was timely for Liverpool because the first team was under fire due to their performance in an FA Cup final defeat to arch-rivals Manchester United. Over the months that followed, Cassidy, Carragher, Owen and Thompson all got more exposure to senior training. Their performances were rewarded with new contracts, rising from £250 to £750 a week.

In December 1996, aged 18, Cassidy was given a squad number (22) and was selected on the bench for first-team game at Anfield against Sheffield Wednesday. Though he did not get on that day as Liverpool lost, 1-0, he was getting closer to a first-team debut.

Some of the coaches at Liverpool identified that he was different to Carragher and Thompson, who were obsessives. Carragher would treat training sessions like they were full-scale games and Thompson would tell senior figures in the squad that he was coming to take their place. Cassidy could be aggressive on the pitch but his otherwise calm demeanour led to questions over his body language.

Did he care enough? His team-mates thought so. This was evidenced when he flew into a tackle during a reserve game not long after snapping his anterior cruciate ligament (ACL). A leg break meant he spent 18 months out in total, with those injuries having an impact on three seasons, just at the point his peers were breaking into the first team and establishing themselves.

There was some belief that this period caused him to lose a yard of pace, particularly damaging as football at the highest level was becoming more about physicality, especially in midfield. One person with an understanding of Cassidy’s position describes him as being “really, really unlucky”.

After another long period out, team-mates would stare at Cassidy’s legs at Melwood, the club’s former training ground. Above specialist shin pads, which looked like they were shatterproof, it seemed as though one of his knees had doubled in size.

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Owen became a global superstar because of his performances with England at the World Cup in 1998, and by the summer of 1999 he had represented Liverpool 86 times.

Carragher, meanwhile, had made it to 70 appearances, and Thompson had 25. Gerrard had also emerged from the youth ranks, playing in 13 games in the 1998-99 season.

Following a succession of setbacks and operations, Cassidy, aged 20, was still waiting for his first-team debut. All of this was playing out against a backdrop of vast cultural change at Liverpool instigated by manager Houllier, who was driving more professional standards. That shift ultimately led to some players, regardless of previous status, moving on.

According to administrators at the club, leading academy figures considered Cassidy to be a huge talent, though he was never quite in the same bracket as Owen and Carragher. These sources have told The Athletic that they cannot remember him causing any problems for the coaches, pointing only towards injuries as a reason he eventually left.

There was shock, however, when he signed for Cambridge United, nearly 200 miles away, in 1999. Cambridge were fighting to stay in the third tier of English football; many at Liverpool believed Cassidy could have made a fresh start at a higher level, earning decent money, for example, in Division One (now the Championship — England’s second tier).

Quickly, Cassidy lost touch with the players at Liverpool with whom he’d spent his teenage years. Most of the band of brothers who had won the FA Youth Cup in 1996 suddenly had less in common, and while some fell into the non-League system at clubs such as Barrow, Droylsden and Vauxhall Motors, others became associated with the game’s amateur scene in Liverpool.

Having entered a relationship with a woman, Cassidy slipped off the radar entirely. Some wondered whether he was too embarrassed or proud to try to work his way back up the football ladder, given how highly rated he had been.

If he lost his love for the game, he did not show it at Cambridge, but he made little impression on a dressing room dominated by senior professionals.

He stood out mainly because he was a Scouser, far away from home. Though it was obvious in training sessions he was technically excellent, he could not emulate team-mates such as Trevor Benjamin and Martin Butler, who would both sign for clubs higher up the food chain in Leicester City and Reading.

In a season when Cambridge finished two places and four points above the relegation zone, Cassidy started just four league games, with another four appearances from the bench.

He did not strike one of Cambridge’s most senior players at the club as a bad lad. “Quite the opposite, I liked him — a really nice kid,” he said.

Nonetheless, he continued, he seemed the type of player “that might need a rocket up his a**e now and then”.

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Cassidy’s career was over by the time he was 23. After brief spells at non-League sides Cambridge City and Northwich Victoria, he reappeared at Burscough, a sixth-tier club in west Lancashire, 18 miles north of Liverpool, partway through pre-season in the summer of 2001.

A match programme at the end of the subsequent campaign suggests he made just five appearances for the club, with three of them starts.

Money was tight at Burscough, and players were paid small sums, cash in hand. Yet the club were developing a reputation as a place where players could trampoline into the professional ranks, thanks to the manager John Davison, who worked as a schoolteacher, and his assistant, Peter King, who came from Liverpool and had a strong grip on a local football landscape where Burscough might naturally recruit.

Those who flourished at Burscough tended to be strikers, such as Michael Yates (who went to Dundee in the Scottish Premier League), Ryan Lowe (Shrewsbury Town), Robbie Talbot (Morecambe) and Lee McEvilly (Rochdale).

Cassidy, however, never really got going. One player thinks he arrived carrying a back injury. Had he been more established at the club, maybe he would have been sent to a specialist but he believes Burscough did not have the means to treat him.

After one training session, Cassidy seemed to disappear for a while. His absence was never explained. Though he returned to the squad, his stay at the club was ultimately brief. Even though he did play, some team-mates needed to be reminded of the data to prove it — he barely made an impression.

