NFL’s Brazil guess hinges on cultivating uncharted soccer panorama, capitalizing on area of interest ardour

SAO PAULO — Thiago Souza emerges from the barricades a person making historical past.

A single-file line spirals the Ibirapuera mall and spills onto the road. A whole lot watch as the person they name “Curitiba,” the man with the large backpack, glasses and Inexperienced Bay gear — Jordan Love jersey, Packers hoodie and hat — unsheathes his bank card and jabs his forefinger at a seating map. There. The primary-ever ticket for an NFL recreation in South America.

Superb, possibly not the primary ticket.

At present is Thursday, June 13, which was alleged to be the opening day of gross sales. Even native Ticketmaster staffers who’d been making ready for 20 days to handle this insanity have been shocked by the June 10 presale. In a belated bonus for the area’s presenting sponsor, the NFL abruptly added an unique sale for patrons of XP, an funding financial institution primarily based in Sao Paulo.

However, by Brazilian regulation, 10 p.c of any such tickets should be offered in individual. So, the mall’s field workplace bustled like a financial institution run. Panic hit social media. Ticketmaster’s on-line portal crammed 150,000 folks into its digital ready room. Solely 15,000 pre-sale tickets have been offered.

Some 250 miles away in Curitiba, Souza, a 36-year-old movie show supervisor, purchased two tickets … to an Anavitória live performance for Dia Dos Namorados, Brazil’s Valentine’s Day. Promote these tickets, his spouse mentioned. Go to Sao Paulo. Don’t come again with out our NFL tickets. He flipped the live performance stubs for a Monday seat on an 11 p.m. bus, noticed nothing afoot Tuesday on the mall, slept in a hostel and returned at 10 a.m. Wednesday.

The place is the road? Souza requested safety. You’re the line, they mentioned.

Sundown. Dawn. Souza loses his garden chair within the pleasure. Fellow campers shout “Curitiba!” as he pumps his telephone and its digital receipt: 4 tickets behind the goalpost totaling 4,305 Brazilian reais ($766), roughly thrice Brazil’s month-to-month minimal wage.

“I didn’t assume, fairly truly, how a lot it will value,” Souza says via an interpreter. “I simply wanted to get the tickets.”

Gustavo Pires, the president of Sao Paulo tourism, predicted this hysteria. After Pires and a Brazilian delegation delivered their recreation proposal to the NFL, league commissioner Roger Goodell requested him why he thought the town would work. “If we had a 300,000-person stadium,” Pires replied, “we might promote out the 300,000 seats.”

Just below 50,000 ticket-holders will enter Enviornment Corinthians on Friday when the Philadelphia Eagles and Inexperienced Bay Packers christen the NFL’s funding in a brand new continent. The league’s worldwide collection started after a 2005 one-off in Mexico Metropolis set the regular-season attendance report (103,467). Since 2007, the NFL has scheduled a minimum of one regular-season recreation per 12 months outdoors the US: 39 in London, 5 in Mexico Metropolis, two in Frankfurt, two in Munich. Knowledge, trial occasions and native legwork have compelled the NFL into a rustic that’s by no means hosted a lot as an exhibition.

How deeply the NFL embeds into Brazilian life depends upon how efficiently the game breaks via vital cultural, political and monetary obstacles. Soccer (American soccer) is a distant enigma to a lot of the Brazilian inhabitants (215.3 million), even among the many rich who found the game in non-public college or when finding out within the States.

However enigmas may be profitable when there’s a chance to view them up shut. When requested what number of new shoppers the pre-sale produced for XP, chief advertising and marketing officer Lisandro Lopez chuckled. “Rather a lot,” he’d say, pointing to a public relations staffer in his high-rise workplace. “He’ll kill me if I inform you.”

Because the NFL digs into the market share of a soccer-crazed nation, it’s uncovering an viewers with a historical past of restricted entry to reside broadcasts, a passionate but unwieldy soccer federation that wants funding and reformation and a pool of athletes who, like many Brazilians, chase desires whereas straddling the poverty line.

The Athletic spent eight days in Sao Paulo exploring a soccer panorama that’s largely undefined. What does success appear like for these concerned? And the way a lot curiosity will stay after the NFL is not a novelty?

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Ha-ha! Hoo-hoo! Estamos nas finais! Ha-ha! Hoo-hoo! Estamos nas finais!

