The sport at the ‘epicenter' of stalking, plus a Taylor Swift review
Good morning! Get excited about Xavier Worthy today.
Our stalking series continues this morning with an affecting story about one sport in particular: tennis, which seems to attract more stalkers than any other sport. And it's no new trend:
Today's story, penned by Charlie Eccleshare, delved into why tennis finds itself here. It's worth your time.
I also could not stop thinking about yesterday's story on Aaron Donald and his stalker, particularly the image of one of the scariest men to ever play football feeling so powerless, as any athlete in a stalking situation feels.
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I asked Nathan Fenno, who wrote the story, about that specific aspect of this entire storyline:
'So much of the burden already falls on victims — they have to document the unwanted (and oftentimes terrifying) behavior, they have to gather evidence, they have to file for a restraining order, they need to show the behavior is causing them to be afraid and, after all that, they need to renew the order once it expires. This all happens while they endure behavior that can wreak havoc on their careers, relationships and mental and physical health. The sad reality is that even if a victim secures a restraining order, that doesn't mean the perpetrator is going to stop. At the same time, stalking is a challenging issue for law enforcement since it's pattern based — usually over an extended period — rather than incident based.'
We'll have more on this entire arc tomorrow. Let's move onto something a little lighter:
At its peak last night, 'New Heights,' the popular podcast featuring Travis and Jason Kelce, reached 1.3 million live viewers. That's not total views — 1.3 million people logged on simultaneously to watch a live football podcast.
Why? I don't know if you've heard, but Travis Kelce is dating Taylor Swift, the biggest pop star on the planet. Swift appeared on the show to announce a new forthcoming album, which is just a wild sentence to even type. It was the confluence of every Swiftie who became a football fan because of this relationship.
We have a full sports-focused review of the episode up already, thanks to the numerous Swifties we have on staff at The Athletic. I'll give Swift credit for her football knowledge, as it was revealed on the show that it was Swift who (excitedly) informed Kelce the Chiefs had drafted Texas wideout Xavier Worthy. Dedication comes in all forms.
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I asked Pulse friend, Athletic sports betting senior editor and pop-culture savant Hannah Vanbiber what she thought was most the most interesting part of the episode:
'Two things will stick with me, and they are two things that Travis and Taylor share: Dedication to family and admiration for each other as elite performers. From unusually candid personal reflections on being with parents through illness to insights into her painstaking creative process or grueling physical conditioning, Taylor pulled aside the curtain with Travis sitting next to her as both glowing fan and proud partner. His 'pop star 🤝 athlete' comparisons were rife — and right. Not everybody can power-skip in heels! Lastly: My favorite quote/advice was Taylor saying (something she observed in Travis): ''Think of your energy as if it's expensive, as if it's like a luxury item. Not everyone can afford it.''
Thank you to Hannah and all the Swifites on staff. Let's keep going:
Jones talks Parsons, cancer
Cowboys owner Jerry Jones made multiple headlines yesterday for quite different reasons. First, he said he expects disgruntled star pass rusher Micah Parsons to play Week 1, even as Parsons holds out for a new deal, because the player is still under contract. Hm. Earlier in the day, Jones confirmed that he overcame stage 4 melanoma stemming from a cancer diagnosis in 2010, thanks to an experimental drug. Jones mentioned the ailment in passing in Netflix's upcoming documentary on the franchise. Read more on that here.
Pulisic reignites beef with USMNT legends
In a new documentary series, USMNT striker Christian Pulisic slammed former American stars Landon Donovan and Clint Dempsey — who have both been critical of Pulisic over the last year — calling their remarks 'the biggest cop-out of all time.' Teammate Tim Weah, also interviewed on the show, went further, calling the former players 'really evil.' I couldn't believe some of these comments.
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Blazers sold to NHL owner
Billionaire Tom Dundon, owner of the Carolina Hurricanes, agreed to buy the Portland Trail Blazers with a group of investors, he confirmed to The Athletic yesterday. The sale is not final yet, but the valuation is set at $4.2 billion. The proceeds from the sale will go toward posthumous philanthropic efforts set in motion by owner Paul Allen, who died in 2018. Oppositely, the Pohlad family pulled the Minnesota Twins off the market, which is crushing for a desperate fan base.
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📺 LLBWS: Japan vs. Europe-Africa
1 p.m. ET on ESPN
Once again, the tykes are playing baseball all afternoon and evening. Three consecutive games follow this one.
📺 WNBA: Storm at Dream
10 p.m. ET on ION
Atlanta may be the league's best story this year, sitting third in the standings after finishing 15-25 last year. Seattle is clinging onto the final playoff spot right now. Good game.
Get tickets to games like these here.
The Little League World Series is ongoing, yes, but I loved this look back at the 1982 edition, which featured a team from Canada that happened to have multiple future NHL legends. This was fun.
Speaking of the Kelce brothers: Can Brady and Matthew Tkachuk become hockey's answer to football's current first family? They're not ruling it out.
Miami may be the NFL team most on edge this year. Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel is well aware.
Strange but true: Ken Griffey Jr. rookie cards in bad condition are commanding premium prices on the collectibles market. Why?