Elsewhere, Carragher and Owen were now Champions League players, having won their first trophies at Liverpool, lifting the League Cup, FA Cup and UEFA Cup (today’s Europa League) in the 2000-01 season. Cassidy, however, faded out of sight and mind.

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It is thought Cassidy turned to the building trade, where he worked with his father.

When he was arrested in 2020, a month after his brother Jonathan was apprehended after landing at Manchester Airport following a flight from Dubai, officers found an encrypted telephone with an Estonian SIM card in a search of his property.

On EncroChat, where drug deals were arranged with traffickers in the Netherlands who had connections to cocaine cartels from Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia and Ecuador, it was established by investigators that his user name was Nuclear Dog.

In April 2020, another EncroChat user going by Whisky Wasp engaged a contact by sending a photograph of his television screen. He was on Netflix, watching El Chapo, a dramatised TV series about a Mexican drug lord. Whisky Wasp joked that they shared the same birthday. He was, in fact, Jonathan Cassidy.

Judge Dove would later describe the comparison as a “stupid exaggeration”, albeit “one not so far from the truth to be fanciful”.

According to the UK’s Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), Jonathan was the “leading” figure behind a cocaine import operation that delivered quantities of the drug on an “industrial” scale.

On Wednesday, it was revealed that, between March and April 2020, the Cassidy brothers were using EncroChat almost every day.

After Jonathan brokered agreements with suppliers in the Netherlands, Jamie “acted on direction” in his “operational role”, ensuring the drugs made their way around the north of England. From there, a third man, Nasar Ahmed, who was sitting beside the Cassidys’ in the dock today, dealt with the money. On at least one occasion, an exchange was made using a reusable bag from the Asda supermarket chain.

It was revealed that when one of Jonathan’s couriers was stopped by police as he met a supplier, “it did not dent his enthusiasm for the next deal”, and the following day, he went to work on EncroChat again.

When a consignment arrived in England, Jamie, as Nuclear Dog, sent his brother a list of clients and their shares. He was, in effect, the book-keeper in the operation. Subsequent correspondence suggests the pair considered using another encrypted device offered by the Sky organisation at the end of the April, but any change of direction at that point would have been too late to avoid the authorities.

On June 13, an administrator at EncroChat told users that the company’s domain had been seized by a “government entity” and that the service could no longer guarantee security. That entity turned out to be the French intelligence services.

On the same evening, online records showed investigators that Ahmed searched for Emirates airline flights to the United Arab Emirates. He was arrested in Bury, in the north of Greater Manchester, the following morning.

On July 8, Jonathan used his iPad to read an article about Mark Fitzgibbon, a Liverpool fugitive who had been arrested in Portugal following 16 years on the run. He also read stories on the Manchester Evening News’ website about police operations in the city.

That evening, he drove to Manchester Airport and flew to Dubai, where he told an estate agent that he had a budget of £2.3million to spend on a villa, which was later furnished with a bed costing £22,000.

By the end of the September, he searched the internet again, this time for his brother’s name, after he had briefly left the United Kingdom. Investigators established that he was trying to find out whether Jamie had been arrested.

It seemed the pair were in the clear but, the following month, Jonathan was arrested on arrival at Manchester Airport after returning from Dubai, telling officers that he “did not know what they were talking about”.

Jamie was arrested a month later. His defence tried to argue that he was the first of the three men to admit his part, yet this admission only came only after a long battle to try to prove the EncroChat evidence as inadmissible.

The smashing of EncroChat has ultimately helped the National Crime Agency carry out “the UK’s biggest law enforcement operation”, one which has since “dismantled entire organised crime groups”, leading to 746 arrests and the seizure of £54million in cash and more than two tonnes of drugs.

On remand, Cassidy was described by prison officers as a “positive role model for his peers”. In the three years since his arrest, he had taken on a role for the Samaritans and one letter partly read out in court heard how he had “listened to others in crisis, helping prevent callers from taking their own lives”.

Amid the prison population, he lived with drug users, coming to understand the impact of his decisions as a dealer. He admitted to being “ashamed” of what he had done and, in sentencing, the judge removed two years from Cassidy’s term due to his “redemptive behaviour”.

Cassidy will, in time, have the chance to rebuild his life, but for those who remember him from his early days, there is just regret at how a special talent was derailed.

(Top photo: Liverpool celebrate winning the 1996 FA Youth Cup, with Jamie Cassidy circled; Aubrey Washington/EMPICS via Getty Images)

Ted Baker has this week become the latest British brand to feel the sucker punch of changing shopping habits, with administrators called in to try and rescue 86 stores across the UK.

At the height of its fashion powers in the nineties, the brand, founded in 1988 by Ray Kelvin – who famously quit in 2019 after being accused of enforcing a ‘hugging’ culture at the company, had firmly mastered the art of upmarket mainstream. 

Its smart, boutique-style shops, often in pretty Victorian streets rather than huge malls, attracted shoppers who wanted mid-market stylish attire that was a cut above the likes of TopShop, Oasis and River Island. 

An authentic homegrown backstory appealed to shoppers too; North Londoner Kelvin had started working in his uncle’s Enfield menswear shop aged 11 and gone on to found the Ted Baker brand after success with a men’s shirts shop in Glasgow – he conjuring up world domination while on a fishing trip. 

