Sports
'Nobody prepared us': An Ivy League wrestler's unlikely path to SEC lineman and NFL Draft prospect
A groggy Joey Slackman woke from an anesthetic slumber the morning of Nov. 20. The Penn defensive lineman was in a Philadelphia hospital bed. He had just spent three hours in surgery to repair a torn biceps.
That day also happened to be when Slackman’s name appeared in the transfer portal, college football’s centralized marketplace for players looking for a new school. Slackman, who graduated from Penn with a political science degree, had decided to pursue his master’s, and coaches were now allowed to contact him.
“It was completely surreal,” said Paul Slackman, Joey’s father. “We got there maybe 4:30 in the morning. I said goodbye. They prepped him. It just so happened that was the day that he entered the portal. It totally slipped my mind. We really didn’t know a lot about this whole process.”
Joey arrived in the Ivy League four years ago as a no-star football recruit from Long Island who went to Penn to wrestle. He has never been a headlining player. But to the surprise of the Slackmans, Joey woke up after surgery as one of the hottest commodities on the transfer market.
“I remember coming to, I was pretty delirious and nauseous from the surgery, but I just remember when I was finally cognizant, looking over at (my dad),” Joey Slackman said. “He had his phone in his hand. He had just gotten off with a coach. He’d hung up the call and said, ‘You won’t believe what’s happening.’ I felt like I was still under, or I was delirious.”
Two hours after he was awoken, bandaged up and put in a wheelchair, Slackman was discharged. Still somewhat groggy from the anesthesia, he started to respond to coaches on the five-hour ride home to Long Island.
“The entire way back, his phone is blowing up, getting texts and calls,” Paul Slackman said. “I was getting so many calls from coaches. This went on for hours. We probably had seven or eight phone conversations and were texting with 20-25 different people.
“It was really insanity for those first 24 hours.”
For many transfer portal entries, the recruiting process is a second spin on the wheel; most of them were recruited by football programs out of high school.
Slackman joined Penn as a heavyweight wrestler, ranked 12th in the country in his weight class. Paul, a PE coach who had won a Division III national title as a tight end for Ithaca (N.Y.) College, had entered Joey in a wrestling tournament in the second grade. His son hated it.
“I remember him saying, ‘I don’t ever want to do this again,’” said Slackman’s mom, Dana.
Slackman liked football, though, and loved getting to play with his friends. He gave wrestling another try in middle school after his football coaches told him it would make him a better lineman.
With his blend of power, determination and focus, Slackman blossomed as a wrestler. He went to wrestling camps and earned national recognition. He emerged as the top 285-pounder in New York and twice received All-America honors at the nationals in Fargo, N.D. His dad purposely tried to stay away from coaching him in middle school and high school but made it a point to teach that it was Joey’s effort that mattered most.
“He worked out religiously, regardless of his condition, the weather, time constraints,” Paul Slackman said. “A few years ago, he just had pec surgery. He was in a sling and wanted to stay in condition. We were on vacation near Sarasota. He had the surgery a week before. He decided to go running with the sling on. He ran 8-9 miles alongside this main road down there. He had all these cars honking and waving at him. That really signifies the determination he has.”
Joey attributes that determination to how his parents raised him and his younger sister, a fencer at the Air Force Academy.
“In our household, we literally were not allowed to use the word ‘can’t,’” he said. “It was like the equivalent of cursing. Stuff like that shaped my mentality. Growing up, I was not a determined kid. I was chubby. I was lazy. School came easy to me, so I didn’t put in a lot of effort, but then wrestling helped propel me to that toughness. I think it’s the toughest sport there is. You’re out there, wearing a silly outfit, and you’re by yourself. It forces you to make a choice of whether or not to grow up and figure it out.”
Because his high school football team struggled, Slackman didn’t get much recognition until his senior season, when he was named first-team all-state. By then, he’d figured that wrestling was his ticket to a high-level education. He chose Penn over recruiting interest from all of the Ivy League’s wrestling programs.
Midway through his freshman year wrestling for the Quakers, he tore his ACL and his meniscus. Three months later, the pandemic shut down college sports, and everyone at Penn was sent home. Slackman took a gap year, leaving school while he recovered from his knee injury. He lived with his wrestling teammates in Philadelphia while working for a non-profit called Beat the Streets, an organization connected to the wrestling community that helps underprivileged kids in the area.
