Sports
Notre Dame suffers stunning upset to Northern Illinois, Huskies record first ever win over top-10 opponent
![Notre Dame suffers stunning upset to Northern Illinois, Huskies record first ever win over top-10 opponent Notre Dame suffers stunning upset to Northern Illinois, Huskies record first ever win over top-10 opponent](https://static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2024/09/Notre-Dame-football.jpg)
Northern Illinois kicker Kanon Woodill’s 35-yard field goal in the final minute proved to be the difference maker in the Huskies’ matchup with the fifth-ranked Notre Dame Fighting Irish.
Notre Dame did try to pull off a last-second comeback, but a 62-yard field goal was no good. Northern Illinois would go on to celebrate an improbable 16-14 victory in South Bend, Indiana.
The upset marked the Huskies first non-conference victory against a ranked opponent since a 19-16 win over the then-21st Alabama Crimson Tide in 2003. It also gave Northern Illinois its first win in program history against a team ranked in the top-10 of the AP Top 25.
Sep 7, 2024; South Bend, Indiana, USA; Northern Illinois Huskies center Logan Zschernitz (65) prepares to snap the ball in the first quarter against the Notre Dame Fighting Irish at Notre Dame Stadium. (Matt Cashore-Imagn Images)
Notre Dame, on the heels of an impressive road win over Texas A&M, looked like it was in position to get some separation from Northern Illinois as it clung to a 14-13 lead in the fourth quarter. The Fighting Irish gained possession after a punt with 7:49 left and drove from their 25 to the Northern Illinois 49.
OKLAHOMA STATE HANGS ON IN DOUBLE OVERTIME TO AVOID ARKANSAS UPSET
Fighting Irish quarterback Riley Leonard launched a pass deep up the middle intended for Kris Mitchell, but Amariyun Knighten made the interception and returned it 33 yards to the 50-yard line with 5:55 to play.
![Northern Illinois football player makes a tackle](https://a57.foxnews.com/static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2024/09/1200/675/Notre-Dame-quarterback.jpg?ve=1&tl=1)
Northern Illinois safety Santana Banner tackles Notre Dame quarterback Riley Leonard during a NCAA college football game between Notre Dame and Northern Illinois at Notre Dame Stadium on Saturday, Sept. 7, 2024. (Michael Clubb / USA TODAY NETWORK)
Knighten’s interception set up the winning field goal from Woodill, his third of the day.
Notre Dame struck first as quarterback Riley Leonard side-stepped the Huskies defense for an 11-yard touchdown run with 8:28 left in the first quarter.
Notre Dame will likely drop considerably in next week’s rankings before they travel to West Lafayette for a game against in Purdue on Sept. 14. Meanwhile, Northern Illinois will enjoy a bye week before hosting Buffalo on Sept. 21.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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Sports
Troy Aikman ‘never lost at anything.’ He’s just now starting to enjoy it.
![Troy Aikman ‘never lost at anything.’ He’s just now starting to enjoy it. Troy Aikman ‘never lost at anything.’ He’s just now starting to enjoy it.](https://cdn.theathletic.com/app/uploads/2024/09/05164707/0906_TroyAikman-1.png)
DALLAS — After he’s revved the room and made his pitch, Troy Aikman walks to the back and starts tending bar. “What can I get ya?” he asks, flashing that famous half-smile over and over, probably because he knows the only beer on tap is his.
It’s a Monday afternoon, late summer, just north of Dallas. Inside the events room at Andrews Distributing, employees of the biggest beer distributor in Texas are not merely allowed to enjoy a cold one at the end of the workday; they’re encouraged. Aikman, the Dallas Cowboys icon, Hall of Famer and “Monday Night Football” analyst, has just wrapped a raucous sales rally for Eight, the beer company he founded in 2022, and now he’s manning the tap.
“How about that pour?” Aikman says, serving one up.
He knows he doesn’t have to be here, playing celebrity bartender, posing for photos, signing autographs, sharing stories about how Jimmy Johnson’s urgency shaped his Cowboys teams and how his own father’s work ethic shaped him. He’s calling a game in Canton in three days and has a trip to New York to celebrate his daughter’s birthday in between. A video message would’ve sufficed.
But that’d be too easy. He hates easy.
He and his team worked on the recipe for two years. Cases would show up on his doorstep from Oregon State University’s fermentation science program, which he partnered with, and they’d do blind taste tests over Zoom. “Can we make it cleaner?” Aikman kept asking.
He was never going to just slap his name on the label. He respects the business too much. Aikman’s first gig in the beverage industry came in college, after his coach at Oklahoma, Barry Switzer, lined him up a summer job before he transferred to UCLA. Imagine this scene today: One of the most talented quarterbacks in the nation spending his offseason loading trucks, delivering cases, stocking shelves and building out displays in grocery stores across the state.
“My NIL deal,” Aikman jokes.