Who is Ted Baker? He doesn’t exist, with one theory suggesting Kelvin didn’t name the brand after himself in case it went bust. But if he did, said Kelvin, he’d be an ‘intrepid aviator, an all-round sportsman and the consort of princesses and Hollywood beauties’. 

The range of shirts in the Glasgow store – in every colour of the rainbow – became a huge hit in the ‘acid house’ era of the 1990s, as clubbers wanted to stand out under the strobe lights. 

More shops quickly followed – in Manchester’s King Street and Nottingham Exchange Arcade –  and as the 90s rolled on, the brand quickly branched out into other departments, eventually selling everything from womenswear, childrenswear, shoes, fragrance and watches to glasses, wedding attire, bedding and lingerie. 

The womenswear became known for soft florals, and became a go-to for summer dresses, but shoppers could happily pick up a sharp suit for the office too – and a pair of heels for less than £100. 

By 1998, Ted Baker had opened its first store in the US, with a shop in New York – and carved out a partnership with American department store Nordstrom. There are now 500 stores and concessions globally. 

Across the UK, there are currently still nearly 90 outlets, including Heathrow, Gatwick and Luton airports and in dozens of branches of John Lewis.  

The brand has always employed the power of celebrity too, with early ambassadors including football, rugby and music stars. 

In 2016, Guy Ritchie created a ‘shoppable film’ to promote the 2016 autumn/winter collection – which carried the strapline ‘Spy it. Click it. Buy it’.

In more recent years, Holly Willoughby, Amal Clooney, Amanda Holden, Emma Stone and Myleene Klass have all worn the brand.

The Princess of Wales famously wore a navy Ted Baker trench during the then Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s Canada tour in July 2011. 

A fast evolving online shopping scene – with brands such as PrettyLittleThing, Boohoo and ASOS suddenly dominating online sales – and a media spotlight on Kelvin’s apparently intimate working practices saw the brand begin to come unstitched around five years ago. 

The entrepreneur, who lives in Hampstead with his second wife Clare and their daughter, Ava, and also has two sons – Ben and Josh – with first wife Georgia Slowe, was accused of harassing employees in the workplace.  

In 2018, Kelvin took a leave of absence when the company was forced to launch an independent investigation into his alleged behaviour following a petition from staff.

He was accused of stroking people’s necks and making sexual innuendos and promptly stepped down in March 2019, saying ‘It is the right thing to step away’.

Kelvin said at the time: ‘Difficult though this decision is given that Ted Baker has been my life and soul for over 30 years, I’ve decided that the right thing to do is to step away from Ted and allow the business to focus on being the outstanding brand it is so it can face 2019 with fresh energy and renewed spirit.’ 

However, by December that year, bosses of the firm quit after profits plunged to less than £10million after its ‘worst ever year of trading’.

The group said at the time that chief executive Lindsay Page – who took over from founder Ray Kelvin after he quit – had been replaced by an interim director.

The resignations were announced as Ted scrapped its shareholder dividend payout and said it is now expecting annual pre-tax profits of between £5 million and £10 million after worse-than-expected trading in November and over Black Friday. This compared with pre-tax profits of £50.9 million the previous year.

In 2024, despite the company’s best efforts to renew its spirit and entice shoppers back to its 86 stores, it finds itself facing closure. 

The firm No Ordinary Designer Label, which is owned by the Authentic Brands Group (ABG) and trades as Ted Baker has filed a notice of intention to appoint administrators Teneo Financial Advisory.

NODL has around 975 employees and runs more than 80 shops and concessions in the UK. In its statement Authentic did not reveal any details of cuts to jobs or shop numbers. 

Going into administration is likely to result in closures of stores and could lead to as many as 1,000 job losses.

By Makayla Muscat for Daily Mail Australia

Published: 08:26 EDT, March 19, 2024 | Updated: 09:10 EDT, March 19, 2024

There is always a sign.

I first noticed something special happening last spring when I couldn’t walk half a block in Dallas without encountering large groups of fans from Iowa or South Carolina. There were also my friends back home who, for the first time, planned their weekend around the women’s NCAA Tournament games instead of the men’s games. And all the sports talk radio channels were discussing Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese. My senses tingled.

I felt it in my bones that the sport was ready for a breakthrough, even though I couldn’t have imagined that nearly 10 million people would tune in to watch the Iowa-LSU national title game, breaking the previous record for viewership of a women’s game . basketball game. But I could see that the barrier of apathy had been broken; these women, that spotted at the end of the match, the sport itself – it would be talked about for days, weeks and months to come.

I have the same feeling right now.

There is another big step forward for a sport that should get used to these advances. As we head into March Madness, the women’s side of the tournament takes center stage. It’s the women’s stars that shine the brightest. It’s the women’s game with the most intriguing storylines.

And… there’s no arguing about that!

“We’re on a steady slope,” USC coach Lindsay Gottlieb said on my SiriusXM show Sunday night. “You combine the star power in our game, the fact that you have some of these established stars that fans have really built a relationship with, like Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese, Cameron Brink – and then you add this incredibly dynamic freshman class.

“What we’re seeing is that women’s basketball is a really marketable entity. People love it. We’re in a space with an incredible amount of excitement around it. … It’s something that’s actually a movement.”