“When he was training for wrestling, alongside the (Penn) football program, I remember him saying, ‘I really miss football,’” recalled Dana.
Slackman decided to try to join the Penn football program and play both sports. He was cleared in February 2021 but tore his right pec not long after that. That meant another surgery and six more months on the sidelines.
“I don’t think (the Penn coaches) thought much of me at first,” he said. “I was coming off two major surgeries.”
Slackman turned heads quickly once he put the pads back on. In his first college game, he was credited with a half-sack. His middle school football coaches were right. All the wrestling training had made a huge difference in his development as a defensive lineman.
“It’s helped me a lot, especially in the run game and being able to hold my ground because I’m able to understand leverage really well and, without thinking, I am able to prevent myself from being moved, which is a lot of what you have to do as a defensive tackle,” he said. “Learning how to hand-fight is the biggest thing in wrestling, and that’s kind of the biggest thing as a D-lineman, too. Also, a lot of the pass rush moves that I like to hit are similar to moves I would hit in wrestling matches.”
Slackman finished the year with 16 tackles, 3.5 tackles for loss, 2.5 sacks and a forced fumble, deciding midseason to focus only on football. In 2022, he started all 10 games and made honorable mention All-Ivy League, ranking second on the team with 4.5 sacks and 49 tackles. But on the second-to-last defensive play of the season, he tore his left pectoral muscle. The injury, which would require his third major surgery, only seemed to further drive Slackman.
“He is one of the most focused and dedicated people I’ve ever been around, and he is the toughest person I’ve ever been around,” said Cornell head coach Dan Swanstrom, previously Penn’s offensive coordinator. “He’s just wired very differently. He is the toughest S.O.B. I’ve ever seen.
“He was 305 pounds at like 16-17 percent body fat. He’s a physical freak of a human. … We had to sub him out just so we could practice. He would wreck our whole offensive practice. He was that disruptive.”
In 2023, Slackman became the most dominant player in the Ivy League. He had five tackles for loss in Penn’s first two games. He finished the season with a team-best 12 TFLs and 50 tackles, becoming the first Penn player to win Ivy League defensive player of the year honors since 2015.
The Quakers were still in contention for the conference title when they faced No. 19 Harvard in the second-to-last game of the season. With five minutes left in the fourth quarter, Slackman tore his right biceps. He took off his pads and tried to root on his teammates. Penn trailed 20-13 before tying the score. Before overtime, Slackman asked the team doctor whether the injury could get worse if he returned to the game.
“The doctor said, ‘You can’t hurt it any more,’” Slackman said. “It was our last chance to keep our Ivy League (title) hopes alive. I went over to our coaches and said, ‘Let’s go!’”
The coaches put Slackman back into the game.
“It’s more than that,” Swanstrom said. “We had this goal-line stand, where it was like three plays from inside the 2. He was in there for all three plays with a torn biceps. Talk about putting it all out there.”
Slackman said he wasn’t trying to be a hero. He had something else on his mind.
“I’d really thought this was gonna be the end for me when it came to football,” he said.
Yes, it was extremely painful to play in the trenches with a torn biceps. Harvard won 25-23 in triple overtime.
“I guess the adrenaline was still running,” he said.
Last fall, the feedback from NFL circles was that Slackman could be a late-round pick, but that came before he went on to win Ivy League defensive player of the year. Some NFL teams visited him; one came four times during the year. “That’s when we started to realize, ‘Wow, he could get drafted,’” said Paul Slackman.
But that was before the torn biceps against Harvard made full participation in the draft process unrealistic. So Slackman, who graduated from Penn with a political science degree, filed his paperwork to enter the transfer portal.
“Nobody prepared us for the transfer portal process,” Dana Slackman said. “It’s blown our minds.”
It was not easy to sort out all the offers and opportunities. Michigan, Texas A&M, Miami, USC and others came calling. He estimates about 50 schools offered him. Ultimately, he scheduled trips to Wisconsin, Virginia Tech, North Carolina, Florida and Auburn.
“It was the craziest month of my life, by far,” Slackman said.
