Culture
Why don’t goalkeepers wear caps anymore?
Brad and Charlie Hart are season-ticket holders at Spurs. Father and son, they always sit near the tunnel at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium and at full time, after every game, 10-year-old Charlie will rush to try to get the attention of the players as they walk off the pitch.
But earlier this month, after Tottenham had beaten West Ham United 4-1, Charlie realised he had forgotten his trusted marker pen for those autographs he covets so much. Little did he know that he would leave the stadium that Saturday afternoon not with a few squiggles of ink on his shirt or a programme but with a true collector’s item.
During the match, Spurs’ goalkeeper Guglielmo Vicario had put on a baseball cap to keep the lunchtime sun from his eyes, a moment celebrated by nostalgic football purists as a welcome return of a once-prominent piece of goalkeeper kit. “Old school vibes,” said one fan on social media.
Those were the days: a ’keeper in a cap or maybe jogging pants, putting comfort before fashion, looking more suitably dressed to wash the car or take the dog for a Sunday morning walk than play in the world’s top domestic football league. While it was commonplace in the 1990s and early 2000s to see a goalkeeper in a cap — Oliver Kahn for Germany and Bayern Munich springs to mind — it is a more unusual sight now. Long gone are the days of goalkeepers wearing flat caps, like the great Lev Yashin.
“Vicario came out with the goalkeeper coach (Rob Burch), who was holding the cap,” Charlie, from Harpenden, a commuter town north of London, tells The Athletic. “He (Burch) just looked in my eyes and said, ‘Catch’, and then he threw the cap. I caught it in one hand because my dad’s phone was in the other, although I would have happily dropped my dad’s phone to secure the catch.”
Unlike his father, who remembers goalkeepers in caps as a more familiar sight, it was the first time outside YouTube videos that Charlie had seen a ’keeper wearing one in a game.
In recent years, England internationals Dean Henderson and Jordan Pickford have worn caps for their clubs, Crystal Palace and Everton, but they are in the minority.
So why has the hat-wearing goalkeeper become so rare?
International Football Association Board (IFAB) rules for the 2024-25 season state that caps for goalkeepers are permitted, as are “sports spectacles” and tracksuit bottoms. There are also specific rules on head covers for players, including the need for them to be black or the same main colour as the shirt, but the same directives do not apply to baseball-style caps worn by goalkeepers. If the rules haven’t changed, what has?
Former Liverpool goalkeeper Chris Kirkland became synonymous with cap-wearing during his pro career, which began in the late 1990s. When people meet him now, the 43-year-old says it is still something he is remembered for.
Kirkland, who won one cap for England, started wearing a cap in training when he was a young player at Coventry City’s academy after seeing the senior team’s first-choice goalkeeper, Steve Ogrizovic, use one. Kirkland found it helpful for boosting concentration levels, as much as for keeping the sun’s glare out of his eyes.
“I always used to wear one in training because I’m not great in the sun,” Kirkland, who joined Liverpool in 2001 aged 20 in a deal that made him the most expensive goalkeeper in Britain, tells The Athletic.
“I burn, so I used to wear caps to keep the sun off my face. But I got used to it and it helped give me better vision. It used to block other things out and I found myself being able to concentrate more because it blocked out distractions. I used to wear it sometimes even when it wasn’t sunny, which I used to get a few strange looks for.
GO DEEPER
Chris Kirkland: ‘I was taking 2,500mg of Tramadol a day. I had it in my goalie bag on the pitch’
“A cap can block the sun out at certain angles, which I used to find helpful. I’m surprised ‘keepers don’t wear them anymore because you see them (when facing the sun). They put their arm up and their hand over their eyes, which is obviously a distraction itself.”