We’ve seen those insanely long lines of fans waiting to get into the arena – any arena – to see Clark play. More than 3 million people watched Clark’s Hawkeyes beat Nebraska in overtime in the Big Ten championship game on CBS, peaking at 4.45 million (!) in overtime. Clark is so ubiquitous that she was discussed several times during this year’s NBA All-Star Weekend broadcast…while her State Farm commercials aired during the breaks.

ESPN recently announced that this was the most-watched regular season for women’s basketball in more than fifteen years, with viewership on ESPN platforms increasing 37 percent from last season. Last Sunday’s SEC championship between LSU and South Carolina drew nearly 2 million viewers, and the Pac-12 title game on the same day between USC and Stanford — the Trojans a No. 1 seed and the Cardinal a No. 2 seed in the upcoming tournament — drew 1.4 million viewers, a 461 percent increase from last season’s championship. Those three title games topped the three NBA weekend games.

With more eyeballs comes more exposure for fans, both new and old. Now they only know the stars by first name. Caitlin. Angel. Paige. JuJu. Comb. Hannah.

Fast! Walk into your neighborhood sports bar and ask someone to name the five men’s basketball players playing this week. Can they do it? I’m not sure I’d bet a beer on that.

Recently, Kevin Garnett on his podcast, KG Certified, made the same point. “This is my first time watching college basketball where I know more girls than boys,” he said. “This is the first time we’ve had women’s basketball over men’s basketball. Women’s college basketball is…electric. It blows the man’s game out of the water.

Of course, that doesn’t matter much if we sit on our couches or bar stools for 14 hours straight on Thursday and 14 hours straight on Friday. We’ll still watch the men’s games and fall in love with Cinderellas, even if they break our braces. We’ll be concerned about a coach’s terrible late-game clock management. And we’ll continue to keep an eye on the men, because theirs has been the best postseason in sports for a long time.

But parity on the women’s side has changed the calculus somewhat. That includes the transient nature of men’s college basketball; one-and-dones combined with the transfer portal have made it harder than ever for players to become national names in the sport. And so many of the biggest men’s stars – the Hall of Fame coaches – have retired and left the sport without any weight.

And that has opened a door for the women’s game. This is the sport with players who stay for three or four years and grow before our eyes. This is the sport where Hall of Fame coaches continue to lead the way — many even recognizing it by their first names: Dawn, Geno, Tara, Kim — even as equality increases and college athletics evolve under their feet.

So this week I’m particularly interested in Clark’s final tournament run and whether she can lead the Hawkeyes to another Final Four. I want to see JuJu Watkins, the freshman phenom who revitalized USC’s women’s program, on the big stage for the first time. I want to pretend that in my daily life I have half the energy that Notre Dame’s Hannah Hidalgo has on defense in just one game. I’ll be waiting with pins and needles to see if South Carolina can complete a perfect season after coming up just short a year ago.

There will undoubtedly be the usual Neanderthals, men who still try to claim that “no one” watches women’s basketball, despite all the evidence to the contrary. These opinions are now shouted down by the fathers who bond with their daughters by taking them to games and the mothers of little boys who wear Clark jerseys and don’t think there is anything strange about idolizing a female athlete. These guys can cling to their silly old-fashioned punchlines that don’t make any sense anymore, while we watch rapturous basketball and join this rocket ship as it takes off.

“Last year it was eye-opening and we fed off that momentum, and it never stopped,” Notre Dame coach Niele Ivey told me on Sunday. “Great teams, great players – the women’s game is just hot.”

(Illustration: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletics; Photos by Angel Reese, Caitlin Clark, Hannah Hidalgo: Eakin Howard / Adam Bettcher / Icon Sportswire, Joseph Weiser / Icon Sportswire)

Feb. 2, 2023 began like any other morning for Amit Patel. He was sitting in his cubicle on the ground floor of EverBank Stadium, home to the Jacksonville Jaguars. Patel, a manager in the team’s financial department, was closing out the last cycle of expenses, as he did at the beginning of each month.

When Jaguars chief financial officer Mark Sirota asked Patel to come to Sirota’s office, he thought it might be to discuss a new project. But then Patel got there and Sirota lowered his voice and asked Patel to shut the door behind him. Sirota then told Patel a delegation from NFL security was in a suite upstairs waiting to talk to him.

Sirota escorted Patel through the office, then the bowels of the stadium. As they made their way to an elevator, Patel looked back and saw a contingent of human relations officials and team security trailing them. When he arrived on the fourth floor and stepped into a suite, he was met by one of the team’s lawyers and three men in suits, one of whom was sitting behind a laptop.

“I already knew they had everything on the computer in front of them. My entire gambling history,” Patel, 31, told The Athletic in an interview from his attorney’s office in Jacksonville last week.

When the NFL security team asked where Patel got the money to place the bets they had discovered, he lied. He said it was from family wealth and cryptocurrency. When they asked whether they could have access to his phone and computer, he looked to the Jaguars’ lawyer for advice, only to realize the lawyer was there to protect the team, not him. He handed his devices over and the lawyer took him for a walk around the concourse. As they walked, Patel feverishly calculated what those security officials might identify as they transferred data from his computer and phone.

When his boss later asked him for his password to the company’s virtual credit card program, Patel knew it was over. He was caught.