Florida felt like an ideal fit. The Gators felt the same way.
“He’s an alpha personality, very articulate and very intelligent,” said Florida head coach Billy Napier. “It’s important to him. He’s very motivated and driven. The biggest compliment I can give him is when he took his official visit here, I literally got 12 to 15 players coming up to me saying, ‘Coach, we gotta get that guy.’ He checked all the boxes.”
(Illustration: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic; photos: Andy Lewis, Getty Images; Courtesy of the Slackman family)
Sports
Law firm fighting for women’s sports in SCOTUS battle comments on ruling possibly impacting SJSU trans lawsuit
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A law firm leading the charge in the ongoing Supreme Court case over trans athletes in women’s sports has responded after a federal judge suggested the case’s ruling could impact a separate case involving a similar issue.
Colorado District Judge Kato Crews deferred ruling in motions to dismiss former San Jose State volleyball co-captain Brooke Slusser’s lawsuit against the California State University (CSU) system until after a ruling in the B.P.J. v. West Virginia Supreme Court case, which is expected to come in June.
Slusser filed the lawsuit against representatives of her school and the Mountain West Conference in fall 2024 after she allegedly was made to share bedrooms and changing spaces with trans teammate Blaire Fleming for a whole season without being informed that Fleming is a biological male.
Meanwhile, the B.P.J. case went to the Supreme Court after a trans teen sued West Virginia to block the state’s law that prevents males from competing in girls’ high school sports.
The Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) is the primary law firm defending West Virginia in that case at the Supreme Court, and has now responded to news that Slusser’s lawsuit could be affected by the SCOTUS ruling.
“We hope the ruling from the Supreme Court will affirm that Title IX was designed to guarantee equal opportunity for women, not to let male athletes displace women and girl in competition. It is crucial that sports be separated by sex for not only the equal opportunity of women but for safety and privacy. Title IX should protect women’s right to compete in their own sports. Allowing men to compete in the female category reverses 50 years of advancement for women,” ADF Vice President of Litigation Strategies Jonathan Scruggs said.
Slusser’s attorney, Bill Bock of the Independent Council on Women’s Sports, expects a Supreme Court ruling in favor of the legal defense representing West Virginia, thus helping his case.
(Left) Brooke Slusser (10) of the San Jose State Spartans serves the ball during the first set against the Air Force Falcons at Falcon Court at East Gym in Colorado Springs, Colorado, on Oct. 19, 2024. (Right) Blaire Fleming #3 of the San Jose State Spartans looks on during the third set against the Air Force Falcons at Falcon Court at East Gym on October 19, 2024 in Colorado Springs, Colorado. ( Andrew Wevers/Getty Images; Andrew Wevers/Getty Images)
“We’re looking forward to the case going forward,” Bock told Fox News Digital.
“I believe that the court is going to find that Title IX operates on the basis of biological sex, without regard to an assumed or professed gender, and so just like the congress and the members of congress that passed Title IX in 1972, allowed this specifically provided for in the regulations that there had to be separate men’s and women’s teams based on biological sex, I think the court is going to see that is the original meaning of the statute and apply it in that way, and I think it’s going to be a big win in women’s sports.”
The Supreme Court’s conservative majority appeared prepared to rule in favor of West Virginia after oral arguments on Jan. 13.
Slusser spoke on the steps of the Supreme Court on Jan. 13 while oral arguments took place inside, sharing her experience with a divided crowd of opposing protesters.
With Fleming on its roster, SJSU reached the 2024 conference final by virtue of a forfeit by Boise State in the semifinal round. SJSU lost in the final to Colorado State.
Slusser went on to develop an eating disorder due to the anxiety and trauma from the scandal and dropped out of her classes the following semester. The eating disorder became so severe, that Slusser said she lost her menstrual cycle for nine months. Her decision to drop her classes resulted in the loss of her scholarship, and her parents said they had to foot the bill out of pocket for an unfinished final semester of college.
President Donald Trump’s Department of Education determined in January that SJSU violated Title IX in its handling of the situation involving Fleming, and has given the university an ultimatum to agree to a series of resolutions or face a referral to the Department of Justice.