Fans have come to the rescue of squinting goalkeepers plenty of times. When Leeds United goalkeeper Felix Wiedwald was struggling with the sunshine away at Barnsley in 2017, a supporter emerged from the away end to heroically give up his cap. A year later, a West Ham fan threw one onto the pitch for England’s No 1 Joe Hart to wear during an FA Cup third-round tie against Shrewsbury Town.
“I stuck with the same cap for years,” Kirkland adds. “It was a navy blue Nike one, and the Nike tick eventually fell off because I wore it that much. I did well in the first game and stuck with it. The only time I would wear another is if I had taken it out of my kit bag to wash it. It was rotten by the end, but I kept it for years until the missus made me get rid. She was like, ‘That is absolutely honking and has got to go!’.”
Richard Lee is a former Watford and Brentford goalkeeper known for his caps — but not because he used to wear one.
“I’ve got a bit more of an association with caps because I went on Dragons’ Den (a British business-based game show) back in the day and it was for a cap company, but I never wore one in a game,” Lee, now a football agent with a long list of goalkeeper clients, tells The Athletic.
“Wearing a cap was good when the sun is out of your eyes, but the moment a cross comes in, or a ball is played over the top, and you get that sudden glare, you look up and the sun hits you. So, I’d almost prefer to have the sun there the whole time and you knew where it was.”
Style could be another reason for goalkeepers opting out of wearing caps. It could simply be a fashion choice.
“You look at the goalkeepers now and they realise they’ve got a certain brand and look, and that does play a part,” Lee adds. “When you go out (onto the pitch) you want to feel a certain way and present yourself a certain way, whether that’s to the fans, the scouts or your team-mates.”
More on the world of sport and fashion…
Elite goalkeepers choosing not to wear caps influences the next generation, too. “The younger ones will copy what the current Premier League goalkeepers are doing,” Lee says. “You’re seeing it less and less at younger age groups too.”
Towards the end of her career, former Everton and England goalkeeper Rachel Brown-Finnis found “a better alternative” to wearing a cap.
“For a while, Nike produced sunglasses-like soft contact lenses. They were bright orange and when you put them in they looked a bit ‘Halloween’,” Brown-Finnis tells The Athletic. “They were by far the most effective thing. I hated wearing caps because they were fine if the ball was on the ground, but as soon as the ball came up in the air, you had to tilt your angle and vision — you were looking into the sun.”
Brown-Finnis said sunshine is a problem for goalkeepers and increases the importance of the pre-game coin toss for an afternoon game. A goalkeeper, she said, would want their counterpart to be facing the sun in the first half in the hope the strength of the sun’s rays died down in the second.
“Clearly that being seen as an advantage for your team to not be in the sun in the first half, it does affect the goalkeeper and players. It’s interesting that there’s not a standard intervention for that,” she said.
Jacob Widell Zetterstrom of Derby County, in the second-tier Championship, is one of the few goalkeepers across the professional game in England who wears headgear. The Sweden international wears a protective scrum cap, something The Athletic’s goalkeeping analyst Matt Pyzdrowski is familiar with.
During the final seven years of his career, spent playing in Sweden, where he still resides as head of academy for his former club Angelholms, Pyzdrowski wore a protective head guard, similar to the one popularised by former Chelsea goalkeeper Petr Cech, who returned to the sport wearing the rugby-style cap in January 2007, three months after a collision with Reading’s Stephen Hunt fractured his skull.
“It was too many concussions in a short period,” Pyzdrowski says. “I remember the specialist I met told me, ‘Matt, you have got to be careful, because we don’t know how much this is going to impact you. If you want to have a good life in the future, you need to start thinking about the risk versus reward of 1) playing and 2) protecting yourself’.
“When you put that into perspective, I was like, ‘I have to wear a helmet’. For the rest of my career, I had a rugby helmet on. Every single training session, every single match, it became part of my outfit.
“It took some time to get used to heading the ball, as well as learning how to control it, but the big benefit was how it made me feel secure. When you come back from a head injury, you become timid, even if you were an aggressive goalkeeper before that. It took me a while to feel safe again, even when I had the helmet.”