In Estádio Baetão, a state-owned complicated neighboring Santo André, a jagged accordion of empty stone bleachers bookends synthetic turf on one aspect, a rowdy 4 rows on the opposite. Below a derelict press field — rust and plywood uncovered by a free banner hung like an unbuttoned shirt — the spray of beer cans and fumes of smoke flares cowl a crowd whose chant competes with a crackling PA system.

The sector has been willed collectively: down markers fabricated from PVC pipes, yard markers made of froth. If the sideline ambulance transports an injured participant the sport should be suspended till it returns.

This playoff contest is all however determined. Arduous to inform with no scoreboard — the PA announcer is doing his damnedest — however the Santo André Werewolves are thrashing the Tatuapé Monsters. On the nameplates of their purple-trimmed jerseys, some sewed surnames, some nicknames: Ninja, G.I., King.

“Interceptação!” Ha-ha! Hoo-hoo! The Monsters quarterback has thrown his third straight choose, all to the identical Werewolves defensive again. The extent of play within the São Paulo Soccer League evokes a Darrell Royal quote, “Three issues can occur if you go, and two of ’em are dangerous.” A Werewolf runs for a landing, then kneels in prayer: 42-7. A man dozes on the bleachers, a white shirt partly overlaying his sunburnt face.

Sophistication varies throughout Brazil’s rivaling soccer associations. Organized play started on Rio de Janeiro seashores within the Nineteen Eighties, first birthing an annual “Carioca Bowl,” then the 2000 founding of what’s now often called the Confederação Brasileira de Futebol Americano. In 2016, among the CBFA’s largest groups shaped an affiliation to prepare a nationwide championship. So started the abbreviated BFA, which had two divisions and greater than 60 groups from 2017-19.

Divorce adopted the pandemic. The BFA now operates independently in a league run by its 21 groups. The CBFA’s board members selected to run their very own championship and handle a soccer-like construction during which 300 groups are divided into regional leagues just like the SPFL and compete for a nationwide title.

Neither system is but worthwhile. CBFA president Cris Kajiwara says every workforce wants practically 200,000 reais (about $38,000) to compete yearly. Gamers in each leagues purchase their very own tools, spending as a lot as thrice the nation’s month-to-month minimal wage on helmets, shoulder pads, pants and cleats. Brazilian producers don’t make footballs, so gamers pay steep costs to the few sporting items shops that import such tools.

However as the ultimate whistle blows at Estádio Baetão, it’s clear why any of them are doing this in any respect.

“Ardour,” says João Batista, 39, the defensive again whose three interceptions sealed the win. He’s a stacker operator in Santos who spends a piece of his month-to-month 3,000 actual wages driving an hour “up the hill” each Saturday to play.

BFA president Marcel Dantas says if the league’s funds will increase, it’s going to spend money on hire for respectable stadiums; ESPN Brazil carried the 2019 ultimate reside, however networks have advised him humble venues scare them away. As a sports activities non-profit affiliation, the BFA is trying to find sponsors, making use of for federal funds and lobbying for legal guidelines that might permit non-public firms to depend donations as tax credit.

However the CBFA holds probably the most political clout. It’s registered with the Worldwide Federation of American Soccer, a French-based group that’s acknowledged by the Worldwide Olympic Committee, and subsequently in a greater place to safe federal funds via its oversight of the nation’s nationwide flag soccer groups. The confederation’s 250-team flag league equipped the Brazilian gamers who competed within the IFAF’s lately accomplished world championships in Finland.

Flag gamers foot payments, too. They paid their approach to Finland for about 12,000 reais every ($2,136), the lads’s workforce’s offensive coordinator, Leticia Ramos, says.

Felipe Aymoré, 20, is a 5-9, 172-pound defensive again. He’s a barista who eschewed school to coach for the 2028 Olympics. His household and buddies “don’t get why I’m doing this,” however they respect how he defends his “double journey,” the sector by way of the espresso store.

Kajiwara believes Olympic inclusion makes investing in flag soccer a vital technique in rising curiosity within the padded sport. The NFL does, too. It’s supplying flags and footballs whereas the CBFA works with academic leaders to get the game sponsored inside faculties. Pires says a 50-school trial program has already begun all through Brazil and hinges totally on scholar curiosity.