FBI investigators subsequently discovered that Patel, over a four-year period, had embezzled more than $22 million from the Jaguars by creating fraudulent charges on the club’s virtual credit card and then covering his tracks by sending falsified files to the team’s accounting department. Patel’s attorney said the vast majority of what he stole he gambled away via online sports gambling sites. The government said he also used the money to fund a jet-set lifestyle and to purchase vehicles, a condominium, a designer watch worth over $95,000 and other extravagances.

Last Tuesday, in U.S. District Court in Jacksonville, Patel stood before a judge, voice quivering, and said he was “ashamed” of his actions. The prosecution asked for a sentence of 84 months, emphasizing the scale of his fraud, the media attention the case received and the message it would send to others who might “steal millions and live like a king.” Patel’s attorney asked for probation, citing his client’s gambling addiction and subsequent recovery efforts as reasons for leniency.

Patel received a 78-month sentence.

In his first interview since he pleaded guilty last year, Patel said that after months of anticipation, dread and unease, he feels a sense of relief to finally face his punishment.

“I’m dealing with the consequences of something that happened a year and a half ago. I’ve been a completely different person since then through my recovery,” Patel said. “I’m dealing with something that’s happened in the past when I was a different person.”

Patel had roughly two dozen friends and family on hand at his sentencing, some of whom made statements vouching for his character. His older brother said he was the prototypical golden child who excelled at sports and school only to be derailed by alcohol abuse and gambling addiction. His high school teacher said he was a “model student.” His girlfriend insisted he was a good person who had taken responsibility for his actions and committed to a life of sobriety.

Government attorneys described him as a fabulist who conned his company and enjoyed the spoils. Court filings included pictures of Patel partying at swanky hotels, flying on private planes and flashing expensive bottles of champagne. In that filing, the prosecutor handling the case wrote that Patel continued to “enjoy the finer things” even after he was fired. Megha Parekh, the Jaguars chief legal counsel, issued a blistering assessment of Patel, stating that his actions invited an inordinate amount of scrutiny on the organization and diverted key resources and time from current employees: “He was our teammate and he betrayed us.”

Those depictions, while seemingly in contrast, coexist in Patel’s retelling, and he frequently toed the line between expressing remorse for his actions and ascribing those actions to a problem outside his control.

“I was battling with a secret addiction that nobody knew about,” Patel said. “Everyone thought I was doing great, dandy. You know, on Instagram they see you having fun, you’re with your friends and family, but there’s a mental demon inside.”

Patel grew up in a strict household where his parents, who immigrated from India, expected academic excellence from their two sons. He said he was impacted greatly by two losses earlier in his life: Patel’s father died of a heart attack when Patel was 13, and one of his best friends died in a car accident nine years later when he was in college. By that time, Patel said his drinking, drug use and gambling were all-consuming.

But Patel also had an abundance of love and support coupled with ambition and opportunity. He was, as the government attorney described in court, an example of the American Dream. Popular and well-liked among his classmates. Elected class president at the Paxon School for Advanced Studies in Jacksonville. Captain of his high school lacrosse team. And he had an entrepreneurial spirit, dabbling in e-commerce and side projects that suffused him with cash and freedom.

Like many people his age, Patel was drawn to gambling during the online poker boom of the early aughts and the ubiquity of fantasy sports. He said he first experienced the rush of gambling on a cruise trip to the Bahamas the summer before he left for college. The cruise featured a poker tournament and, though his mom forbade him to enter because he had previously squandered money on online poker by using her credit card, his stepfather slipped him a $100 bill.

A crowd formed around the poker table and he was in the middle of it all, winning the tournament and a $2,000 prize. He paid his mother back for a portion of the cruise and bought his then-girlfriend a necklace. He later posed for a picture with the money splayed out on a table and made that his Facebook profile avatar.

Patel enrolled at Florida State in 2010 but said the combination of partying and gambling led him to switch from his major of choice (engineering) to something more manageable (accounting). Poor grades prompted his transfer to Flagler College as he prioritized gambling over all else. He took a bus to an in-person poker tournament at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel in Hollywood, Florida, where he finished 15th out of about 1,500 entrants, winning almost $7,500. But he was able to return to FSU for an MBA. Out of college, he went to work for Deloitte, and while there he used his corporate credit card to fund his gambling habit. But he avoided trouble because his brother helped him pay it off.

In 2018, he landed his dream job with the Jaguars, a team he grew up supporting. By that point, he’d progressed from playing fantasy football to betting on baseball via offshore accounts to placing wagers on essentially anything he could. “You wake up in the middle of the night and you’re betting on Turkish women’s volleyball,” he said.

He’d ignore his mom’s calls, forget to brush his teeth, stay up late into the night, constantly refreshing his phone for scores and highlights while his girlfriend slept next to him. Once, in Las Vegas, he drove to the Nevada/Arizona border just so he could place a daily fantasy sports bet, which isn’t permitted in Nevada. When his bank account was low, he’d sell personal items, donate plasma, take out payday loans or rustle up work doing cell phone repairs. There were times he’d visit the ATM multiple times in a day, depositing and depleting.

“The worst part is there’s always a win around the corner,” Patel said. “And so that’s what you’re always chasing.”