Pyzdrowski said protective headgear is becoming more prevalent in Sweden, with a few top-flight goalkeepers wearing them. “As a goalkeeper, you are very vulnerable. You have to be brave and put yourself in very difficult and unsafe situations. When I think about it, and about the safety of goalkeepers, it really should become a priority,” he says.
As for Charlie, after taking Vicario’s cap to school to show his classmates, he is hoping to get it signed by the player himself at one of Tottenham’s upcoming home games. It will then be put in a display case — a reminder of the special family day that sparked a nostalgic outpouring within the football world.
(Top photos: Getty Images; design: Eamonn Dalton)
Culture
Bronny James makes G League debut in South Bay Lakers’ blowout win
EL SEGUNDO, Calif. — Bronny James made his much-anticipated G League debut for the South Bay Lakers on Saturday night, posting six points, three rebounds, four assists, two steals, one block and five turnovers in 31 minutes in the Lakers’ 110-96 blowout win over the Salt Lake City Stars at the UCLA Health Training Facility.
James made two of his nine shot attempts, missing all four of his 3-point looks. He went 1-for-1 at the free throw line. The Lakers were outscored by one point with James on the floor.
“It felt pretty good to go out there and just play my game,” James said. “Not much difference. I was just playing basketball. It felt good.”
James looked more comfortable with the ball in his hands than he did in Summer League or earlier in the season, with both of his baskets coming from off-the-dribble jumpers. He still has a ways to go as a shooter, but he’s increasingly become more assertive. Defensively, he pressured ballhandlers, was active in passing lanes and seamlessly switched screens on and off the ball.
1⃣st bucket of the season pic.twitter.com/mnuEnQ7oip
— South Bay Lakers (@SouthBayLakers) November 10, 2024
“I think he did a great job dictating on the ball,” South Bay Lakers coach Zach Guthrie said. “He got the first bucket of the game. I drew up the first play for him, but we didn’t get to run it because they won the tip. … He played great, he played unselfishly, he played within the flow of the game.”
The hype entering the game was unlike most — if any — G League games. The game sold out more than 48 hours in advance, with resale tickets starting at $200 and the arena filled to capacity with 676 attendees. The reason was obvious: The lone jersey being sold in the concourse was Bronny’s golden No. 9 Lakers jersey. The arena’s eyes were on his every move.
The courtside crowd included most of Bronny’s immediate family — his father, LeBron, his mother, Savannah, his younger sister, Zhuri and his grandmother, Gloria — along with teammates Anthony Davis and D’Angelo Russell, Lakers coach JJ Redick and Lakers vice president of basketball operations and general manager Rob Pelinka.
“I mean, this doesn’t normally happen after a G League game,” said Salt Lake City Stars coach Steve Wojciechowski. “Obviously, with Bronny there’s a boatload of excitement and there should be. It’s one of the great stories in basketball. He and his family, I know them incredibly well. … His story is bringing attention not just to South Bay, but the league in general and for the guys who play in the league.”
James was introduced last during the starting lineup introductions — often the spot reserved for the biggest star or best player — and drew the loudest ovation of the evening. The 20-year-old guard started at small forward as the Lakers opened with a three-guard lineup.
“To have Bronny out there looking like how we did, I was just happy to see him get out there and show the world that he can play,” Lakers two-way guard Quincy Olivari said. “I think I’m a big advocate on pushing that he’s a great basketball player and that the criticism he gets is unfair. But to see him go out there, have fun … it was just great to see.”
Bronny ➡️ Kylor pic.twitter.com/dVgBsidOY6
— South Bay Lakers (@SouthBayLakers) November 10, 2024
Bronny James wins G League debut as South Bay Lakers dominate Salt Lake City Stars: Live updates and reaction
James, the No. 55 pick in the 2024 NBA Draft, has appeared in five of the Lakers’ nine games, averaging 0.8 points (on 16.7-0.0-100.0 shooting splits), 0.2 rebounds, 0.4 assists and 0.2 steals in 2.8 minutes per game.
