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    Australian Open: Ben Shelton, the American With the Blinding Serve, Returns

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    He made a splash at last year’s event, reaching the quarterfinals, and went on to have a breakout season.It all started with a simple text message that, if Bryan Shelton’s memory serves him, went something like this:“That coulda got really interesting,” wrote his then-20-year-old son, Ben, moments after he won a fifth-set tiebreaker against Zhizhen Zhang at last year’s Australian Open, clinching that first-round match.Had it not been for that win, in a match that began in the morning and ended at night under the lights, during which Shelton survived a heat postponement, a rain delay and a match point, he might never have had the breakout season that he had last year.“Not sure I remember it that way, because it did get kind of interesting,” said Shelton by phone shortly after he and his father traveled to Brisbane, Australia, from their Florida home in late December to begin the 2024 season with a pre-Australian Open warm-up tournament. Shelton did, however, recall the unreturnable serve he hit at 4-5, 30-40 down in the fifth set.Shelton left last year’s Australian Open, his first trip abroad, as a quarterfinalist after succumbing to his friend and fellow American Tommy Paul. By season’s end, Shelton had reached the semifinals at the United States Open alongside the world’s top three players — Novak Djokovic, Carlos Alcaraz and Daniil Medvedev — and cracked the ATP’s top 15. The young American had begun 2023, his first full year on tour, ranked barely inside the top 100.Shelton is still very much a work in progress. Despite a serve that topped out at 149 m.p.h. at last year’s U.S. Open, he struggled trying to adapt to clay and grass courts. It is something that he and his father, who left as head coach at the University of Florida last spring to coach his son full time, have worked on diligently during the off-season.“The biggest thing for him is movement,” said Bryan Shelton, a tour player mostly in the 1990s. “It’s efficiency, being more balanced. The men’s game today is all about the serve and return and creating opportunities to come forward, which Ben can do.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      At the Australian Open, Ben Shelton Is Ready to Go Global

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      Shelton, 20, is ranked in the top 100 after a late-season surge last year. Now, he is embarking on his first full season on tour and his first trip outside the United States.MELBOURNE, Australia — Pro tennis is one of the most international sports, but the American Ben Shelton has only just become global.This Australian Open, which starts on Monday, is part of his first trip outside the United States. His passport is in mint condition; his eyes are almost as big as his lefty serve.“A whole lot of blue; it almost doesn’t look real,” Shelton said as he walked the grounds at Melbourne Park, with its azure signage and courts, for the first time this week. “It’s like an alternate world.”Shelton, a strapping and mop-topped 20-year-old from Gainesville, Fla., who is embarking on his first full season on tour, earned his spot in Melbourne in a hurry, making the biggest leap into the year-end top 100 of any men’s singles player in 2022.He did it by winning in the big leagues: He upset Casper Ruud, a French Open and U.S. Open finalist in 2022, in the second round of the Masters 1000 event in Mason, Ohio, in August.But Shelton did it, above all, by winning in the minor leagues, taking three consecutive titles indoors on the Challenger circuit in November to secure direct entry into the Australian Open based on his ranking. He had already guaranteed himself a wild-card slot — part of a reciprocal agreement for Grand Slam entries between the United States Tennis Association and Tennis Australia — by compiling the best results among eligible Americans in the late season. But that was not the path down under that he preferred.