In September 2019, Patel, then a mid-level employee with the Jaguars, was in the hole from gambling losses, his credit card maxed out. He was drunk, trying to think of a way to dig himself out of debt and feeling the “itch.” That’s when he allowed himself to consider using funds from the company VCC program he managed.

“I mean, the devil inside me is like let me just deposit $25,000 from the card. I’ll turn it into $50,000. I’ll put the $25,000 back,” Patel said.

Given the level of attrition and lack of oversight within the Jaguars’ depleted accounting and finance department, the prospect of getting caught seemed low. In corporate finance, there is a concept called the fraud triangle: Opportunity. Incentive. Rationalization. Patel had all three.

The hole deepened as Patel’s gambling losses mounted. And so he continued using funds obtained from the Jaguars VCC program to place astronomical bets via FanDuel and DraftKings in hopes that he’d win big and save himself. Patel said his VIP rep at FanDuel would add 10 percent to his account for every $600,000 he spent, in addition to entry fees that were refunded and travel perks he was comped. A spokesperson for FanDuel declined to comment as the company still considers the situation an “ongoing matter.”

In the early days of the scheme, Patel would see an unannounced meeting placed on his calendar and believe the team had figured out his subterfuge. As the years passed and his actions went undetected, that fear never abated, he said, but he just couldn’t stop.

He’s not sure what tipped off NFL security early in 2023. (Employees of NFL teams are forbidden from betting on games.) But he recounted some brazen moves he made in the months before his termination. Twice, he bet on the Jaguars – once while he was in Kansas City for a game against the Chiefs — an $18,000 six-way parlay involving five UFC fights and the Jags covering the spread. (The five fights went his way, he said, but the Jags didn’t cover.) Later, he said he bet “a few hundred thousand dollars” on a Jaguars-Titans game, another loss. He also tried to withdraw money from a wire to place bets through FanDuel, which triggered a notification from the anti-money laundering team at the site. (He said his account was suspended after he unsuccessfully answered questions about the source of his funds.)

“I was so far in the hole I was like ‘Maybe I can win a million really quick on this game and pay them back,’” he said. “I was desperate.”

In the immediate aftermath of getting fired by the Jaguars, Patel did not stop gambling. Instead, he continued scrambling to try to win and pay the team back. An absurd idea, he recognizes now, considering the sum he owed.

Patel was in rehab by the time the FBI got involved. His attorney referred him for alcohol and drug abuse, as well as gambling addiction. He cooperated with the government’s investigation and in December 2023 pleaded guilty to charges of fraud and an illegal monetary transaction.

In the 99 days he spent in rehab, Patel said he felt guilt and shame for the pain he caused his loved ones, friends and coworkers. But he also felt grateful. “I was so glad to be out of that torturous, endless cycle in my head,” he said.

Gambler’s Anonymous works similarly to Alcoholics Anonymous. You work the 12 steps. Identify the “character defects” that contribute to addiction. Patel still battles those, with perfectionism and ego surfacing more prevalently than he would like.

He bristled at the suggestion that he was a neophyte and historically bad gambler, as one report suggested. He was bothered by news accounts that only one person attended his plea hearing in his defense. (He told friends and family not to attend, he said.) And he pushes back on the government’s assertion that he was driven solely by greed.

He contends that he bought some luxury items to flip for profits to subsidize his gambling, while also acknowledging that he was frittering away money on a country club membership, spa services and more. Though the majority of the money he stole from the Jaguars ended up with FanDuel or DraftKings, the government contends that Patel transferred over $5 million to his PayPal and other financial accounts.

He admits he enjoyed the trappings that came with having access to millions of dollars but said the cost of certain trips and events were reimbursed by the online betting sites, an incentive for him to continue spending with them: “They just give you this illusion that you’re winning because they’re just making so much money off of you that they need to keep you happy and keep you gambling,” he said.

Patel said he still has urges to gamble — the most recent one came a few months ago when he got an email from the Hard Rock Hotel Casino group, commemorating the opening of its new sportsbook. Patel talked about it in the GA meeting he organized; the group now meets regularly in a local church.

“Not everyone will get addicted to gambling,” Patel said. “But everyone can get addicted.”

Patel will continue treatment while incarcerated. He is slated to begin his sentence within the next 90 days. His attorney requested he be placed at the federal facility closest to his family in Jacksonville. When he gets out, he’ll be put on a payment plan – $250 a month directed to the Jaguars. Both the prosecuting attorney and the judge acknowledged he is unlikely to ever pay back the entire sum he stole from the NFL franchise.

Said Patel: “I’ve just got to deal with these consequences and move on with my life and see how much I can use this to help a lot of other people.”

(Illustration: Eamonn Dalton / The Athletic; photos: Don Juan Moore, Julio Aguilar, Perry Knotts, Don Juan Moore / Getty Images; courtesy of U.S. Attorney)

When Jac Collinsworth, at just 27 years old, debuted in the prestigious job as NBC’s play-by-play voice for Notre Dame football in September 2022, he succeeded one of the most decorated announcers in sports, Mike Tirico .

Being given such a position suggested he was a sports reporting prodigy, but from his first game — when Marshall upset Notre Dame — Collinsworth didn’t sound like he deserved the national stage in the role. He lacked precision and rhythm, and he kept saying, “Mmm, hmm,” a bad habit usually eradicated by years of practice.