Among the department’s findings, it determined that a female athlete discovered that the trans student allegedly conspired to have a member of an opposing team spike her in the face during a match. ED claims that “SJSU did not investigate the conspiracy, but later subjected the female athlete to a Title IX complaint for ‘misgendering’ the male athlete in online videos and interviews.”
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SJSU trans player Blaire Fleming and teammate Brooke Slusser went to a magic show and had Thanksgiving together in Las Vegas despite an ongoing lawsuit over Fleming being transgender. (Thien-An Truong/San Jose State Athletics)
SJSU Athletic Director Jeff Konya told Fox News Digital in a July interview that he was satisfied with how the university handled the situation involving Fleming.
“I think everybody acted in the best possible way they could, given the circumstances,” Konya said.
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Sports
Myles Garrett cited for speeding a ninth time, an elite pass rusher seemingly always in a rush
Myles Garrett is in a hurry to become the greatest pass rusher in NFL history. The Cleveland Browns All-Pro defensive end set the single-season sack record in 2025 and has cracked the top 20 career leaders after only nine seasons.
“I’m going to take that down, and I prefer I take it down in the next five years,” Garrett told Casino Guru News last month.
Off the field, however, his urgency to get from point A to B is a problem. He’s accumulating speeding tickets at an alarming rate.
On Feb. 21, Garrett was handed his ninth speeding ticket since his NFL career began in 2017. He was cited for driving 94 mph in a 70-mph zone on Interstate 71 between Cleveland and Columbus, Ohio.
The citation from the Wayne County Sheriff’s Office says Garrett was driving his green 2024 Porsche at 1:35 a.m., returning home after attending a Miami of Ohio basketball game in Oxford.
Body cam footage shows the officer telling Garrett that she kept the charge under 100 mph so that a court appearance wouldn’t be mandatory. Garrett reportedly still holds a Texas driver’s license — he attended Texas A&M — and told the officer that he did not have an Ohio license.
Cleveland Browns’ Myles Garrett wears a jacket displaying his girlfriend Chloe Kim before the women’s snowboarding halfpipe finals at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Livigno, Italy.
(Lindsey Wasson / AP)
The officer wrote that the famously affable Garrett was “kind and cooperative,” and that drugs and alcohol were not a factor.
Garrett’s need for speed flies in the face of his persona. He has written poetry since high school, peppers social media with inspirational sayings and donates time and money to several charities.
His girlfriend is two-time gold-medal-winning U.S. Olympic snowboarder Chloe Kim, for whom he wrote a poem he shared on social media: “You enrapture fools to kings, and exist without a peer, put on this Earth for many things, but our love is why you’re here.”
Verse hasn’t slowed his roll. On Aug. 9 he was cited for ticket No. 8, clocked at 100 mph in a 60-mph zone in a Cleveland suburb a day after the Browns returned home from a preseason game at Carolina.
Garrett’s seventh ticket followed a frightening crash in 2022. He flipped his gray 2021 Porsche 911 Turbo S off State Road in Sharon Township and he and a female passenger were injured. He was cited for failing to control his vehicle due to unsafe speeds on what had been a slick roadway.
A witness told a responding police officer that Garrett’s vehicle went airborne, took out a fire hydrant and rolled three times. Garrett sustained shoulder and biceps sprains and was sidelined for the Browns’ game that week against the Atlanta Falcons. His companion was not seriously injured.
Cleveland television station WKYC reported that in September 2021 Garrett was stopped twice in a 24-hour period — for driving 120 and 105 mph. The infractions occurred on Interstate 71 in Medina County, where the speed limit is 70 mph, and he paid fines of $267 and $287.
A year earlier, Garrett was cited for driving 100 mph in a 65-mph zone of Interstate 77 — again while driving a Porsche — and paid a $308 fine. He accumulated his first batch of speeding tickets in 2017 and 2018, and the police reports recite similar circumstances: Garrett driving well over the speed limit, cited without incident, paid a nominal fine.
The piddly fines certainly aren’t a deterrent. Garrett, 30, and the Browns agreed to a four-year contract extension in March 2025 that made him the highest-paid non-quarterback in NFL history at the time. The deal pays the seven-time All-Pro more than $40 million a season and includes more than $123 million in guaranteed money.