“Ben was like, ‘I don’t want to see that W.C. next to my name,’ and so he dug down in the final of that last Challenger,” said Dean Goldfine, one of his coaches. “I think a lot of guys would have been satisfied, and he was exhausted from playing three weeks in a row. But he powered through, and that put him in the top 100.”The 2023 Australian OpenThe year’s first Grand Slam tennis tournament runs from Jan. 16 to Jan. 29 in Melbourne.Missing Stars: Carlos Alcaraz, Naomi Osaka and Nick Kyrgios have all pulled out of the tournament. Alcaraz’s withdrawal means that the Australian Open will be without the men’s No. 1 singles player.Talent From China: Shang Juncheng, once the world’s top-ranked junior, is the youngest member of a promising new wave of players that also includes Wu Yibing and Zhang Zhizhen.Holger Rune’s Rise: Last year, the 19-year-old broke into the top 10, but not without some unwanted attention. We spoke to the young Dane ahead of his second Australian Open.Ben Shelton Goes Global: The 20-year-old American is ranked in the top 100 after a late-season surge last year. Now, he is embarking on his first full season on tour.In early June, shortly after winning the N.C.A.A. singles title as a sophomore at the University of Florida, Shelton was ranked No. 547. This week, he is up to No. 92 and practicing in Rod Laver Arena in Melbourne with the likes of Rafael Nadal, the Spanish megastar and reigning Australian Open champion. Nadal was in need of a powerful left-handed sparring partner to prepare for his tricky opening-round match Monday against the rising British 21-year-old Jack Draper.Shelton, a Nadal admirer, was delighted to get the call and will face the unseeded Zhang Zhizhen of China on Tuesday in his Australian Open debut.Nadal, above, was in need of a powerful left-handed sparring partner to prepare for his tricky opening-round match. Shelton, below, was delighted to get the call.Cameron Spencer/Getty Images“I’m really excited to play main draw of my very first Slam out of the country,” Shelton said. “Maybe eight months ago I wouldn’t think I’d be in this position, but I’m lucky I have a good team around me helping me.”Shelton’s girlfriend is Anna Hall, a heptathlete who won a bronze medal at the world track and field championships in Eugene, Ore., in July. Shelton, who was competing in a Challenger event in Indianapolis that week, watched her events on his phone between matches. Both Hall and Shelton turned professional last summer and, though he has trounced her in pickleball, he likes to point out that he is not the best athlete of the two.“She’s outshining me,” he said.“It’s great, actually,” Goldfine said. “Because they challenge each other, and she totally understands what it takes to be at an elite level.”Shelton, at 6-foot-4 and 195 pounds, has a percussive, all-court game, based around a big-bang forehand and serve and an attacking mentality that often carries him to the net. He is “still raw” and still figuring out the best patterns of play, according to Goldfine, who has coached the former top players Todd Martin and Andy Roddick and most recently helped coach the 22-year-old American Sebastian Korda.But, to Goldfine, Shelton’s upside is clear.“I think with the natural gifts he has — his athleticism, his love for competing and for taking challenges head-on and his mental toughness — I think Ben has the possibility to be a great player who can someday challenge for Grand Slam titles,” he said. “He has all the variables you see in the top players, and being a lefty helps, definitely.”Shelton certainly has fine tennis genes. His father, Bryan, the men’s tennis coach at the University of Florida, was ranked as high as No. 55 during his pro career and reached the fourth round of Wimbledon as a qualifier in 1994. Ben’s mother, Lisa, played junior tennis and is the sister of Todd Witsken, a three-time all-American at the University of Southern California who peaked at No. 43 in singles on the ATP Tour before tragically dying of brain cancer at age 34.Ben’s older sister Emma is a senior on the University of Florida women’s team and was the only Shelton sibling serious about tennis until Ben quit playing football when he was 11.“It was just for a year, but it turned out to be forever,” Bryan Shelton said. “Even though he wasn’t the happiest in the world to go out there on court and drill with me, as soon as he got to compete, man, I mean the lights came on, and he was so excited about it. So that part I thought was pretty special. Some people shy away from competition, and he never did.“I always say he’s like a Labrador retriever: You throw the ball, he’s going to run and go get it. And if you throw it again, he’s going to run and go get it again and again and again. So, you know, he has a passion for it,” he said.Ben’s trip to Melbourne is a full-circle moment for the Shelton family: Bryan and Lisa met in Melbourne during the 1993 Australian Open.“How cool is that?” Ben said.Lisa, who was helping her brother in 1993, has not returned to Australia. Bryan has not been back since 1997, and despite being his son’s primary coach, he won’t be returning this year either because of his college coaching commitments. But he is in daily contact with Ben and his traveling coach, Goldfine, who works for the U.S.T.A.’s player-development program.