The focus on Collinsworth only grew last year, especially during a flat performance with his partner Jason Garrett during a primetime game between Notre Dame and USC in October.

At the root of all the criticism is that Collinsworth’s father, Cris, is NBC’s top NFL analyst, appearing on “Sunday Night Football” and in five Super Bowl broadcasts. Jac also appears on the SNF pregame show as an on-site reporter/host, among other roles with the network.

Every son or daughter who joins the family business is labeled nepotism. Jac Collinsworth was no different, but attention grew as he floundered.

Although Collinsworth, after graduating from Notre Dame in 2017, found success at ESPN as a reporter and then on the sidelines and as a host for NBC Sports, his failure at the Fighting Irish Games left the man responsible for the move in first, Sam Flood, the president of production for NBC Sports, to finally remove Collinsworth from the role last month, admitting his mistake because Collinsworth did not yet have the required play-by-play reps for such a big assignment.

Jac Collinsworth, Cris Collinsworth and Flood all declined requests to be interviewed.

Sports reporting is filled with father-and-son stories about succession. There are more successes than failures – and to be clear, Jac Collinsworth shouldn’t be placed in either category just yet; especially at age 29. He’s just not alone.

This offseason, the A’s in Oakland hired 24-year-old Chris Caray, a fourth-generation broadcaster dating back to his great-grandfather Harry. In Toronto, 23-year-old Ben Shulman, son of Dan, joins the Blue Jays radio booth just a door away from his father, who is calling TV for the team along with his ESPN work.

There is a long list of sons and daughters following their parents into sports reporting, from Mike Golic Sr. and Jr. to Karl and Sam Ravech to Kevin Harlan and Olivia Harlan Dekker.

And the trend is nothing new, as Fox Sports, after luring the NFL from CBS in the mid-1990s, hired three sons of famous play-by-play broadcasters: Joe Buck (son of Jack, voice of the St. Louis Cardinals and national football and baseball broadcasts), Kenny Albert (son of Marv, the legendary play-by-play voice of the NBA) and Thom Brennaman (son of Marty, the former voice of the Cincinnati Reds).

Like Fox three decades ago, NBC has shown a penchant for sports reporting descendants, from Collinsworth to Chris Simms, son of Phil, and Noah Eagle, son of Ian.

Collinsworth’s demotion further opened the door for Noah Eagle to continue rising. Eagle, who is only 27, excelled in Big Ten Saturday primetime games and the NFL playoffs in his first season at NBC.

Next season and beyond, he and his analyst, Todd Blackledge, will continue with the Big Ten, but if Notre Dame is the top game on the network in a given week, the duo will switch to that matchup.

Eagle has taken a path reminiscent of Buck’s, but the issue of nepotism in the booth is complicated.

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When Joe Buck talks to kids who want to be sportscasters, he often falls back on an old joke.

“My advice is to start with a famous father,” Buck said The Athletics.

Buck is often cited as the ultimate example of nepotism in sports reporting, but he is also probably its greatest success story. His father, Jack Buck, is one of the most legendary play-by-play announcers in history and at the age of 54, Joe has equaled, if not surpassed, his father.

Joe Buck has already called 24 World Series and six Super Bowls on TV. Jack called two World Series and one Super Bowl on the medium, while also providing a constant soundtrack as a radio voice on both events.

Growing up in St. Louis, Joe began studying how his father prepared for MLB and NFL broadcasts by the time he turned six.

At age 12, Joe was calling games into a tape recorder in an empty TV booth in the press box at Busch Stadium. On the way home, he and his father listened back and Joe learned from it. As Jack did the reviews, it was like a raspy Mozart giving feedback to a teenage violinist.

At 21, Buck was supposed to be in the Cardinals’ main lineup, but before he could cancel a game, he had tears in his eyes.

He was still living at home when he opened St. Louis’ largest newspaper, the Post-Dispatch, and saw that respected media critic Dan Caesar had written a column about how nepotism helped Buck get the job.

In June 1990, Caesar wrote: “The burning question is why, at age 21, is Joe Buck being force-fed to Cardinals fans? The reason is simple: it is spelled BUCK.”

It hurt Buck, but he knew it wasn’t wrong.

“Although it crushed my soul to read how unpleasant my hiring was, he was right,” Buck said. “I remember crying about it.”

Buck said it felt like he was in a race, but he started behind the starting line. Although he realized that he had the benefits of an internship from an early age, he realized that he owed the job in large part to his last name.

Over the years, even though Buck has often proven to be the most confident man in the booth, that insecurity drove him – and still does – because he always knew there would be those who felt his achievements were due to the Hall of Fame credentials from his father. .

“It was a gift Dan gave me to understand what people think,” Buck said. “It’s human nature. “Oh well, we know how he got the job.”

These days with social media, it’s even harder, Buck said, because everyone is a critic.

“It makes it really hard to get your legs,” Buck said.

Eagle has done well under the same NBC umbrella as Collinsworth, but that’s because he was credible on air.

“For Noah Eagle, he was great, and he obviously worked really hard on this and put in the hours,” Buck said. “I think all of us – and it’s a big group – had the benefit of being involved as children. I think there’s something to that.”