Commanders wide receiver Deebo Samuel has dealt with a lot in the last two years: pneumonia, a calf strain, a wrist injury and a trade. He's finally ready to be old Deebo again.
Most-clicked in the newsletter yesterday: Our story about ESPN's new deal with the NFL, mentioned in yesterday's UFC discussion.
Most-read on the website yesterday: The Aaron Donald stalker story.
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How did that first Notre Dame football loss in 2024 deliver a docuseries win?
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On that September Saturday at Notre Dame Stadium, Fornaro felt something that only a person in his position could after the loss to Northern Illinois went final. Charged with overseeing the first season of 'Here Come the Irish,' a docuseries that aired on Peacock last season, Fornaro wasn't going to let one loss keep him from making what he thought had the makings of something special. Break the doc? How about make it? 'It was like, all right, this could go one of two ways,'' Fornaro said Thursday from a darkened Notre Dame Stadium interview room. 'I will say, after the Northern Illinois game, you kind of knew it was real. You knew the show was real.' Real because for as low of a moment as that loss was for everyone associated with Notre Dame football – from the head coach on down – they treated it, and treated Fornaro and his crew, just as they had done the previous week after winning at Texas A&M. Access rarely was restricted. Fornaro and his crew were not asked not to shoot this team meeting or that player-coach interaction. Freeman and his staff, like Fornaro and his, went about business as usual. Even in soul-crushing defeat. The show must go on. It went on. 'As soon as that happened, I was like, 'All right, we're making a real show here. This is going to happen. This is going to be good,'' Fornaro said. The result was a seven-episode docuseries look at the 2024 Notre Dame football team from the highest of highs (pick one) to that lowest of lows (Northern Illinois). Everything that Fornaro, a native New Yorker and 2016 Marist College graduate, heard about Notre Dame and its storied football program, he lived last season. Every day from August camp, into the regular season and through a CFP postseason that stretched from late December to late January, Fornaro learned what makes Notre Dame football after a near-daily 93-minute drive from his home in Chicago's West Loop. It took Fornaro, a four-time national sports Emmy award winner during his four years at ESPN, four seconds when he arrived in April 2024 to understand that campus, that football program, that everything. It was dizzying. 'You always hear about Notre Dame and you hear about the lore and you hear about the prestige of what Notre Dame is and its history,' he said. 'Being with the team every day, being on the road, being in the team hotel, being on the team charters, you see all this stuff that makes this place special and you understand it. 'The feeling here is real. The fans here are real.' The docuseries, last season and again this season (it was announced Thursday that the first episode will drop December 8), also, real. Notre Dame football may have the final say, but Fornaro insists there wasn't much of a balancing act to the documentary that he wanted to make and the one Notre Dame wanted made. 'We told the exact story that we wanted to tell,' he said. 'There were no limitations, no restrictions from football or the (communication) staff. There's a good relationship there; there's trust there.' There also was a lot there. Fornaro admitted he over did it on the amount of footage shot last season just, well, because he could. He thought everything about Notre Dame and its football program was 'amazing' and wanted to squeeze everything in the show. Not everything made it without making it the War and Peace (ask your parents) of docs. It would have run for days, not hours. Fornaro and his crew made it a point last season and will make it again this fall to be at every team meeting, every practice, every recordable moment. 'We shoot 90% and 10% of it gets used,' he said. 'You have to show the team and the staff that you're committed to be there. That's the most important part for me.' 'Here Come the Irish' has been in production since long before the first official day of practice on July 31. 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Contact Noie at tnoie@ This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: What storyline roads might the 2025 Notre Dame football season travel?
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Five-time Pro Bowl G Brandon Scherff reveals he retired as quietly as possible this offseason
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Micah Parsons has colossal trade value for the Cowboys, but is this circus worth more to Jerry Jones?