“We’ve already started watching some of the video on Zhang,” Goldfine said of himself and Bryan Shelton. “We are always bouncing ideas off each other.”Goldfine, 57, and Ben exchange plenty as well, teasing each other, in particular, about the generational gap.“Dean couldn’t believe I didn’t know ‘Hotel California,’” Ben said, briefly halting practice on Thursday to share the story. “And I was like, ‘Dean, look at my phone and you won’t know any of the songs on my playlist.’”Ben is the first reigning N.C.A.A. men’s singles champion to break into the top 100 since Tim Mayotte in 1981. He is also the youngest of the 14 American men in the Australian Open, and his breakthrough to this level gives the United States an even deeper roster of promising men’s talent. There are nine Americans in the top 50, led by Taylor Fritz, and eight of them are 25 years old or younger.Ben has met most of them. As a young boy, he remembers watching Frances Tiafoe and Reilly Opelka play a junior tournament in Kalamazoo, Mich., where Bryan Shelton was scouting potential recruits.At that stage, there was no way to know that Ben would be the future No. 1 at Florida, of course. Though the team plays on without him, he is pursuing a business degree online and following the Gators’ scores and live streams from afar.“I’m definitely going to miss being around a bunch of my best friends and being able to go out there on the court playing for something much bigger than myself,” Ben said. “But I’m excited to see what they do and be able to be in the stands cheering them on whenever I’m home during the spring.” More

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      The N.C.A.A. Champion Ben Shelton Is Turning Pro. He Already Has a Big Win.

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      A valiant effort against John Isner and two wins at a Masters 1000 event helped persuade Ben Shelton to leave the University of Florida, where his father was his coach.Ben Shelton, the reigning N.C.A.A. Division I men’s singles champion and one of the most exciting young tennis talents in the United States, turned professional on Tuesday, and he’s ready for quite a few changes.He will make his first trip outside the United States.He will play his first tournament on red clay.He will play his first tennis on grass.But for starters, Shelton, 19, will play in his first Grand Slam tournament after receiving a wild card into the main draw of the U.S. Open, which begins Monday in Queens.“I think that I have some pretty good momentum right now,” Shelton said in a telephone interview on Monday, explaining his decision to turn pro. “I really enjoy being out there and playing on tour and getting to play some of these really cool tournaments, and that’s something I want to continue to do and not have to take a five- or six-month break for the college season. I love playing college tennis, but I’ve definitely had the most fun playing in these pro events.”After two seasons at the University of Florida, where his father, Bryan, is the men’s tennis coach, Shelton has certainly ticked two big boxes: clinching the national team title in 2021 for Florida as a freshman by winning the decisive match against Baylor and then winning the individual title this spring.But what sealed the deal for him on leaving college tennis were his results on the pro tour over the last few weeks: a tight three-set duel and defeat in Atlanta against John Isner, long the top-ranked American, and then eye-catching victories at a Masters 1000 tournament, the tier below the Grand Slams, outside Cincinnati last week. He began the event, the Western and Southern Open, with wins over Lorenzo Sonego of Italy and fifth-ranked Casper Ruud of Norway.Amateurs can play pro events and accumulate ranking points. Shelton is up to No. 171 in singles, making him the third-highest teenager in the ATP rankings behind No. 4 Carlos Alcaraz of Spain and No. 32 Holger Rune of Denmark, who are both 19 years old and already Grand Slam quarterfinalists. But turning professional will allow Shelton to keep his prize money of $84,510 from Cincinnati and the $80,000 he will earn for playing in the first round of the U.S. Open.By turning pro, Shelton will follow the path of his father, who peaked as a top-60 singles player in the 1990s during a golden era for American men’s tennis and who reached the fourth round of Wimbledon as a qualifier in 1994, upsetting the No. 2 seed Michael Stich of Germany in the opening round.But while Bryan Shelton was 6-foot-1 and played right-handed with attacking tools and speed, his son is a 6-4 lefty — still an advantage in tennis — with an intimidating serve and knockout power from the baseline, particularly with his whipping forehand. Ben Shelton often put that shot to devastating use against Ruud when he was not busy flicking a between-the-legs lob winner that left Ruud looking stunned at the net.