Star athlete or not, working wasn’t a choice. Kenneth Aikman had his son shingling the roof at 12 and clocking in for his first job at 13. “He treated me as a man from the time I was 6,” Troy says. In high school he’d spend his Friday nights on the football field and his Saturday mornings installing tires, changing out dead batteries and fixing window units at the Western Auto down the road. A lesson he learned then is printed on every can of his beer now: No shortcuts.
Aikman believes it to be the spine of his success: without that wiring, there are no Super Bowls, no 23-year broadcasting career, no booming business ventures. On paper, his was the archetype American success story, the country kid who made good because he was raised right. GQ once put him on the cover above the headline, “God’s Quarterback.”
But there’s another side to the story that God’s Quarterback rarely talks about. The success everyone saw masked the inner turmoil no one knew about. Aikman’s wrestled with it for decades, warring against his own happiness, chasing a finish line he isn’t even sure exists.
Then one day he looked up and realized his second marriage was crumbling.
“A failure,” Aikman calls it. “That was my rock bottom.”
Even now, years later, he’s embarrassed talking about it.
“For me,” he says over breakfast one morning in Dallas, “contentment was always a four-letter word. I never wanted to be content. I didn’t wanna be around anyone who was content. That’s just not a place I could land.”
He’s 57. He hasn’t taken a warm shower in years. He starts each morning with a cold one and a 20-minute walk in low-level sunlight to set his circadian rhythm. He’s in bed by 9 p.m. unless he’s calling a game.
He lifts four days a week and adheres to a recovery routine that would probably make half the starting quarterbacks in the league feel guilty: cold plunges, stints in the sauna and hyperbaric chamber, plus regular red-light and plasma therapies. For years Aikman jogged every summer afternoon at 3 p.m. — when it’s typically pushing 100 degrees in Dallas — partly because he craved the challenge, partly because he liked how it felt afterward. He needed to hurt.
“If I didn’t keep myself in shape,” he says, “I’d feel like a fraud.”
He tracks his sleep. He reads about biohacking. “I’m obsessed,” he admits. He carries around a gallon jug of water everywhere he goes, filling it up three times a day. Wanting more flexibility, he took up yoga this spring, and for the first three months it absolutely wrecked him. “It’s a b—-,” he says. “Hardest thing I’ve ever done.” Class would finish and he’d just lie there, soaked in sweat, unable to move. The quarterback who once finished a game as a rookie after being knocked out cold — Aikman had blood dripping from his ear on the sideline — couldn’t even muster the strength to stand.
He’s come to love it. “I feel like I can do everything I did when I was in my 30s,” he says.
Even play in an NFL game?
“If I had to, yeah,” he says.
The work is what always separated him. He didn’t have Dan Marino’s arm or Steve Young’s improvisation. But the work never scared him. The punishment, either.
Daryl Johnston, a teammate for 11 seasons in Dallas, remembers Aikman walking up to him during the 1993 NFC Championship Game against the 49ers, looking confused. “38-21?” Aikman asked, reading the scoreboard aloud. “How’d we get on them so quick?” Johnston stood there, stunned.
The starting quarterback didn’t even know the score?
Then, after he watched Aikman slip an ammonia cap under his nose and inhale, Johnston put it together. The QB had taken a vicious shot to the head early in the game. Ninety minutes of his memory was gone. The Cowboys won their second straight Super Bowl seven days later.
“I’ve always felt that my success as an athlete, and as a broadcaster, is not because I’m the most talented guy in the room,” Aikman says. “It’s because I’m willing to do what most people are not.”
He’s also willing to say what others won’t. It’s why Aikman remains one of the top TV analysts in sports: he not only prepares like he’s still playing, but he’s blunt when others tend to back away, unafraid to call it like he sees it. He’s at his best when he says what the fans at home are thinking.
“Troy might be the most honest guy ever,” says Norv Turner, his former offensive coordinator in Dallas.
The routine never changes. Aikman needs it. After the game ends Monday night, he takes notes while he watches a replay on his flight home — Aikman owns his own jet and flies private to and from every game — then starts prep for the following week first thing Tuesday morning. He designed his own spotting boards before his first year in the booth, back in 2001, and he’s been using them ever since. He prints them out on Thursdays, color codes them, then adds notes all the way up until kickoff. He refuses to go into a game anything less than completely prepared.
“It took me about a week of us working together to realize why the guy had won three Super Bowls,” says his on-air partner and close friend, Joe Buck. The pair are the longest-tenured broadcast team in NFL history. Their 23rd season together begins Monday night outside San Francisco, where they’ll call 49ers-Jets.
A few years ago, Aikman sent the spotting boards he uses for broadcasts to Greg Olsen, who was taking his old job at Fox; this spring, he sent them to Tom Brady. (Courtesy of ESPN)
In March 2023, after Aikman and Buck’s first year at the network, ESPN replaced a director and producer on the MNF team. Rumors swirled that Aikman was behind the decision; not true, says a company source. With its first Super Bowl broadcast looming in February 2027, ESPN wanted and needed a better fit for the duo it’s paying a combined $33 million annually. Execs learned Aikman wanted to be coached hard, no different than when he was growing up in Oklahoma or suiting up for the Cowboys. The personalities simply hadn’t meshed.