Dantas admires the CBFA’s flag efforts, however the BFA is concentrated on constructing a decent and televised padded league. Dantas and Kajiwara each agree dividing federal funds between the leagues diminishes the influence the cash would in any other case have in the event that they have been unified. They’ve begun casual talks about realignment.

“We’re in the best way of one another,” says Bruno Barandas, head coach of the BFA’s Vasco Admirals.

Barandas, 30, has hitched his profession to the game’s success. He dropped out of regulation college to affix the Admirals as a quarterbacks coach in 2015. A well-connected native helped push his resume to Georgetown College, and in 2017 Bruno “spent each single dime I had” to simply accept a lowly graduate assistant job. He “slept like two hours an evening” in a Maryland residence that was two hours from campus by bus, subway and one other bus. He purchased a knock-off Vespa that broke down the third time he used it.

“Oh, the scooter,” sighs Michael Neuberger, then Georgetown’s offensive coordinator. Neuberger tried to repair it, gave up and taxied Barandas for the remainder of the 12 months. The 2 bonded over soccer, DMV visitors and their mutual love for The Doorways.

At Georgetown’s first workers assembly, Barandas says the coaches spoke to him “like they have been speaking to a baby” till the room was caught on a run scheme difficulty and he drew up three performs. He was no rube. Among the many books on soccer technique he’d scavenged was Howard Mudd’s “The View from the O-Line.” He watched a web-based lecture by former Patriots offensive line coach Dante Scarnecchia. “Couldn’t perceive s—,” Barandas says. He rewatched it till he may. Barandas had a stripped-down view of the sport that helped the Georgetown workers simplify issues, Neuberger says, “particularly at 9 o’clock at evening once we’re banging our heads towards the board.”

Former Georgetown assistant coach Maurice Banks reached out to Barandas about becoming a member of his workers at Division III Gettysburg Faculty in 2020. By then, Barandas, who’d returned to Rio, was coming into his third season as Vasco’s head coach. He’d rebuilt the roster. He’d upgraded the scheme with run-pass choices and inside zone runs, even mastering a trademark double-post go. He’d discovered a task pioneering a distinct segment sport again house, so he stayed.

“I all the time felt that my calling was serving to develop soccer in Brazil,” Barandas says.

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Pedro Monteiro and his buddies ran Arraial do Cabo’s seashores till the ice cream distributors advised Monteiro’s mother and father their child was chopping into their livelihoods. He was 9. So Monteiro offered comedian books, espresso, juice and water at Rio’s bus stops. He offered sandwiches throughout college breaks. He staged magic reveals and charged youngsters entry. They first confirmed up with out cash, so Monteiro referred to as their of us to make sure they introduced money the following time.

“And I sucked,” he says.

Monteiro charged $10 for automobile washes throughout his mom’s medical sabbatical at Harvard College. He was 16. It was 1991. The Boston Backyard charged little for obstructed-view seats at Celtics video games. Monteiro persuaded a police officer to let him sit on the ground. There’s Larry Chook. There’s Michael Jordan.

Monteiro swam for Kenyon Faculty and earned a bronze within the 2003 Pan American Video games. As CEO of Impact Sport, his upstart Rio-based sports activities advertising and marketing company, Monteiro brokered a 36-kilometer swim as its first nationally televised occasion. But it surely was his curiosity in basketball that’d assist him promote the NFL on enjoying in Brazil.

In 2015, Monteiro attended a convention in Portland, Ore., and had two weeks to kill earlier than the NBA All-Star Recreation in New York. He emailed somebody who knew somebody who offered him and a buddy two fourth-row tickets to Tremendous Bowl XLIX in the long run zone reverse Malcolm Butler’s game-winning choose for the Patriots.

“I’ve been to World Cup finals, completely different occasions, however, I imply, that was simply mesmerizing,” Monteiro says. “Leaving the sport, I used to be like, ‘Hey, we should work with these guys.’”

A U.S. Olympic Committee contact related Monteiro with Mark Waller, then the NFL’s overseer of the league’s worldwide development. Waller and different league staffers visited Monteiro in Brazil. They explored holding the 2017 Professional Bowl in Rio and even met with then-governor Luiz Fernando de Souza. Brazil’s economic system was experiencing a nationwide recession, making it financially unattainable for the state to assist such an occasion, however the NFL retained Impact Sport to domesticate the nation’s fan base.