He set the NFL single-season sack record with 23.0 last season, surpassing the 22.5 accumulated by T.J. Watt and Michael Strahan. Garrett has 125.5 career sacks, averaging 14 a season, a pace that would enable him to break Bruce Smith’s career record of 200 in five years.
“That is definitely on my mind to go out there and get,” Garrett said. “That’s a goal I’ve had for years now since college.”
Garrett has declined to discuss his driving habits.
“I’d honestly prefer to talk about football and this team than anything I’m doing off the field other than the back-to-school event that I did the other day,” he told reporters after ticket No. 8 in August, referring to a charity appearance.
“I try to keep my personal life personal. And I’d rather focus on this team when I can.”
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Former ESPN broadcaster Keith Olbermann once again incited backlash on social media Wednesday after he called late legendary college football coach Lou Holtz a “legendary scumbag” in an X post on the day Holtz was announced dead.
“Legendary scumbag, yes,” Olbermann wrote in response to a clip of Holtz criticizing former President Joe Biden in 2020 for supporting abortion rights.
Olbermann received scathing criticism in response to his post on X.
“You’re a scumbag that needs mental help,” one X user wrote to Olbermann.
One user echoed that sentiment, writing to Olbermann, “You’re the real scumbag here. Lou Holtz had more class, integrity, and genuine decency in his pinky finger than you’ll ever show in your lifetime.”
Another user wrote, “You’re a grumpy, lonely, Godless man. All the things Lou Holtz was not.”
Keith Olbermann speaks onstage during the Olbermann panel at the ESPN portion of the 2013 Summer Television Critics Association tour at the Beverly Hilton Hotel July 24, 2013, in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images)
Olbermann has made it a pattern of sharing politically charged far-left statements that are often combative and ridiculed on social media, typically resulting in immense backlash.
After the U.S. men’s hockey team’s gold medal win, Olbermann heavily criticized the team for accepting an invitation from President Trump to the State of the Union address. Olbermann wrote on X that any members of the men’s team who attended the event were “declaring their indelible stupidity and misogyny,” while praising the women’s team for declining the invitation.
In January, Olbermann attacked former University of Kentucky women’s swimmer Kaitlynn Wheeler for celebrating a women’s rights rally outside the U.S. Supreme Court during oral arguments for two cases focused on the legality of biological male trans athletes in women’s sports.
Former Notre Dame football coach Lou Holtz listens before being presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom at the White House in Washington, D.C., Dec, 3, 2020. (Doug Mills/The New York Times/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
“It’s still about you trying to find an excuse for a lifetime wasted trying to succeed in sports without talent,” Olbermann wrote in response to Wheeler’s post.
In 2025, Olbermann faced significant backlash after posting (and later deleting) a message on X aimed at CNN contributor Scott Jennings, that said, “You’re next motherf—–,” shortly after the assassination of conservative influencer Charlie Kirk.
Holtz was a stern supporter of President Donald Trump, even saying in February 2024 that Trump needed to “coach America back to greatness!”
Near the end of Trump’s first term, shortly after former President Joe Biden defeated him in the 2020 election, Trump awarded Holtz with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award of the United States.
After Holtz’s death was announced Wednesday, several top GOP figures paid tribute to the coach on social media.
Those GOP lawmakers included senators Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala.; Todd Young, R-Ind.; Tom Cotton, R-Ark.; and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.; representatives Greg Murphy, R-N.C.; David Rouzer, R-N.C.; Erin Houchin, R-Ind.; and Steve Womack, R-Ark.; and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis; Indiana Gov. Mike Braun; U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon; and Rudy Giuliani.
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Lou Holtz, former Notre Dame football coach, addresses the America First Policy Institute’s America First Agenda Summit at the Marriott Marquis July 26, 2022. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc)
At the time of publication, prominent Democrat leaders have appeared silent on Holtz’s passing, including prominent Democrats with a football background.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who worked as an assistant high school football coach; Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., who was a recruiting target for Holtz in 1986 as a college prospect; Rep. Colin Allred, D-Texas, who played in the NFL; and Rep. Kam Buckner, D-Ill., who played football for the University of Illinois, have not posted acknowledging Holtz’s death.
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