Aikman’s style isn’t for everyone. He knows this. But he’s not above showing others what works for him: a few years ago, Aikman sent his spotting boards to Greg Olsen, who was stepping into his old job at Fox; this spring he did the same with Tom Brady, who’ll slide into Olsen’s seat beginning Sunday. It was important to Aikman to pay it forward. It’s what John Madden did with him.
![go-deeper](https://cdn.theathletic.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=128,height=128,fit=cover,format=auto/app/uploads/2024/09/03204542/0904_TomBradyFOX-1024x512.png)
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He doesn’t know how Brady will do as a broadcaster, but he expects the transition will take time. “It’s not an easy thing to settle into right away,” Aikman says.
Analysts live in 15 to 20-second soundbites. Then the ball is snapped. Someone told Aikman early on that calling a game is like a prizefight — “Body blows, body blows, body blows,” he explains, “then every once in a while you have a chance at a knockout punch.” It took years for him to learn that.
“There’s this idea that ‘I have this wealth of knowledge about the game, and now I get to take people behind the curtain,’” Aikman says. “You don’t have that kind of time. And it’s gotten harder over the years because teams are playing faster.
“Whether it’s Tom or Greg or Tony (Romo), you sort of figure that out as you go.”
Aikman also doesn’t downplay the competitive juices simmering in an industry that has seen salaries explode in recent years. It’s there, whether it’s discussed publicly or not. Two years after Romo made headlines, signing an extension with CBS that pays $18 million a year, Aikman jumped to ESPN on a similar deal. Brady hasn’t even called a game yet and is already the highest-paid commentator in history, starting a 10-year, $375 million deal with Fox.
“That’s the competitive nature of me, and I know these guys are competitive as well,” Aikman says. “Every one of us wants to be the best. But whether it’s a new guy coming in or other guys being well-received, it doesn’t affect or change my approach. I go about it the same regardless.”
Maybe it doesn’t change his approach. But Romo’s deal, Olsen’s popularity, the hype surrounding Brady’s debut … it’s caught his attention, right?
Buck, who knows Aikman about as well as anyone, has no doubt.
“We’ve never really talked about this, but it’s only natural. It’s what drives him to watch all that film.”
He’s raging on the sideline at Texas Stadium during a loss late in his career, ripping into his offensive line. “That’s a f—— embarrassment!” he screams. “F—— junior league!”
He’s standing next to an assistant coach, fuming about how far they’d fallen. “I’m tired of being the guy who’s gotta run down everybody’s throat all the time … why don’t we have a coach who does that?”
Aikman hates these clips.
“Man, I don’t want my daughters seeing that stuff,” he’ll tell his old teammates.
“Troy,” Johnston will remind him, “that was part of your greatness.”
Most only remember the trophies. Aikman remembers how much the beginning humbled him and how much the end hurt. He went 0-11 as a rookie and used to walk off the field grumbling, “What’s it take to win a game in this league?” Two years later, fully healthy, he stood on the sideline and watched Steve Beuerlein start the first playoff game of the Jimmy Johnson era.
Turner had met him a year earlier. Aikman’s arm was in a sling. The Cowboys’ new OC decided to make a joke to lighten the mood.
“We gotta get you to get the ball out a little quicker,” Turner told him.
Aikman didn’t laugh.
Even as the dynasty took off, he struggled to enjoy parts of the climb. Aikman still remembers the visitor’s locker room at Candlestick Park, just after they’d beaten the 49ers to advance to their first Super Bowl. Johnson stood on a table and screamed “How ’bout them Cowboys!” Players yelled. Players hugged.
The QB walked to the shower, muttering under his breath, “Well, if we don’t win in two weeks, this won’t mean sh–.”
He felt an immense weight before the game, mindful of how it’d shape his legacy. He knew there was no going back. “In three and a half hours,” Aikman told himself on the field, “this is either going to be the greatest day of my life or the worst.”
He carved up the Bills’ secondary for four touchdowns in a 52-17 rout. A few hours later, the game’s MVP couldn’t find anyone to celebrate with. Aikman walked into the Cowboys party with his girlfriend at the time, looked around, saw nothing but fans wanting autographs and sponsors wanting photos — “Jerry (Jones) making money,” he says — and walked out. He went back to the hotel, looking for his teammates. His girlfriend fell asleep. He called room service and ordered some beer. He called his parents’ room. No answer. Called his sister’s room. No answer.
“No way in hell I was going to bed,” he says.
He ambled down to the lobby, bumped into some members of the Dallas media and threw back beers with them until the sun came up. He showed up to his MVP press conference the following morning having not slept a wink, head still ringing, “trying not to say anything stupid.”