He has frequently drawn “We want Bronny!” chants this season, both at Crypto.com Arena and at road games. James’ first NBA appearance came during opening night on Oct. 22 in Los Angeles, where he and LeBron shared the court for a stint that lasted less than three minutes but made them the first father-son duo in NBA history to play together. In James’ second appearance, on Oct. 30 in Cleveland, he scored his first basket after the hometown crowd chanted his name and erupted in celebration when he entered the game.
Redick has referred to James as “test case No. 1” for the organization’s new player development program. The Lakers’ plan is for James to shuffle between the official Lakers’ roster and the South Bay roster during the season.
“Our plans are always fluid based in real-time,” Redick said. “You base things in real-time. And the plan for Bronny to move between the Lakers roster and the South Bay roster, that’s always been the plan since Day 1. Rob and I have talked about that. LeBron’s talked about that.”
The South Bay Lakers play again on Nov. 15 against the Santa Cruz Warriors.
Required reading
(Photo: Adam Pantozzi / NBAE via Getty Images)
Culture
How Penn State’s White Out — the stadium spectacle — ended up on Peacock
There was no made-for-television moment last spring as the Big Ten’s television draft unfolded. With a flurry of emails between CBS, NBC and Fox executives — plus a few follow-up phone calls to the conference to ensure contractual agreements were being met — each network consulted with its big board and planned how to best position its broadcast packages with its picks.
A network television draft for college football is every bit as sterile as it sounds.
“It’s just emails flying back and forth,” said Kerry Kenny, chief operating officer for the Big Ten Conference. “We benefit from all these partners working to make the Big Ten the best it can be, but at the end of the day, they’re all competitors. What’s good for Fox, what’s good for NBC, what’s good for CBS isn’t always good for the other network partners in that moment.”
The Big Ten is in the midst of a seven-year media rights agreement with Fox, CBS and NBC which began in July 2023. Penn State’s place in this agreement has been an interesting one in that so much of what fans have been accustomed to — like start times known for the White Out months in advance and the hope of playing Ohio State or Michigan in prime time for that White Out game — all look different now. Trying to protect Penn State’s annual White Out game and place it in a prime-time slot is harder than ever before.
This year, Penn State’s 16th full-stadium White Out will be played Saturday at 8 p.m. against Washington. The game comes on the heels of an emotional letdown after Penn State’s loss to No. 2 Ohio State. It feels strange that the annual spectacle with an envious atmosphere is being held this late in the season. It’s also odd that it won’t be found on traditional TV and instead will be streamed on Peacock.
How Penn State ended up here is the byproduct of trying to ensure the game is held at night like Penn State fans desired and athletic director Pat Kraft lobbied for, while making sure the network partners get what they desire. No, Penn State wasn’t necessarily relegated to Peacock but instead was slotted into a window that met the night game request.
When the television partners met in the spring to draft who picks which games first, second and third this week, Penn State had already made it clear that it hoped to have a White Out game in prime time.
GO DEEPER
Penn State’s No. 6 ranking backed by road wins, hanging with Ohio State, CFP committee says
Thanks to an 18-team conference that spans three time zones and has more network partners than previous media rights agreements, fans must continue adapting. Only once before, in 2015, has the White Out been held in November. The 8 p.m. start time wasn’t announced until last Saturday.
Even the raucous, White Out environment that’s become the calling card for the Penn State fan base, a bucket-list item for sports fans and a made-for-TV spectacle, will be a little harder for fans to find Saturday with Peacock being a subscription-based streaming service. It’s the second time Penn State football has appeared on the platform, joining last year’s game against Delaware.