“I think things have certainly accelerated a lot faster than I had planned or thought with Ben’s development on the court and with his maturity as well,” Bryan Shelton said in a telephone interview from Gainesville, Fla., the university’s city, on Monday.Ben Shelton entered elite tennis comparatively late, having not competed or even played regularly until age 11 when he decided to stop his nascent career at quarterback and focus on the family sport.“This was the same kid who said that ‘tennis will not be my sport’ when he was younger,” Bryan Shelton said. “So he definitely came to it on his own. There was no pressure from mom or dad or sister.”Ben’s older sister, Emma, is a senior on Florida’s women’s tennis team. Their mother, Lisa, was also an accomplished junior player and is the sister of the former world No. 4 doubles and No. 43 singles player Todd Witsken.“We kid around, like which genes is Ben playing with, the Shelton genes or the Witsken genes?” Bryan Shelton said. “He’s got some good blood running through him, that’s for sure.”Ben Shelton said his father’s tennis knowledge played a key role in his decision to choose the sport.“I saw that my dad was a college coach and knew a lot about the game,” he said. “My chances of going far in the sport and having that resource was definitely going to be helpful. The other thing was I grew kind of late. So going into the end of middle school, there was a lot of huge kids in football, and I hadn’t really hit my growth spurt yet. I was maybe a little tired of getting bashed up all the time.”At 6-foot-4 and 195 pounds, Shelton combines power and athleticism.Susan Mullane/USA Today Sports, via ReutersHe now has a build well suited to playing in this age of taller players, which includes Daniil Medvedev of Russia (6-6), Alexander Zverev of Germany (6-6) and Stefanos Tsitsipas of Greece (6-4), all of whom are top-five players.But the Sheltons are well aware that big power and promising early results are no guarantee of reaching the big time. Ben Shelton got a quick reminder of the rigors of the pro game in the round of 16 at the Western and Southern Open, when he was drubbed, 6-0, 6-2, in a night-session match on Center Court by Cameron Norrie, a British left-hander who was a former collegiate No. 1 at Texas Christian University.“There’s definitely a lot of different players out there; not just one type of tennis you are going to win with,” Ben Shelton said. “I definitely learned that from match to match you’re going to have to have a different game plan and be able to make adjustments. You’re not always going to have a perfect day. And when you’re not playing well out on the pro tour, pretty much everyone can take advantage of that, so I kind of learned that I need to think a little quicker on my feet.”Bryan Shelton, who has coached his son from the beginning, will continue to guide Ben’s development with help on the road from Dean Goldfine, a veteran American coach who long worked with the American star Todd Martin. Most recently, Goldfine helped coach Sebastian Korda, 22, one of the most promising young American men’s players, whose father, Petr, an Australian Open champion, was on tour at the same time as Bryan Shelton.Ben Shelton will be managed by TEAM8, the small management company that was founded by Roger Federer, one of Shelton’s tennis idols, and his agent, Tony Godsick, who has a long connection with the Shelton family. Ben Shelton will work day to day with Alessandro Barel Di Sant Albano, who represents an established American teenage star, 18-year-old Coco Gauff.Bryan Shelton knows firsthand all that can go awry on tour.“It’s a tough sport, and the sport is just part of it,” he said. “It’s dealing with the travel and dealing with losses and dealing with feeling lonely.”But Bryan Shelton also knows what it takes, and he sees reassuring signs as he prepares for the bittersweet experience of losing his Florida team’s No. 1 player and watching his son make a big step forward.“It took me a long time to get to where he’s at, and he started later than I did,” Bryan Shelton said. “So he’s just a different animal than I was, and I try not to compare too much what I did and just help him along the way, but I also realize he’s got a much higher ceiling.” More

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      5 N.B.A. Draft Prospects to Know