He decided he was in charge of the Cowboys’ Super Bowl parties from there on out.
“We got better as we went along,” he says with a laugh.
He was the first quarterback to win three Super Bowls in four seasons, and his story was irresistibly American: he was the son of a rancher from Oklahoma, the No. 1 pick with the icy demeanor who’d stand in the pocket, take the hit and fire it on the money.
His name seemed dreamed up by the Football Gods. He was Clint Eastwood in shoulder pads.
But there always seemed to be a joylessness to him. He was so … robotic. Cowboys owner Jerry Jones once said that fans would write him letters, asking why his star quarterback didn’t have more fun on the field.
“I wasn’t out there to be anybody’s friend,” Aikman says.
![](https://cdn.theathletic.com/app/uploads/2024/09/05164825/0906_TroyAikman_Downpage2-scaled.jpg)
“I wasn’t out there to be anybody’s friend,” Aikman says of his playing days. (George Gojkovich / Getty Images)
By the time they won their third title, in January 1996, Aikman knew they were slipping. “Hanging on by a thread,” Johnston says. They escaped Super Bowl XXX with a 27-17 win over the Steelers largely because Pittsburgh quarterback Neil O’Donnell tossed two errant second-half interceptions. Aikman barely threw for 200 yards.
The Cowboys were lined up in victory formation for the final snap when Steelers linebacker Kevin Greene let them hear it. “You know we kicked your ass!” Greene screamed from across the line of scrimmage. “You know we should’ve won this game!”
Aikman smirked.
“Yeah, well guess who’s getting the trophy?” he shouted back. “Set hut!”
But in postgame interviews, he could barely allow a smile. “Relief” was the word he kept using.
Johnson had been gone for two years, following a nasty falling out with Jones, two men wrestling over credit while their egos destroyed a dynasty from within. Everything the coach had built — everything Aikman had bought into — was slowly unraveling. His father had taught him there was a certain way of doing things; Johnson had done the same. No shortcuts, remember. Now Aikman was realizing that without that drive, he was miserable.
He once fumed when Switzer, hired to replace Johnson after the second title, called off practice when half the wide receivers room showed up hungover. “What am I supposed to do, cut Michael Irvin?” Aikman remembers Switzer asking him.
“No, you don’t cut Michael Irvin,” Aikman told him. “But you cut that guy, and that guy, and that guy.”
By 2000, Aikman’s last year in Dallas, he was taking pain-killing shots before every game just to slog through another beating. The Cowboys went 5-11. He decided midway through the season he’d never play for them again. It wasn’t the back issues. It wasn’t the concussions. He was disgusted at what America’s Team had become.
What pissed him off most — and what still irritates him to this day — is that it wasn’t the 49ers or Packers that dethroned them. The NFL’s team of the 90s sabotaged themselves.
“Not one time did you ever read Michael Irvin complaining that he wasn’t getting enough credit, or Emmitt Smith complaining he wasn’t getting enough credit, or me complaining I wasn’t getting enough credit,” Aikman says, getting a bit heated over breakfast. “Every player on those teams did what we had to do to win.
“And yet the two guys who led the organization couldn’t do it. That’s the part that was bullsh–.”
Turner puts it this way: “Deep down, Troy thinks they could’ve won a couple more.”
Ask Aikman which of the current coaches he’d like to play for, and his answers aren’t all that surprising: Kyle Shanahan, Sean McVay, Matt LeFleur.
Then he thinks about it a little more, and his response is telling.
“Tom (Brady) is gonna laugh at this,” he finally says. “But I would have loved to play for Bill Belichick.”
Dad would always ask him what he wanted to be when he grew up, and Troy would always give him the same answer: professional athlete. As a kid, he’d spend nights alone in his bedroom, practicing his signature, perfecting it for the day he started getting autograph requests.
Kenneth Aikman took no issue with his son’s ambition — he just wanted him to know what it’d require. Around the house, he was rigid and unrelenting. When he laid down orders, he didn’t repeat himself.
“In some ways it was really good for me,” Troy says. “But you give up a lot of childhood in the process.”
The family moved from California to Oklahoma when Troy was 12. His dad hired two carpenters and built their house from the ground up. “A modern-day Wyatt Earp,” Troy has called him in interviews. “He instilled the fear of God in me growing up.”
His older sisters, too. Once, after one of them left a rotting banana peel on the kitchen counter, dad grew furious. “If I find another one,” he warned, “you’re gonna eat it.” Not long after, he did. And he stuck to his word.
It’s not a story Aikman tells often.
He was actually better at baseball than football growing up, and he wasn’t even planning on going out for the high school team until his dad asked him about it. “You know football sign-ups are today, right? You’re signing up, right?”
Troy didn’t have it in him to tell him no. He needed to show the toughest man he knew that he was tough, too.