Tremendous Bowl LVI in February 2022 was the watershed second. Monteiro negotiated a media rights cope with one of many nation’s 4 primary networks inside two weeks of the sport. The NFL hadn’t been on a free-to-air Brazilian community in over 20 years. Movie show managers (like Thiago Souza in Curitiba) confirmed the reside broadcast of their cinemas.

In response to Máquina do Esporte, a median of practically 360,000 folks watched a minimum of 15 uninterrupted minutes of Rams–Bengals on RedeTV — modest metrics for networks who’d favor tens of millions. However inside the context of a sudden broadcast of a distinct segment sport, there was a extra promising return: 13 advertisers purchased commercials, demonstrating a need for future affiliation with the NFL model. In August 2022, RedeTV signed a three-year contract to broadcast regular-season video games, the playoffs and the Tremendous Bowl.

Pires, Sao Paulo’s 32-year-old tourism head, watched a minimum of 5 NFL video games per week in 2023. He even tried one recreation at working again for the SPFL’s Corinthians Steamrollers — “Zero expertise, all effort,” he says.

Pires knew any legit influence trusted Brazil internet hosting an NFL occasion. Impact Sport arrange a web-based assembly between the league and Sao Paulo’s tourism company in 2022. Pires advised them the town needed to host a recreation as early as 2023. The NFL remained dedicated to London and Frankfurt in 2023, however a contingent of league officers reassured Pires that Brazil was a future goal. From then on, Pires says he emailed the NFL each 15 days whereas Impact Sport continued to safe company sponsors that signed on with none assure of a recreation.

In August 2023, NFL officers referred to as Monteiro. Estadio Azteca was beneath renovation for the 2026 World Cup, which had already compelled the NFL to cancel its 2023 recreation in Mexico Metropolis. Development would take longer. The league wanted a brand new worldwide host in 2024. Its targets: Barcelona, Madrid, Rio, Sao Paulo.

Over the following 5 months, Pires ran level for Sao Paulo’s proposal. He selected Enviornment Corinthians (for its discipline dimension and parking zone), secured $5 million in monetary assist from Mayor Ricardo Nunes (the town’s income had greater than doubled because the recession) and led the presentation with the league in London.

Ten days earlier than the NFL introduced the information, Pires received a 9 p.m. telephone name in his workplace. It was Impact Sport telling him Sao Paulo had received the bid. “If it wasn’t for Gustavo, and the mayor trusting Gustavo, it’s very probably the sport wouldn’t have come,” Monteiro says.

The league strategically scheduled the sport to face alone on a Friday evening in prime time, and it’s blasting the reside broadcast via three distinct mediums: RedeTV, simply accessible free-to-air; ESPN Brazil, the league’s longtime pay TV associate; and CazéTV, owned by Brazilian streamer Casimiro Miguel, who has 32.3 million mixed social media subscribers, a “huge chunk” of personal fairness from XP, Lopez says, and in addition landed broadcast rights for the 2024 Olympics.

There’s a novel digital pathway in Brazil. The nation has extra smartphones than inhabitants, in keeping with a survey by the Getúlio Vargas Basis, and 92.5 p.c of households used the web in 2023. Free-to-air tv and radio entry dropped by half 1,000,000 properties because the earlier 12 months, and solely 42.1 p.c paid for video streaming companies. However free mobile phone apps like WhatsApp join folks from Amazon villages to Rio seashores. On Monday, the Brazilian Supreme Courtroom upheld a choice to dam the social community X throughout the nation in an try to take away hate speech and assaults on democracy on-line.

One recreation per 12 months — or two video games, as Pires hopes — will not be sufficient to burst the bubble, says ESPN Brazil commentator Antony Curti. Certainly, the NFL might not have its desired attain till Brazil’s largest community, TV Globo, takes curiosity (RedeTV’s deal expires after this season).

However Brazilians “love idols,” Curti says. Method One wasn’t beloved till Emerson Fittipaldi, Nelson Piquet and Ayrton Senna received championships. Anderson Silva held the UFC title for a report 2,457 days. Rayssa Leal popularized skateboarding by medaling in each the Tokyo and Paris Olympic Video games. Brazil wants an NFL idol, Curti says, and it may possibly actually solely be one place.

“It needs to be the quarterback.”