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      They don’t have to be big names to make an impact. “Getting buckets for myself, getting buckets for my teammates — that’s what I do,” Florida’s Tre Mann said.From the cheap seats at Barclays Center on Thursday night, the N.B.A. draft might appear to be back to normal. Fans will be in attendance, and so too will some of the league’s future stars. When their names are called, they’ll saunter up to the stage, greet Adam Silver, the commissioner of the N.B.A., and show off their custom suits. More

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      Kyle Pitts Is Set to Be the N.F.L.’s Next Revelation at Tight End

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      After he is drafted Thursday, Pitts is expected to join the N.F.L.’s top-shelf tight ends: Rob Gronkowski, George Kittle and Travis Kelce, big-bodied pass catchers who are coveted by contending teams.In the first quarter of a game against Kentucky last November, the University of Florida coaching staff called a favorite play for a favorite player.Kyle Pitts, the bruising and balletic tight end forecast to be among the earliest selections in N.F.L. draft this week, had returned to the field that day, three weeks after being concussed on an illegal hit in a game against Georgia. The Gators’ first drive of the Kentucky game had just begun gathering momentum, nudging to Florida’s 35-yard line, when Coach Dan Mullen dialed up a “snake” pattern — a route traditionally assigned to slight, fast-twitch receivers, not to players who check in at 6 foot 6 and 245 pounds, as Pitts does.“It’s an amazingly athletic route,” Tim Brewster, Florida’s tight ends coach, said. “Really good receivers can struggle with the route.”Pitts came off the left end of the line at full speed, tilted his shoulders toward the sideline and — so quickly that video of the play seems to skip a frame — veered back inside, leaving the cornerback who covered Pitts whirling his hips and grabbing at air. Quarterback Kyle Trask hit Pitts in stride, and he did the rest, opening up to a gliding sprint. The play went for a 65-yard touchdown, the first of three for Pitts that day.“The kid freakin’ ripped it,” Brewster said. “I mean, it was absolutely gorgeous.”Pitts’s game, a blend of rare physicality and even rarer grace, tends to inspire such double-barreled language. He is poised to join the ranks of the N.F.L.’s top-shelf tight ends, players like Rob Gronkowski, George Kittle and Travis Kelce, who have given recent Super Bowl contenders offensive options that are nearly impossible to cover.Pitts and those other big-bodied pass catchers epitomize what N.F.L. teams seek in “unicorns” — parlance borrowed from a similar positional evolution in the N.B.A. These players not only excel at a given job description but also pair attributes long considered disparate. Pitts gets open like a small man and brings the ball down like a big one, high-jumping along the sideline or shoving through pairs of defenders to wrangle passes. He makes possible a new version of the sport.“It really is mismatches,” Mike Renner, a draft analyst for Pro Football Focus, said of modern offensive philosophy. “Offensive coordinators are realizing it’s not necessarily their scheme; it’s about getting the right guy on the right defender. You’re seeing more and more of that — those guys that have multiple skill sets are the ones that are more coveted.”Running backs who might once have been considered too small to carry the every-down load, such as the New Orleans Saints’ Alvin Kamara, have stepped to the position’s vanguard, catching passes almost as often as they take handoffs. Receivers who don’t fit the traditional profile — the Seattle Seahawks’ D.K. Metcalf was once thought to be too bulky to run effective routes — have become game breakers.Tight ends George Kittle (left) and Travis Kelce have helped transform the position with their combination of size, speed and balletic catches.Ezra Shaw/Getty ImagesJamie Squire/Getty ImagesNowhere has the shift been more pronounced than at the tight end position, once the province of dutiful blockers and complementary receiving targets. Kittle is the muscle of the San Francisco 49ers’ ground game, cracking into linebackers to clear space for outside runs, and the focal point of its aerial attack, amassing a team-high 1,053 yards during the 2019 season, which ended with the 49ers in the Super Bowl.Kansas City’s Kelce is a less renowned blocker but a bigger vertical threat; until late in the 2020 season, he led all N.F.L. players, not just tight ends, in total receiving yards. In trying to re-establish their championship bona fides, the New England Patriots added a pair of tight ends this off-season, Jonnu Smith and Hunter Henry, giving the team a chance to recreate the offensive confusion that made