The resolve he built as a teenager never eased. Time and success only hardened it. He’d play half the NFC Championship Game with no memory of it. He’d unload on coaches and teammates when the standard wasn’t being met. He’d get pain-killing shots just so he could be on the field for a five-win team.
Even in retirement he felt a pull, like there was more to prove. He almost came back three times. He was ready to play for the Chargers in 2001; San Diego signed Doug Flutie instead. Then-Eagles coach Andy Reid called him in 2002 after Donovan McNabb broke his leg; Philadelphia was 7-3 and needed a quarterback for the playoff push. Aikman mulled it overnight but decided against it. A year later, the Dolphins thought they were a quarterback away. Turner was calling the plays. Aikman was in. He started training. Ultimately, Miami general manager Rick Spielman couldn’t get comfortable with Aikman’s injury history.
Broadcasting scratched an itch, but slowly Aikman learned the void would never again be filled. “You know the thing about this business that kills me?” he told Buck their first year together. “There’s no scoreboard.”
![go-deeper](https://cdn.theathletic.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=128,height=128,fit=cover,format=auto/app/uploads/2024/09/03070909/AP24236240607852-1024x683.jpeg)
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He poured himself into other pursuits. A restaurant. A car dealership. For a time he was part-owner of the San Diego Padres, then a NASCAR team. He quit golf for a while because it drove him nuts. “I can run a little hot sometimes,” Aikman says.
He moved on to the next thing, and the next thing, and the next thing. It was all he knew to do. Standing still scared him to death.
“There have been times when I’m like, ‘Bro, just chill, you don’t have to chase all this stuff,’” Buck says. “But any idea of him just drifting into a peaceful retirement, sitting on a beach somewhere, that’s just the furthest thing from his mind.”
Years passed. The more Aikman ran from contentment, the more it robbed him of his own happiness. His first marriage fell apart. Then his second. So he went to work on himself, trying to balance something that took years for him to accept: the traits that made him a Hall of Famer were the same ones keeping him from life’s simple joys.
He started meditating daily. He learned he could skip one workout a week and not beat himself up over it. He realized everyone doesn’t think like a quarterback, and that being content wasn’t a sign of weakness — or worse yet, a character flaw.
“It’s taken decades,” Aikman admits. “Not to get weird on you, but it’s taken a lot of personal work … finding it within myself to give myself grace. There was a lot of, ‘Why do I feel this way?’ There’s also been a curiosity that’s allowed me to unlock a lot of locked doors.”
That doesn’t mean the man’s lost his edge. A few years ago, he and Buck were standing on the sideline during a Cowboys walkthrough, prepping to call a game the next day. One of the coaches asked Aikman if he wanted to take a few snaps with the scout team. Are you kidding? He stepped into the huddle, on the wrong side of 50, determined to torch Dallas’ first-team defense.
“I’m gonna challenge them,” he told Buck. “You don’t run the scout team to be bad.”
![](https://cdn.theathletic.com/app/uploads/2024/09/05171307/0906_TroyAikman_DownpageBooth-1-scaled.jpg)
Buck and Aikman kick off Year 23 of their partnership Monday night. (Courtesy of ESPN)
Aikman’s newest venture taps into some of the same competitive urges. Eight’s launch in 2022 was the biggest of any independent beer in the history of the state. But Aikman wasn’t thrilled with Year 2, so he spent a month recruiting Dave Reny, who at the time was working for Yuengling, to be his new CEO.
At first, Reny hesitated. He liked where he was at.
“Dave,” Aikman told him, “I’ve never lost at anything in my life. I’m not about to lose at this.”
In between the beer and the booth, Aikman devotes his time to his two 20-something daughters, Jordan and Alexa. “He couldn’t be a better dad,” Buck says. He’s got a soft side, his on-air partner vows, even if most don’t believe it. The tough-as-nails, fire-breathing quarterback who’s bitingly honest when he’s calling a game is actually an easy cry. When Aikman gave a speech at Buck’s wedding a handful of years ago, the entire room was left in tears, Aikman included.
Buck still remembers the first time they spoke, back in 2001, a few weeks after Fox paired them together. He nervously called up his new partner. “I know we don’t know each other real well, but I’ve got my St. Louis Children’s Hospital charity golf tournament coming up,” Buck said, “and I don’t know if there’s any chance you could come …”
“I’ll be there,” Aikman told him.
“That side of him’s never changed,” Buck says.
The loyalty runs both ways. During Aikman’s negotiations with ESPN in 2022, the two spoke every day. Aikman made it clear: he wasn’t making the move unless they made the move together.
“He lost a lot of sleep thinking he was going to have to start over,” Buck says. “Fox flashed Olsen and Brady at me before I left. I told them, ‘I’m sure Greg’s gonna be great. I’m sure Tom’s gonna be great. But I know what I’ve got with Troy.’
“We get along. We fit. We genuinely like each other, and that’s a really comforting feeling when you’re doing a Super Bowl for 115 million people.”