Still, in some ways, it might feel like a relegation, which comes just one week after State College was the epicenter of the sport, hosting ESPN’s “College GameDay” and Fox’s “Big Noon Kickoff.” But, part of the reason why the game ended up on Peacock is thanks to NBC’s long-standing relationship with Notre Dame. Part of that deal allows up to two games per year to be played in prime time on NBC. Florida State-Notre Dame was designated for the NBC prime-time slot well in advance of the Big Ten’s draft, Kenny said. However, NBC’s slot wasn’t the only option. Had Penn State beat Ohio State last week, this weekend’s game could’ve been at 3:30 p.m. on CBS or in prime time on Fox.
“We always knew that with NBC’s first selection that week, November 9, the Big Ten selection, whether it was the number one pick that week, the number two pick, or the number three pick among the three broadcast partners that was going to always end up on Peacock,” Kenny said.
GO DEEPER
The ‘Big Noon Kickoff’ debate: Is Penn State-Ohio State too early?
Another new twist this season is that the White Out will also be available in 23 different IMAX theaters, primarily catering to audiences in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland and Washington — inconveniently, the closest IMAX to Happy Valley is more than 90 minutes away in York, Pa. Still, it’ll be the first college football game presented live in select IMAX theaters, perhaps shedding light on what this next frontier of out-of-venue sports viewing could look like.
NBC tried a similar approach with the Olympic opening ceremonies this year in IMAX and also found success showing the 2024 NBA Finals in non-mainland China and the League of Legends championship in China and Korea. Depending on each theater’s food and beverage offerings this weekend, fans could drink beer, order dinner and experience the game in a different way — all without having to navigate Beaver Stadium postgame traffic.
“It’s the whole communal experience first of all and then we’ve specifically designed each of our theaters for the most immersive experience possible both from a visual and an audio standpoint,” said Mark Welton, global president of IMAX Theatres. “It really feels like you’re at the game. The crowd, the noise. … People are up cheering. It’s like kind of being in the stadium.”
Admittedly, the timing of the White Out, it being on Peacock and the possibility of watching it in IMAX all feels a little odd because Penn State’s biggest home game of the season — and one of the most important in Beaver Stadium history — was played last week at noon as part of Fox’s “Big Noon Kickoff.” For all the fan criticism of a noon kick — and there was plenty — the Big Noon exposure machine did its job. Penn State-Ohio State drew 9.94 million viewers, an uptick from the 7.3 million viewers who typically watch when the game has aired in prime time.
Last 25 Years of Ohio State-Penn State Games:
FOX Big Noon Games – 9.4 million viewers
All Other OSU-PSU Games – 7.3 million
Look forward to running it back next year. https://t.co/TvxPAMl84S
— Michael Mulvihill (@mulvihill79) November 6, 2024
Fans will still show up in droves Saturday for the White Out, but this season Penn State has rolled out so many variations of a White Out theme — a “White Out energy” game against Illinois, a helmet stripe game, and a stripe out — that the lead up to Saturday feels different. Even head coach James Franklin, who usually wears white to his Monday media session the week of the White Out, didn’t do so this week. The whole tenor of the week coming off a loss to Ohio State doesn’t have the usual hype that comes in the lead-up to the annual stadium spectacle.
Part of the challenge moving forward will be how willing the Big Ten is to help Penn State with the White Out while recognizing that the TV partners hold the cards.
Kraft connected with the Big Ten last spring around draft time to state his case about what the White Out means to Penn State fans, the sport and the local community. It’s often used as a marquee recruiting weekend for other Penn State sports beyond football. Fans prefer the game to be held at night so the visual spectacle of 100,000-plus fans wearing white shirts and shaking white pompoms pops against the night sky. Hotels are booked months in advance.
Penn State knew Fox was making the Ohio State game Big Noon. It also knew the September home game against Illinois for homecoming would be at night. It could’ve either doubled up on homecoming and the White Out or done a noon White Out for Ohio State. Instead, it opted for Washington knowing that the start time would at the earliest be at 3:30 p.m. Penn State wanted time to make fans aware of the game theme — which it did in July — and wanted ample time to put all the usual marketing efforts behind it.