Nearly seven years ago, an NFL framework for a Micah Parsons trade was created. It involved a dynamic 27-year-old edge rusher who had entered the league as the fifth overall pick in the 2014 NFL Draft. In just four seasons, he shredded the league with 40 1/2 sacks, 84 quarterback hits, 68 tackles for loss and a dominant presence that demanded every offensive game plan be prioritized to stop him. By the summer of 2018, when he began a holdout seeking the richest defensive contract in league history, his demand was bolstered by a Defensive Player of the Year nod in 2016, three Pro Bowls and three first-team All-Pro spots, including becoming the only player in history to lock down two first-team All-Pro spots on the same team, having captured that distinction at both linebacker and defensive end in 2015. When it came time to work a contract extension, any suggestion of an impasse forcing a trade seemed absurd. That player — the Oakland Raiders' Khalil Mack — seemed to be untradeable. Either because the price tag would be too much or because Raiders ownership wouldn't fathom dealing away one of the best young defensive players in the game. It all seemed wild. And then Mack was flipped to the Chicago Bears on the doorstep of the 2018 season. [Join or create a Yahoo Fantasy Football league for the 2025 NFL season] It's a noteworthy moment in NFL history that has some eerie overlapping circumstances with Parsons and the Dallas Cowboys. From Mack and Parsons both being elite, game-changing edge rushers, to a negotiating breakdown that has gotten dicey, to both Mack and Parsons demanding trades in the middle of the impasse. Mack went from being unattainable to being traded. Now we have to question if Parsons' future will go down the same avenue. On that point, seven league executives polled by Yahoo Sports — including four general managers who have executed elite 'star' level trades — all shared a common agreement when it came to Parsons: If he is ultimately traded, the basement price on him will start at the what the Raiders landed for Mack, then likely require a sweetener on top of it. Ultimately, the Raiders received two first-round draft picks, along with a third and sixth — in exchange for their superstar defender plus a second- and seventh-round pick. 'For the right team, if you're right there [on the verge of a Super Bowl], I think you'd give up a little more [than the Mack trade],' one general manager said. 'I think Dallas could get three firsts if it was coming from someone who is expecting their firsts to be at the bottom of the round. That's still a lot for a defensive player. Or it could be two firsts and a quality starter, like when the [Carolina] Panthers packaged DJ Moore to get the first pick in the draft.' The seven executives all had similar guardrails on a Parsons deal: at least two first-round picks, possibly three first-rounders if a team was certain he'd unlock a Super Bowl, or some combination of two first-round picks and other players and picks. Interestingly, all seven executives expressed doubt that Parsons would ever be made available — despite his public proclamation earlier this month that his time in Dallas had come to an end. Indeed, one general manager called a member of the Cowboys' front office under the auspices of discussing something else, but poked around on Parsons just to see what the reaction would be. 'I didn't get the sense he was really available,' the general manager said. 'And it felt like if he was ever going to be, it was going to cost something nobody would be willing to give up — especially knowing whoever trades for him still has to sign him to a $45 million [per year] deal on top of it.' Then the general manager asked a question about Cowboys owner Jerry Jones that seemed outlandish in the moment, but as time passes at least has to be pondered. 'There's no way this is about the Netflix thing, is there?' [Get more Cowboys news: Dallas team feed] The question was framed under the forthcoming debut of Jones' Netflix docutainment rollout on Tuesday, giving the world a vantage into Jerry that is largely driven by Jerry. Titled 'America's Team: The Gambler and His Cowboys,' the series will showcase Jones' life, some of his private struggles along the way, his financial rise as an oilman, and above all else, his ownership of the Cowboys — with an emphasis on the 1990s Super Bowls — and his broader impact on the business of sports. Jones has been working on the project with Netflix for more than two years, but others close to him who spoke to Yahoo Sports after the announcement of the project have speculated that Jerry first began conceiving of an aggrandizement project in either book or movie form as far back as his Hall of Fame election in 2017. Now, in the midst of this training camp, with the oddity of how the Parsons negotiation has dragged on and also been a very public storyline fueled by Jerry himself, it has given rise to at least some skeptical — if not outright conspiratorial — thought experiments. As the general manager framed it: 'Is there a chance that they already know they're going to give him everything he wants and hand him $140 million [in guaranteed money] to buy peace, but [Jones is] playing this out for all the attention it's getting?' The knee-jerk first answer to this kind of conspiracy theory is always 'no' because it just seems, for lack of a better word, reckless. Especially given that Jones has taken an almost combative stance at times and also done nothing to suggest he's interested in talking to Parsons' agent, David Mulugheta. That said, there's no denying that the Jerry vs. Micah back-and-forth has been the No. 1 story of this summer's training camps, often appearing at the top of every morning show across sports networks, trending on social media and eating up endless blocks of NFL podcasts. And this has now gone on for nearly three weeks straight, with Jones occasionally freshening the topic either with his own words or responding to either Parsons or someone else's commentary on the situation. It's hard to quantify what that attention is worth to the Cowboys. But it's even more difficult to quantify what it's worth to Jerry himself — given that he really doesn't believe in negative publicity and would naturally, one way or another, try to raise up a few media hype tornadoes on the doorstep of his documentary. His willingness to gamble for the sake of marketing success is otherworldly and demonstrable over the expanse of his ownership of the Cowboys. And then you have Jones saying things like this ahead of his Netflix premiere in Los Angeles earlier in the week: 'I do believe if we're not being looked at, then I'll do my part to get us looked at,' Jones said during a red carpet event prior to the screening of his Netflix project. 'The beautiful thing for networks or, if you will, streaming companies is that the NFL is a 365-day-a-year interest factor. A lot of programming, you have to spend as much to promote it as you do to make it. The Cowboys are a soap opera 365 days a year. When it gets slow, I'll stir it up. It's wonderful to have the great athletes, have the great players, but there's something more there. There's sizzle. There's emotion. And if you will, there's controversy. That controversy is good stuff in terms of keeping and having people's attention.' Take that and reflect on how the Parsons negotiation has played out over the past few weeks. Now consider the maximum level of attention it has wrangled at the most uncommon of times: On the cusp of Jones debuting his media opus. If Jerry turns around after the launch of this Netflix series and signs Parsons for the max level money it will always have taken, what will he have lost? But in his own words, what valuable commodities will he have won along the way? The soap opera. The eyeballs. The emotion. The controversy. The sizzle. The definition of America's Scheme: The Gambler and His Cowboys.