Aikman’s never had a problem fighting for his own. Last winter — after resisting for almost 30 years — Jones finally relented and inducted Johnson into the Cowboys Ring of Honor. What few knew was how central a role Aikman played behind the scenes. His coach deserved it. It was a wrong Aikman needed to see righted.
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Back at the beer distributor in Dallas, Aikman finishes bartending and slips out the back. His plane’s waiting for him. After a busy summer traveling and promoting Eight, he’s anxious to get back to the rhythms of the season. He’s learned to enjoy it more than he did in the past.
More than that, he’s learned he’s allowed to enjoy it.
“I’ve found contentment, if you can believe it,” Aikman says. “And it’s a really good feeling.”
For him peace was a process, long and aggravating, thrilling in moments but draining in others, a journey littered with the triumphs everyone saw and the inner storms no one knew about. Only now does he know one doesn’t come without the other.
That would’ve been too easy, anyway. Troy Aikman’s always hated easy.
(Illustration: Meech Robinson / The Athletic; photos courtesy of JJ Miller Photography and ESPN, Brian Bahr / Getty Images)
Sports
High school football top performers in the Southland
A look at the top performers from high school football games across the Southland on Thursday and Friday nights.
RUSHING
—Julius Gillick, Edison: Rushed for 302 yards and four touchdowns in win over Lakewood.
—Anthony League, Long Beach Millikan: Rushed for 207 yards and three touchdowns in loss to Downey.
—Jalen Gallegos, Diamond Ranch: Rushed for 180 yards and three touchdowns in loss to Covina.
—Jarrett Sabol, Aliso Niguel: USC baseball commit rushed for 223 yards and two touchdowns in win over Chino.
—Samuel Richard, Crenshaw: Rushed for 144 yards and scored a touchdown in win over Hamilton.
PASSING
—Noah Giddens, Western: Passed for 468 yards and six touchdowns in win over El Toro.
—Wyatt McCauley, Inglewood: Passed for 364 yards and four touchdowns in win over Carson.
—Jake Leones, Temple City: Passed for 318 yards and three touchdowns in win over Alhambra.
—Isaiah Arriaza, Damien: Passed for 314 yards and three touchdowns in win over St. Paul.
—Brady Edmunds, Huntington Beach: Passed for 345 yards and two touchdowns in win over Capistrano Vallley.
—Oscar Rios, Downey: Passed for 287 yards and three touchdowns, ran for 136 yards and three touchdowns in 69-68 win over Long Beach Millikan.
—Jacob Paisano, Hart: Completed 30 of 40 passes for 360 yards and two touchdowns in win over Paraclete.
—Jeremiah Duhu, Beaumont: Passed for 244 yards and three touchdowns in win over Summit.
—Bryson Beaver, Vista Murrieta: Completed 18 of 23 passes for 274 yards and two touchdowns in win over Orange Vista.
—James Johnson, Santa Margarita: Passed for five touchdowns in win over Bakersfield Liberty.
RECEIVING
—Shane Rosenthal, Newbury Park: Recorded his fourth interception of the season and had five catches for 118 yards and two touchdowns in win over Oxnard Pacifica.
—JJ Amezcua, Western: Caught 16 passes for 280 yards and four touchdowns in win over El Toro.
—Damani Porras, Downey: Caught seven passes for 152 yards and three touchdowns in win over Millikan.
—Parker Maxwell, Hart: Caught 13 passes for 157 yards and one touchdown in win over Paraclete.
DEFENSE
__Jake Treibatch, Palisades: Had 16 tackles in win over Granada Hills.
—Jon Sarmiento, Palos Verdes: Made two interceptions in comeback win over Corona del Mar.
—Balen Betancourt, Newbury Park: Had three sacks in win over Oxnard Pacifica.
—Mastice Jauregui, Garfield: Had 10 tackles in win over King/Drew.
—Abduall Sanders, Mater Dei: Had two sacks in win over Bishop Gorman.
—KC Cuillard, Tesoro: Returned two interceptions for touchdowns in win over La Mirada.
—Andrejs Biezins, Oak Park: The first-year football player had three tackles for losses in win over Birmingham.
SPECIAL TEAMS
—William Weisberg, SO Notre Dame: Made a 39-yard field goal with five seconds left in 36-34 win over St. Francis. It was his third of the game.
—Nate Lewis, Villa Park: Made field goals from 45 and 40 yards in win over Upland.
Sports
F1’s Carlos Sainz embraces final races as a Ferrari driver: “No one can take that away”
![F1’s Carlos Sainz embraces final races as a Ferrari driver: “No one can take that away” F1’s Carlos Sainz embraces final races as a Ferrari driver: “No one can take that away”](https://cdn.theathletic.com/app/uploads/2024/09/06133448/sipa_55584251-scaled.jpg)
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MONZA, Italy — Carlos Sainz didn’t shy away from admitting that the Italian Grand Prix weekend would be an emotional one.