the pairing of Gronkowski and Aaron Hernandez so successful in the early 2010s.To defend against such threats, “what you need is for someone like me to go play linebacker,” said Tony Gonzalez, the Hall of Fame tight end who in the 1990s and 2000s prefigured this age of rangy receiving threats. “But we don’t want to play linebacker; we want to score touchdowns.”At Florida’s pro-day workout for N.F.L. scouts in March, Pitts flashed the attributes that make him what Renner terms “a true modern tight end weapon,” registering a wingspan of nearly 7 feet and a 33½-inch vertical leap and running his 40-yard dash in 4.44 seconds — faster than some All-Pro wide receivers.Shortly thereafter, Pitts laid out professional aspirations that extend beyond going in the top five of this year’s draft, as many analysts predict he will: “Start at a high level and keep increasing every year and being able to do other things that other tight ends aren’t doing,” Pitts said. “I feel like I’ll be the best to ever do it.”When Pitts arrived in Gainesville in 2018 as a 17-year-old freshman, the challenge for Florida coaches lay in convincing him of all that his body could do. “It was just a learning process of him understanding how to play in his frame,” said Larry Scott, Pitts’s tight end coach for his first two years with the Gators and now the head coach at Howard University. Scott marveled at Pitts’s catch radius — his ability to adjust to passes close to his shoe tops or high above his helmet — and taught him when to outrun defenders and when to invite contact and create leverage.“Just because a guy’s on you doesn’t mean you’re not open,” Scott told Pitts. “You’re always open.”Pitts caught just three passes his freshman season, but he built a habit of studying the N.F.L. players who will soon become his peers. He watched film of Kittle and of Las Vegas Raiders tight end Darren Waller, eyeing nuances of footwork and positioning. He drilled line-of-scrimmage releases and blocking technique incessantly.Larry Scott, Florida’s tight ends coach for Pitts’s first two seasons, told his 6-foot-6, 245-pound charge, “Just because a guy’s on you doesn’t mean you’re not open. You’re always open.”Sam Craft/Associated PressAt Archbishop Wood High School outside Philadelphia, Pitts had played defense as well as tight end and receiver, once registering a pair of interceptions in a state championship game, and he grew adept at reading complex coverages and knowing how to settle into open zones.The practice-field and film-room work helped Pitts produce the finest season by a tight end in recent college football history in 2020. Lining up wherever he was needed in Florida’s formations, Pitts caught 43 passes for 770 yards and a dozen touchdowns — despite missing the better part of three regular-season games because of the concussion and a fourth with an unrelated injury, and also sitting out the Gators’ Cotton Bowl game to prepare for the draft.His 17.9 yards per reception eclipsed the 15.9-yard average of DeVonta Smith, the Alabama receiver who won the 2020 Heisman Trophy; Pitts finished 10th in the voting, higher than any other tight end in more than four decades.Even top draft prospects tend to get typecast, as talent evaluators look for skills that can reliably transfer to the next level. Coaches talk about Pitts, though, in the language not of production but of possibility.After Pitts’s pro-day workout, Mullen described a straightforward on-field calculus: If Pitts has a corner on him, he will come inside and play through contact. If he is matched up with a linebacker, he will flex out and win with speed and route running. “What are you going to do at that point?” Mullen asked.Unlike his predecessors, Pitts won’t take the league by surprise. In 2013, the Chiefs nabbed Kelce in the third round of the draft after he amassed fewer than 900 receiving yards over three seasons at the University of Cincinnati. Coming out of Iowa with just 22 catches his senior year, Kittle was not picked until the fifth round in 2017. But college offenses have become more elaborate in recent years to showcase talent like Pitts’s, on the rare occasions it comes along.“You saw him run routes like a wide receiver, you saw him block in line, you saw him run the seam, you saw him make contested catches,” Renner said. “You’ve seen everything that the guy is going to do in the N.F.L.”In the draft, N.F.L. teams divulge the skills they most value; one can trace the trends of the game in the ever-increasing glut of quarterbacks taken at the top of the first round and in the falling out of favor by running backs. If Pitts is the highest non-passer selected, he could be the first tight end chosen in the top five since Riley Odoms in 1972. (Atlanta, holding the fourth pick, may look to Pitts to replicate, and expand, Gonzalez’s role there.)