“Washington was unique because it’s a time of year where after daylight savings where a 3:30 game it gets dark pretty quick,” Kenny said. “We looked at that date and commissioner (Tony) Petitti and I spoke extensively with Pat about that.”
It’s never too early to peek ahead to Penn State’s 2025 home slate which includes games in Beaver Stadium against Oregon and Nebraska, among others. While a prime-time White Out against Oregon would seem like a shoo-in a few TV contracts ago, that’s far from a given now.
“We’re committed to making sure that this continues to find a way even in this new changing environment of college football that the White Out is a tradition that has some legs to survive and really thrive in the future,” Kenny said.
(Photo: Dan Rainville / USA Today)
Culture
The kid from ‘nowhere’ setting records at Ole Miss
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — They called him “Nowhere.”
He was 11 years old when he showed up with little to no warning on the football field behind Doss High School. It was one of the few times that Tim Richardson, who ran the local youth football league, didn’t have the skinny on one of the players.
“No one knew who he was,” said Richardson. “We didn’t know what to do with him.”
The coaches were so caught off guard they played the kid on offensive and defensive lines as a seventh grader. Once Richardson got him as an eighth grader, he realized the quiet, mysterious outsider was outrunning everyone else on the team, much too fast and athletic to linger in the trenches. Richardson moved him to receiver, quarterback, running back — any position where he could put the ball in his hands — unlocking the best player on one of the top youth teams in the country.
“I had him touch it about every other play,” Richardson said. “He might have had 35 touchdowns that season.”
But even as a star player, with area high school coaches scouting his games, he remained the unknown kid who showed up out of the mist, a trace of something unsaid always trailing close behind him.
On the back of his jersey, instead of his name, they even put “NO-WHERE.”
Today, Jordan Watkins is a senior wide receiver for the Ole Miss Rebels, No. 16 in the College Football Playoff rankings. Last Saturday, Watkins set two Ole Miss single-game receiving marks with 254 yards and five touchdowns in a win at Arkansas. This Saturday, the Rebels and Lane Kiffin’s high-powered offense will take the field in Oxford, Miss., against the No. 3 Georgia Bulldogs in search of a victory to bolster their chances of making the 12-team Playoff.
But before he became a record-setting starter on a top-rated SEC offense, Watkins was that kid from nowhere.
When Watkins was 8 years old, he sobbed as he watched his mom was driven away in the back of a cop car. He can still hear the officer telling him, “Don’t worry, your mom will be back soon.”
He didn’t see her again for almost two years.
Paula Baker was a child of addiction. She started drinking at age 12, smoked weed as a teenager, used cocaine at 18 and got hooked on OxyContin at 21. She was a mother of two by then, having Jordan at 17 and his younger brother, Elijah, a few years later.
She did her best to keep the substance abuse out of the house and away from the kids, but eventually started trafficking drugs to feed her habit. At age 25, she got kicked out of her apartment in central Ohio, so she packed up her two boys and called a friend back home in Ashland, Ky., asking if they could crash at her place. They arrived in the middle of the night, Watkins and his little brother asleep in the back seat. Paula got arrested the next day, busted for making a deal to scrounge up money for a new place to stay, violating parole in the process.
“That was the bottom for me,” Paula said.
She wound up at the Western Kentucky Correctional Facility, where she spent more than 18 months. The boys stayed with their aunt in Ashland, five hours away on the opposite side of the state. They didn’t see their mom for her entire incarceration. Watkins would tell his friends that she was on a business trip.
Paula was eventually paroled and granted a conditional release to The Healing Place, a recovery center in Louisville, where she was required to spend another 18 months. It was a couple of hours closer to Ashland, and her sister brought the boys to see her the week she arrived. They all sat together in the common room around a Christmas tree.