The week leading up to Ferrari’s home grand prix is one of the busiest for Sainz and his team, who face extra pressure to perform. It can be easy to be caught up in the day-to-day grind: marketing, media and sponsor commitments, engineering meetings and greeting fans, to name a few. Hundreds of people wait just beyond the gates of the Ferrari drivers’ hotel, he says, for a shot at getting a photo, an autograph or just to cheer for them.
When entering weekends like this, racing at Monza, Sainz tries to be more present.
“More often than not, I end up probably in a loop where you just think that what you’re living is normal because it feels normal and standard now after four years of being a Ferrari driver,” Sainz said to The Athletic. “It’s very easy to take everything for granted and think that having all that people there is normal, that the racing in Monza is normal, that it becomes a job and it becomes a routine.”
But his perspective on weekends like this can shift into appreciation. After all, Sainz turned 30 recently. He’s spent 10 years on the grid, and the Singapore Grand Prix will mark his 200th career grand prix. He joined the Formula One grid in 2015 and became a Ferrari driver in 2021. He secured his first pole position and win with the Prancing Horse, amassing five pole positions, 21 podium finishes and three victories over the four seasons with the Maranello-based crew. And at season’s end, Sainz will close this chapter and head to Grove, England, to join Williams.
But for now, he’s focused on where his feet are.
“Going to so many races that we are doing nowadays, it’s very easy to fall into feeling that everything feels very routinary,” he continued about the Italian GP weekend. “So I try to extract myself from that feeling and try to really be appreciative, and always try and tell myself what Carlos, when he was 11, 12, 13 years old, would have thought.
“If you would tell him that now I would be living these moments, I’m sure he wouldn’t have believed it, and he would be enjoying it and trying to embrace it as much as possible.”
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Weathering a ‘roller coaster’ season
Sainz describes himself as a “short-term thinker,” focusing on the next race or year. Becoming a Ferrari driver is a dream for most competitors — if not all — in the sport, given it is one of the most successful F1 teams.
While competing for Toro Rosso (now known as RB), he formed a good relationship with the Italian mechanics and engineers. He said, “I knew they were putting in a good word about me to the Italian engineers in Ferrari because they normally fly together because the bases are only an hour away from each other. And then I remember thinking, maybe one day I can be a Ferrari driver.”
![](https://cdn.theathletic.com/app/uploads/2024/09/06133722/sipa_55633294-scaled.jpg)
Sainz won’t close the door on a Ferrari reunion someday. (Sipa USA)
It happened in 2021, four years after his Toro Rosso chapter. One of his first memories with Ferrari happened at a special track to the team and company — Fiorano Circuit. It is a figure-eight track where Ferrari tests the cars, located near the factory in Maranello. Sainz remembers putting on the red suit and hopping into the red car, his father (a well-known and successful rally car champion) watching on.
“I saw him, a little tear falling down his eye when they told me when I left the pits in Fiorano for my first install lap in red,” Sainz said. “That is a memory that I will never forget.”
Sainz’s most successful seasons happened during this Ferrari chapter, the first top team he has competed for. The 2024 season marked the last of his two-year agreement, and he thrives on stability. Before Christmas last winter, Sainz expressed that his priority was to remain with the Prancing Horse. There seemed to be little reason to doubt Ferrari would extend his and Charles Leclerc’s contracts, keeping together one of the sport’s most consistently competitive driver duos.
But then came February 1, 2024.
News broke that Lewis Hamilton would join the Italian team in 2025, replacing Sainz and throwing the Spaniard’s future into question. He became the hottest name on the driver market, but the silly season wore on through much of 2024. To this day, Sainz still describes this year as a “roller coaster,” touching on the high of winning in Australia (16 days after surgery for appendicitis) and figuring out his future in the sport.
![go-deeper](https://cdn.theathletic.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=128,height=128,fit=cover,format=auto/app/uploads/2024/02/02092950/GettyImages-1669182898-1024x683.jpg)
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“What I’ve been through this year is not ideal to perform at your highest level as an athlete,” Sainz said at Monza. “I think every driver that wants to perform at its highest level wants to have their future sorted and not have to worry about that, while having to perform in a Formula One season, in a team that already has a lot of pressure and a lot of attention and high tension environment like (at) Ferrari.”
But Sainz keeps showing up each weekend, knowing Hamilton will replace him at season’s end. Looking back over the campaign, he said he’s proud of how he handled the first half of the season “given everything that I had to go through and how relatively well the season went.
“But I do believe there’s lap time in the athlete when everything is a bit calmer.”
Sainz says it requires one’s full attention and effort to be competitive in this sport. He pours all of his training, time and thinking into racing and feels that has helped him win races and perform at the level he has in recent years.
“That’s why I say that is so critical, also, to make sure that you have everything under control.”