“He’s pretty much an unsolvable problem,” Brewster said.Asked what Pitts might become in his N.F.L. prime, Brewster thought back to the game against Georgia, which was ranked fifth in the country at the time. Before getting hurt, Pitts was the locus of the action, throwing blocks at the burly Bulldogs front and catching two passes for 59 yards. The first was a vaulting, pirouetting snag over the sideline, the second a sheer outmuscling of his defender in the end zone. He did enough, over a quarter and a half of play, to dig No. 8 Florida out of an early two-score hole; the Gators would go on to an upset win, 44-28.“He was on a whole ’nother level,” Brewster said. “There was everybody on the field — you had Florida and you had Georgia. And above the field, you had Kyle Pitts.” More

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      Urban Meyer’s Renewal in Jacksonville

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      They filed into the first few rows of TIAA Bank Field, 120 staffers from the Jacksonville Jaguars’ business side, sitting there like so many college boosters and alumni Urban Meyer had addressed over the years. He gathered them there on a sunny afternoon in early March, nearly two months after being hired to revive one of the N.F.L.’s more forlorn franchises, to deliver a speech similar in spirit and substance to ones he’d given as the coach at college behemoths like Ohio State and Florida.After retiring from coaching in 2018, Meyer, 56, had a cushy television gig and a secure legacy as one of the best, and most polarizing, coaches in recent college football history. But he was still unfulfilled. He wanted to coach again, and despite the N.F.L.’s history of conquering celebrated college coaches trying to recreate their glory in the pros, Meyer determined his best fit was with the worst team of the last decade.Tabbed to try to reorient this wayward organization, Meyer conjured his past as an ace recruiter. Wearing white shorts and a gray Jaguars pullover, he urged the assembled employees to “own it,” a call to action he also used at the Jan. 15 news conference introducing him as Jacksonville’s new coach. He implored them to take pride in every facet of the organization, right down to the team logo.“This, right now, is not the most respected logo in the N.F.L. — it’s not,” Meyer said that day. “If in three years it still doesn’t mean much, then you’re probably looking for a new coach and we’ve not been very successful. That’s how personally I’m taking it.”Meyer’s rah-rah message underscored that his competitive drive to own anything and everything about a program, a compulsion that produced three national titles — two at Florida and one at Ohio State — remained fierce, even after a two-year layoff.That self-imposed time away from coaching came after a string of scandals and stress- and health-related issues helped cause him to resign or retire three times in his career. Meyer’s college teams were 187-32 (.854) while, at Florida, there were 31 arrests of players during his tenure, and, at Ohio State, he protected a longtime assistant with a history of domestic abuse.As he weighed whether to re-enter a culture that glorifies workaholics, Meyer did not choose any of the more visible (and venerable) franchises that also wanted him. Instead he pursued the top job in one of the N.F.L.’s smallest markets with a team that perennially has to quell speculation that it will move to London.Jacksonville is poised on Thursday to select Clemson’s Trevor Lawrence, one of the best quarterback prospects in decades, with the first overall pick in the N.F.L. draft. After years of disarray, the Jaguars, as desperate for an identity as they are for victories, have arrived at the most critical juncture since their inception in 1995, an inflection point that the team owner Shahid Khan called “a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity in football.” The union between Meyer and Khan is meant to make good on it.