She had been sober for more than a year and a half by that point, but quickly realized she had no true understanding of addiction or recovery.
“I didn’t know addiction was a disease, or that I wasn’t a horrible person. But I heard these stories of recovery, and that’s what I wanted,” she said. “I didn’t want to live a chaotic life anymore.”
By May 2013, she had completed her recovery program and was working part-time at The Healing Place, saving up enough money to get a place with Austin Baker, her future husband, who had just gone through his own recovery program. She regained full custody of her boys and moved them from Ashland to Louisville.
Eleven-year-old Watkins struggled with the transition. Watkins’ father had never been a consistent figure in his life, and now he had to leave his friends in Ashland for a new city, to move in with his mom after more than three years apart, and with Austin suddenly in the picture.
“He was mad, and I understood why,” said Paula. “He didn’t know what was going to happen, if I was going to end up back in prison. It was all new for him too.”
The football field was Watkins’ haven.
“You could tell when he showed up, it was an outlet for him,” said Richardson.
For the next few years, Watkins lashed out at home and picked fights at school, following a timeworn recipe of rebellious behavior.
“It took me a very long time to forgive my mom for going away,” said Watkins. “I hate that in retrospect, because I love my mom to death, but I was clearly acting out to show how much resentment I had toward her.”
Richardson heard stories about Watkins causing trouble, but he never saw it on the field. Watkins would ask questions about route-running and schemes, but he mostly kept to himself, burying that anger.
Things started to turn during Watkins’ freshman year of high school. He was ineligible for the football team at his public school because of all the suspensions he racked up, so Paula and Austin enrolled him in a private school, barely able to afford his tuition.
“They had to sacrifice everything just so I could play football,” said Watkins. “I messed things up by being spiteful, but I saw what they were trying to do for me.”
He didn’t come to this realization immediately, or all on his own. There was a lot of therapy, as a family and individually. Watkins bucked against it at first, then was drawn to it, working with a therapist named David for a few years. The two of them would grab a bite to eat. Take walks. Visit the library to do homework.
“There are still a lot of people in today’s society that think therapy is for sissies, that as a man you have to be tough. I try to be open about the fact that therapy changed my life,” said Watkins. “David didn’t expect anything in return from me, didn’t need me to be someone I wasn’t. He was just trying to help me.”
Once Watkins accepted that his mom and Austin were trying to help, too, the scars began to heal.
By his senior year at Butler Traditional High School, he emerged as a three-star wide receiver and committed to play for Louisville in the 2020 class. He liked the idea of his family being a 10-minute drive from the stadium, but after two years with the hometown Cardinals, he entered the transfer portal. Watkins received plenty of interest, but Kiffin — who has been open about his own journey to sobriety — sold him on Ole Miss.
“Coach Kiffin told Jordan if he wanted to go to the NFL, he needed to come play for him,” said Austin.
Watkins has 118 catches for 1,739 yards and 12 touchdowns midway through his third season with the Rebels. Paula didn’t love her son moving more than six hours away, but she recognized what it could mean for his future, that he was ready for a new challenge. And she was ready, too.
Paula has been sober for more than 14 years. These days, Watkins is a self-described “mama’s boy” who talks to her every day. He’s grown close with Austin, too, the first person Watkins called when he got the new College Football 25 video game featuring his own likeness, and whom he immediately FaceTimed when he hit a hole-in-one this summer, out of breath from sprinting to the green. Watkins will regularly send pictures to the family group chat of what he cooked for dinner on his flat-top grill.
“I’ve always held onto that little bit of hope: If you wake up and keep doing it day by day, things get better,” said Paula. “And it’s true.”
Ken Trogdon was giddy watching the highlights of Ole Miss’ win last week. The South Carolina alum and resident is a loyal Gamecocks supporter, but he’s become a fan of the Rebels through his connection to Watkins, whom he met earlier this year.