![](https://cdn.theathletic.com/app/uploads/2024/09/06134119/GettyImages-2169737984-1-scaled.jpg)
Sainz raced his final Italian GP with Ferrari last weekend. (Lars Baron/Getty Images)
‘No hard feelings’ as Williams era beckons
Williams’ pursuit of Sainz began at the end of 2023 at the Abu Dhabi GP, team boss James Vowles confirmed in late July after announcing that the Spaniard would join the Grove-based team. Vowles’s message to Sainz remained the same.
“From the beginning, I gave him warts and all: ‘Here’s what’s going to happen, we are going to go backwards, here’s why, here’s what we’re investing in, here’s what’s coming, here’s why I’m excited by this project – and it’s your choice, very much, if you want to be a part of it,” Vowles said. “‘But I know that we will have success in the future and I know it’s going to cost us in the short term.’ And I’m confident that that honesty and transparency has paid off.”
Sainz has learned over his F1 career to trust his gut feeling about people. It dates back to his McLaren days, where he secured two podium finishes in the same number of seasons. He said, “I remember I’ve never enjoyed so much competing as I did my years in McLaren with Lando (Norris), with Andrea Stella, and we did (have) a very strong team. And I remember leaving that team thinking I want to go to Ferrari and perform there, but I think this team is going to be successful in the future.”
Three years later, Sainz was right. McLaren is challenging Red Bull for the constructors’ championship, the gap sitting at just eight points. The people component and belief in future success carried weight when deciding to join the rebuilding Williams team. Something that motivates him is how he’ll be able to help the project progress.
“I want to feel listened (to). I want to feel like I can help,” Sainz said in Zandvoort. “And this, in a historical team like Williams, when they have a clear vision and super committed to bringing the team back to the front with very clear investment partners, it’s something that was important for me.”
Sainz may be heading to an English team next season, but he’s not fully closing the door on Ferrari. And it’s not a surprise. He said their relationship didn’t break – the separation is “circumstantial.”
“The fact that I’m leaving at the end of the year, I think there is nothing really that is wrong with me and Ferrari,” he continued. “A seven-time world champion happened to want to come to Ferrari in the last years of his career, and I had to move aside and to obviously leave my space to Lewis. I have no hard feelings regarding that.
“I have probably still five to 10 years of career in front of me. So why would I close the door to a potential comeback?”
‘Always a Ferrari driver’
As Sainz climbed the pit wall and peeked through the wire fencing, the crowds dressed in rosso corsa cheered. Leclerc won the Italian Grand Prix that weekend, but it was possible in part thanks to Sainz.
Sainz critically helped Leclerc and Ferrari win on home turf by holding up Piastri. The Australian pitted on lap 38 out of 53, gaining quickly as the race wore on. But for him to catch Leclerc, Piastri needed to pass several backmarkers and Sainz. After the race, he said he knew the McLaren driver was gaining on him and what was at stake.
“I did my best to slow him down one lap. Then obviously, he was a second and a half quicker at that stage, so around Monza, it’s not like you can do much more than one lap.”
It ended up being enough. Sainz didn’t finish on the podium, but Piastri ended his day in second, 2.664 seconds off of Leclerc.
![](https://cdn.theathletic.com/app/uploads/2024/09/06133838/GettyImages-2169752324-scaled.jpg)
Sainz didn’t make the podium but helped ensure a Ferrari victory. (Clive Rose/Getty Images)
“It’s been an incredible weekend for me. I’ve enjoyed it a lot. It’s a shame not to be on the podium today. At the same time, I feel like today was a bit of a coin toss whether to stay out or not, get it right,” Sainz said. “Charles has nailed it together with the team. With me, if we wanted to be in that fight, we probably would have needed to stay in the train with the cars ahead after the first pit stop. We just lost the chance of a podium there.
“Honestly, very happy to see the team winning here this weekend. I wish I was there up there with the podium with Charles, but I think he deserves the win more than anyone today, so congrats.”
The Spaniard may be leaving the team at season’s end, but at least part of the Ferrari faithful likely will continue following his career. Sebastian Vettel once said, “Everybody’s a Ferrari fan. Even if they say they’re not, they are a Ferrari fan.” The same could be said for past Ferrari drivers. They may not wear the rosso corsa race suit but will always be part of Ferrari.
“There are many examples in the grid or in the past where every time there’s been a Ferrari driver that obviously has had also success, but also a good relationship with the tifosi, has then been remembered and has been treated really well from the tifosi all around the world, wherever they go,” Sainz said.
“I do believe that’s my case also. That’s why I’ve always said that once you’re a Ferrari driver, you’re always a Ferrari driver. No one can take that away from you. I’ve had the pleasure of doing it for the last four years, and yeah, I’m gonna enjoy it as much as I can.”
![go-deeper](https://cdn.theathletic.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=128,height=128,fit=cover,format=auto/app/uploads/2024/07/25145058/0726_F1_Ferrari-1024x512.png)
GO DEEPER
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Top photo: Sipa USA
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