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This view was as soon as solely hills. Then the Portuguese arrived, planting espresso beans, sugar cane, cotton. Ranches rose. So did housing for servants: some slave, some free. Sao Paulo swelled from the southwest. Trade pushed the ranchers east. The poor constructed charretes (horse-drawn carts) for the wealthy. The wealthy fled, leaving the undocumented poor with solely the hills on which to construct these ramshackle properties.

“It’s Vila Progresso,” the quarterback says, leaning towards the balcony. “Or Progress Village. And there’s no progress in right here. You’ll be able to see that.”

Jorge Ribeiro, 24, was born inside this panorama of brick, mortar and corrugated metallic. His father offered washing machines. His mom labored reception at a bridal retailer. Each jobs have been downtown. They’d wake Jorge and his youthful brother João at 4:30 a.m. and collectively take an hour-long subway into the town. That’s the place the higher public faculties have been, his mom believed, the place her sons may safely keep whereas she and their father secured hire cash, meals and financial savings to sometime escape the favelas.

That’s one model of life right here. One other feeds on the distress. Drug sellers and thieves solicit largely unpoliced streets. Nonetheless, the poor construct their shanties. If a resident stays on loads for 5 years it’s theirs by regulation. Authorities installations present energy strains, paved roads and plumbing however little else. The “river” in a close-by ditch overflows with sewage in storms. However Jorge and João didn’t know any higher. Nor did they care. For a day, they’d a pool.

Ribeiro has solely seen politicians (and their digicam crews) throughout elections. Vila Progresso spends the remainder of the 12 months largely forgotten, its households groping for progress, some paying month-to-month hire to landlords who cost nowhere lower than 1,000 reais.

“They’ve two shitty jobs to allow them to have one shitty life,” Ribeiro says.

On Ribeiro’s tenth birthday, his mom gifted him a composite leather-based soccer she’d purchased in a downtown retailer. He gripped it greedily, threw it and blew out a lamp. “This has been my life ever since,” he says. He nuzzled the ball at evening, crying, dreaming of enjoying within the States. He carried it round college. Classmates stared. You need me to show you methods to throw? He transformed few disciples. “All people knew me for the bizarre ball,” he says.

There have been worse methods to be recognized. Saturday nights within the favelas sign the Baile Funk, weekly bacchanals of medication, intercourse and gunplay. Vacationers wander in as thrillseekers, Ribeiro says, failing to know the resignation required to rage with abandon, why cops criminalize these events and hearth smoke bombs into the raucous rhythm, why one flirtatious phrase to the flawed lady can ignite gunshots that depart 5 wounded and 5 useless. They fail to know why enjoying the lottery for the evening of your life or the evening of your loss of life is nonetheless value it.

As a result of if you’re Black, Ribeiro says, there’s no escape. He and a buddy have been strolling one evening when a police officer stopped them on the road and drew his gun. Let’s have a journey. Two hours later, the truck stopped. The cop beat them, Riberio says, and had them kneel within the dust. “He mentioned, ‘I ought to kill you guys,’” Ribeiro says. “After which we mentioned nothing. After which he advised us to face up and begin working. After which we began working and he gave two pictures to the air.”

Higher to be often called “the soccer man, not the Black man,” Ribeiro says. It’s how he realized English. He looked for random Fb customers with the surname “Smith” and messaged those who appreciated NFL pages. Can I be your buddy? I’m going to the US someday quickly, and I wish to be prepared. Positive, some Smiths mentioned. Silence, others.

It’s how he first went to America. In 2021, Luiz Ferreira, the previous placekicker for the SPFL’s Palmeiras Locomotives, was enjoying for Presentation Faculty and helped Ribeiro safe a scholarship with the NAIA program in Aberdeen, South Dakota.

But it surely’s been three years, and Ribeiro stays in Brazil.

His father’s most cancers first introduced him again. His mom and brother, who has gentle Down syndrome, couldn’t deal with it alone. After his father recovered, Presentation Faculty shuttered resulting from lack of funding. Ribeiro landed a partial tutorial scholarship at Rockford College, a Division III college close to Chicago. Its scholar companies workplace related Ribeiro with a Brazilian benefactor who paid the remaining $11,000 steadiness. “You’re a warrior,” the benefactor advised him.