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Noah Eagle first thought he wanted to be a sportscaster at the age of 13. Less than a decade later, he sat for 90 minutes before one of the richest people in the world — Los Angeles Clippers owner Steve Ballmer — in a Seattle-area conference room overlooking Mount Rainier and Lake Washington, trying to get a job available from the Ballmer broadcast team.

In college, Noah tried hard to be his own person – almost too much. Because his father and his mother, Alisa, both went to Syracuse, he was initially hesitant to go there, but eventually decided it was the right place for him. But when he got there, he tried to hide his last name. He would introduce himself as just ‘Noah’.

“I wanted to be like Cher or Madonna or Beyonce, you know. “I just wanted to be ‘Noah’, period,” Noah said.

He didn’t want to get the impression that every opportunity was down to his father, who is considered one of the best broadcasters in all of sports and will call this year’s Final Four.

Midway through Noah’s stay in Syracuse, Ian told his son to embrace who he is, not run away from it.

“I respected the fact that Noah wanted to be his own person when he arrived at Syracuse, but reminded him to be proud of his last name,” Ian said.

By his senior year, Noah had the respect of Olivia Stomski, an Emmy Award-winning sports producer who directs the sports media center at Newhouse School in Syracuse. She was in contact with the Clippers, who were looking for suitors after longtime TV play-by-play voice Ralph Lawler retired.

Stomski recommended Eagle and Drew Carter, Eagle’s classmate who is now on the Boston Celtics broadcast crew. The Clippers liked each of their tapes, but preferred Eagle’s and invited him to Los Angeles for an initial interview.

Stomski said the Clippers knew this was Ian’s son, but it was Noah they chose.

“I would say very little or none,” Stomski said when asked about Ian’s impact. “I’m sure they didn’t call Ian. Ian didn’t call anyone else. If anyone was pushing, it was probably me.”

After Noah Eagle completed the first interview, he went to Ballmer, the owner of the Clippers. The two went back and forth, with Eagle even having the chance to disagree with Ballmer on some points.

Eagle ended up getting the radio job, not the TV job. It allowed him to do play-by-play for four years in the country’s second-largest market.

This led to Nickelodeon’s well-received Slimetime broadcasts, including for this year’s Super Bowl, and subsequently landing NBC’s top college football job. He is also called games for Fox Sports.

The four years of 82 games on the radio and the playoffs gave Eagle the reps for the national stage. He then handed over the Clippers job.

“My biggest goal was to do my job so well that other people would be more willing to hire younger people in the future,” Eagle said. “I would actually go out there and they would know that a 22-year-old could pull this off. And so the most pride I’ve had literally didn’t come from the four years I was there. It was because they had hired another 22-year-old boy after me.”

At 22, Carlo Jiménez, straight out of USC, succeeded Eagle as the radio voice of the Clippers. Jiménez’s father is a professor at Santa Clara, teaching ceramics and working in academic consulting, while his mother is the Chief Revenue Officer for a technology startup. With Eagle’s help, Jiménez has quickly leveled the playing field and is honing his craft on a big stage.

“I think it gives you a huge advantage,” Buck said of being the son of a famous sportscaster. “But then the question is: ‘What do you do with it?’”

(Top photo by Jac Collinsworth: Dylan Buell/Getty Images)

In an open letter Published Monday, the NAACP urged black college athletes to “reconsider any possible decision” to attend a public university in Florida, after last week’s news that the University of Florida is eliminating its Diversity and Inclusion office.

The University of Gainesville decision came in response to a law signed last year by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis that bans the state’s public universities from using state or federal dollars for diversity programs or activities. In a March 1 memo, the university announced it would eliminate 13 positions, including the Chief Diversity Officer, and reallocate $5 million it spent on DEI initiatives.

Monday’s letter, signed by NAACP Board Chairman Leon W. Russell and President and CEO Derrick Johnson, is addressed to NCAA President Charlie Baker and current and future college athletes. It predicts that “while the University of Florida may be the first, it won’t be the last.”

Six public universities in Florida – Florida, Florida State, Central Florida, South Florida, Florida Atlantic and Florida International – compete at the FBS level.

“Florida’s rampant anti-Black policies pose a direct threat to the progress of our young people and their ability to compete in a global economy,” Johnson said in a statement. “Diversity, equity and inclusion are paramount to ensuring fair and effective educational outcomes. The value that Black and other college athletes bring to major universities is unparalleled. If these institutions cannot fully invest in those athletes, it is time for them to take their talents elsewhere.”

The NAACP letter echoes the sentiment of former Gators executive Emmitt Smith, who wrote on March 3 that he was “completely disgusted by UF’s decision and the precedent it sets.”

In his statement, he said, “to the MANY minority athletes at UF: please be aware of this decision by the university, which is now closing its doors to other minorities without any oversight.”

pic.twitter.com/NkMvqkkHYes

— Emmitt Smith (@EmmittSmith22) March 3, 2024

In the school memo announcing the elimination of the DEI office, officials wrote: “The University of Florida is — and always will be — steadfast in our commitment to universal human dignity.”

The NCAA and the Florida governor’s office had not returned messages seeking comment by time of publication. On the day the University of Florida announced it would close its DEI office, DeSantis tweeted: “DEI is toxic and has no place on our public universities.”

(Photo: Miami Herald/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)