“Five touchdowns? I was so excited for Jordan,” said Trogdon. “He’s such a special young man.”
About 12 years ago, Trogdon, a healthcare administrator, founded HarborPath as a nonprofit organization that supplies medications to vulnerable populations nationwide. That mission soon intersected with the opioid and fentanyl crises, including efforts to distribute and inform people about naloxone — commonly known as Narcan — a drug that can reverse opioid and fentanyl overdoses. For the past few years, HarborPath has worked to get naloxone within arms reach of as many people as possible.
That’s what brought Trogdon to Ole Miss this past winter. HarborPath supplied Narcan to the William Magee Center, founded in 2019 in honor of a former Ole Miss track athlete who died of an accidental overdose. Anyone can stop by and pick up Narcan for free, no questions asked.
Trogdon approached The Grove Collective, an Ole Miss-affiliated name, image and likeness organization, about partnering with Ole Miss athletes in social media videos to spread awareness. Watkins, a prominent football player who was comfortable in front of the camera, was one of the athletes The Grove suggested.
Chatting with Trogdon and Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch between filming sessions, Watkins shared details about his life before coming to Ole Miss in 2022. About his childhood and his mom’s struggles with addiction. About her time in prison and recovery centers, and how his stepfather, also in recovery, was twice revived with Narcan. About how his mom now works as a consultant in the recovery field with organizations just like HarborPath.
Trogdon was hoping for a charismatic football player to help message his cause. Instead, he got a player with “a personal connection to it like nobody else.”
Fake pills are not worth the risk.
Ole Miss wide receiver @jordantwatkins is partnering with HarborPath to help save lives from drug overdose and deadly fentanyl on college campuses.
🔗 https://t.co/vZE9w9Jy8j pic.twitter.com/zwN47gWSFk
— HarborPath (@HarborpathRx) March 8, 2024
When the Ole Miss videos were released in February, they generated 100,000 views on X on the first day. Trogdon said HarborPath is considering expanding the campaign to additional campuses, and that he could see Watkins being a national spokesperson for the organization.
More importantly, the Magee Center experienced an uptake of Narcan after the videos circulated, and Trogdon said the available medication was responsible for reversing an overdose on the Ole Miss campus.
It’s also become another outlet for Watkins, who has also worked with recovery groups back home in Louisville. And his mom will put him on the phone with kids who might be suffering those familiar pains of family addiction to offer perspective.
“It affects so many people, not just through personal use but because of those around them,” said Watkins. “I love being able to use my platform or experience to help.”
Recovery is not a beginning-and-end process. It’s a daily undertaking, a plant that needs watering. But after 14 years, the roots have taken hold. This weekend, Paula and the family will make their regular 400-plus-mile trek to watch Watkins and the Rebels take on Georgia. Cheering on the quiet kid from nowhere.
“We’re not perfect,” said Paula, “but we’ve come a long way.”
(Illustration: Meech Robinson / The Athletic; photos: David Jensen / Getty Images; Courtesy of Paula Baker)
-
Business1 week ago
Carol Lombardini, studio negotiator during Hollywood strikes, to step down
-
Health1 week ago
Just Walking Can Help You Lose Weight: Try These Simple Fat-Burning Tips!
-
Business1 week ago
Hall of Fame won't get Freddie Freeman's grand slam ball, but Dodgers donate World Series memorabilia
-
Culture1 week ago
Yankees’ Gerrit Cole opts out of contract, per source: How New York could prevent him from testing free agency
-
Culture6 days ago
Try This Quiz on Books That Were Made Into Great Space Movies
-
Technology1 week ago
An Okta login bug bypassed checking passwords on some long usernames
-
Health2 days ago
Lose Weight Without the Gym? Try These Easy Lifestyle Hacks
-
Culture2 days ago
The NFL is heading to Germany – and the country has fallen for American football