Ribeiro wears a brace understanding that assertion’s nonetheless true. After spring follow sprints in 2023, Ribeiro says his cleat slipped in muddy grass. His knee dislocated. His ACL popped. A Rockford spokesperson confirmed Ribeiro was enrolled however denied he was on the soccer workforce. Ribeiro says his benefactor fell out of contact after the surgical procedure. “I imply, he’s a businessman,” Ribeiro shrugs.

Ribeiro blamed God for his return to Brazil. However after two months, his girlfriend Jani grabbed him by the shirt. Get up! Transfer on! We’re going to seek out our means again! They married, had a daughter and moved right into a gated residence 20 minutes from Vila Progresso.

Small progress. Ribeiro has two jobs and one hopeful life. He offered his soccer helmet to purchase an iPhone 13 and an information plan. He wanted the digicam to create content material after beginning his non-public quarterback coaching academy, “The Chosen One.” He fees seven pupils 40 reais per session. It’s subsequent to nothing, he is aware of. However how else can the game advance?

How lengthy would possibly that course of take? A decade? Ribeiro, who needs to lift his daughter in America, doesn’t intend to remain in Brazil that lengthy. However for now, he says, he should share his data. He should construct folks up inside these hills.

“It’s like a preacher, I assume,” Ribeiro says. “I’m telling folks the nice approach to go.”

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A entrada é por aqui!

The beer carts are empty. The tents are folded. The last-minute line of Corinthians followers crams into one of many area’s gates.

There’s a purpose the Brazilian motto “Ordem e Progresso” (“Order and Progress”) is usually spoken in jest. An overtly bureaucratic system that requires its residents to make use of their equal of a social safety quantity to purchase soccer tickets typically forgoes order for course of.

The road clogs. A person takes offense to a steward’s insistence that he should enter a special turnstile although all of them result in the identical hallway. Shoving. Screaming. An officer drives the person out with a baton.

Within the stands, voices growth by the 1000’s. The stairways divide a crowd wearing black and white. Beneath one awning of the open-air cover is painted Time Do Povo, “the folks’s workforce,” signifying the membership’s connection to Sao Paulo’s working class.

As Friday’s designated house workforce, the Eagles goal to endear with their black-and-white alternate ensembles. Corinthians wears black and white. Archrival Palmeiras wears inexperienced. A state regulation, “Torcida Única,” cuts down hooliganism by banning away followers — typically recognized by what coloration they put on — from attending video games between the town’s rival soccer golf equipment. This rule doesn’t apply to the NFL, whose touring followers can freely put on no matter they’d like. Jon Ferrari, who partly oversaw worldwide operations as Philadelphia’s assistant common supervisor, mentioned the Eagles selected black as “a novel nod” to the Corinthians fanbase. The Packers are sporting their commonplace house inexperienced uniform.

Each Enviornment Corinthians and Enviornment Palmeiras are impressively trendy stadiums. The pre-game scenes are as festive as school soccer tailgates. Followers gulp beer, scarf down sanduíches de pernil and bellow for hours. A metropolis with New York’s sense of dimension with a South Florida ambiance is hungry to eat an elite American match — and hopes it’s not the one one.

The NFL intends to return. “The imaginative and prescient isn’t a one-and-done,” Peter O’Reilly, the league’s head of worldwide affairs, mentioned. Via a Brazilian analysis institute (IBOPE), the NFL noticed the variety of Brazilians “” within the league spike from 3 million in 2014 to 38 million in 2023. Starting with Eagles-Packers, the NFL goals to transform that surge into extra “avid” followers — those that watch video games usually, purchase league merchandise, attend occasions — a quantity the institute pegs in Brazil at 8.3 million.

“That is a few recreation as a catalyst to deeper, year-round engagement,” O’Reilly mentioned.

Can the NFL keep its momentum? Some have already determined the prices are too excessive. Arthur Lipsi and his buddy Felipe Mengoni, each 18, spent eight hours within the field workplace line however retreated empty-handed when the one seats remaining have been 1,700 reais every ($302). Dirceu Bertin, 66, bailed when the designated line for seniors received too lengthy. Elvis Vasconcelos, a carpenter, thought of the price of dropping a possible work day however nonetheless paid 1,650 reais for one ticket.

“I have to work, like, onerous,” Vasconcelos insisted. “However right this moment is a special occasion.”

(Illustration: Dan Golfarb / The Athletic; pictures: Brooks Kubena / The Athletic)