“Now, we get a fresh start,” Khan said in an interview in mid-April. “Everybody gets that this isn’t rebuilding. I mean, we need to win now.”Jaguars fans at a Bold City Brigade tailgate during the 2019 season. The 2020 season, the worst in franchise history, yielded its most promising moment: the right to draft Trevor Lawrence. Dustin HegedusSince Khan’s first season as owner in 2012, no team has a worse record than the Jaguars (39-105), who until last year’s 1-15 debacle somehow never managed to be quite putrid enough to earn the No. 1 draft pick. They have outspent every other team in free agency over that period, but recorded only one winning season, in 2017, during which they lost the A.F.C. title game at New England. Since that apex, Jacksonville is 12-36.John Caputo, the president of Bold City Brigade, a Jaguars supporters club with chapters around the country and overseas, likes to say that fair-weather Jacksonville fans cannot exist. For years, they have endured taunts about their team, their city, their own perceived apathy, and still they fork over discretionary income to watch bad football in person.The darkness lifted in December when the worst season in franchise history yielded its most promising moment: The winless Jets beat the Los Angeles Rams in Week 15, vaulting one-win Jacksonville ahead on tiebreakers for the right to draft Lawrence. “The last month of the season was the most fun we’ve had since 2017 even though we were setting a franchise record for being terrible,” Caputo said. “Because of the Trevor watch.”As the Jets edged Los Angeles, Caputo sat, riveted, at a bar near his home in Jacksonville Beach. Patrons chanted, “J-E-T-S, Jets, Jets, Jets!” Afraid the Jets would lose if he left, Caputo stayed until the end.“For the last 10 years all we want is for the Jaguars to win, but they lose,” Caputo said in a video call. “And so now we’re actually cheering for them to lose, which was kind of liberating.”His friend Pat Donnell, the Brigade’s vice president, chimed in: “And they didn’t let us down.”In light of the team’s rebuilding fortune, fans are rallying to newfound ambitions. Since Meyer arrived, deposits for season tickets have poured in so fast — and from so many new customers — that the Jaguars hired 20 new sales representatives. Traffic on the team’s website and social media accounts has soared, with much of it coming from locations outside Florida, including the Midwest, where Meyer last coached.Coach Urban Meyer, far right, watched Trevor Lawrence, foreground, work out at Clemson’s pro day in February.David Platt/Clemson Athletics, via USA Today Sports, via ReutersA bonanza of fan-designed apparel has cropped up. “Urban Renewal” merchandise is for sale along with T-shirts blaring “Hope,” beneath Lawrence’s photo, a nod to the popular Shepard Fairey-designed poster for Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign.Scores of Jaguars fans contributed $9.04, a homage to Jacksonville’s area code, and bought Lawrence and his new wife, Marissa, a $299.95 toaster from their wedding registry. The fans’ gifts, combined with $20,000 Lawrence said he’d chip in and other donations, added up to more than $54,000 that will be given to charities. “Thanks again, we hope to be a part of your community soon,” Lawrence responded on Twitter.Lawrence’s pending arrival has reinvigorated a franchise that has tried and failed to find a quarterback to outshine Mark Brunell, who started eight playoff games for Jacksonville in the late 1990s. But Meyer’s hiring has given the Jaguars immediate credibility as a team that might also responsibly manage a talented star’s rise.Khan and Meyer had chatted at a few functions over the years, but it wasn’t until Khan bumped into Meyer at an invitation-only N.F.L. party before the Super Bowl in February 2020 in Miami Gardens, Fla., that they shared an extended conversation. As they discussed each other’s backgrounds, Khan found that Meyer’s leadership traits were similar to those he’d acquired immigrating to the United States from Pakistan at age 16 and becoming a global auto parts magnate: relentless ambition, a hands-on temperament, trust in his staff.Though Meyer fielded interest from other teams, he was drawn in by Khan’s offer to remake the franchise in his image. If he succeeds, Meyer can become only the fourth coach to win both a national college championship and a Super Bowl, after Jimmy Johnson, Barry Switzer and Pete Carroll.“If you know Urban, I mean, he doesn’t do much on quick decisions or on a whim,” said Florida Coach Dan Mullen, a close friend and former assistant of Meyer’s. “Everything he does is extremely well thought out with a very detailed plan of why he would do it.”Prepping for coaching interviews, Meyer had canvassed his former players in the N.F.L. and contacted, among others, Johnson to learn how he rebuilt the Dallas Cowboys three decades ago after leaving the University of Miami.The conversations with Khan moved swiftly, and Meyer called his decision to accept the job — and the bounty of benefits that accompanied it, from the weather to the lack of state income tax to Jacksonville’s swell of Florida Gators fans — an easy one.“They got the first pick, a chance to start fresh, start with some salary-cap advantages,” Meyer said in an interview. “Really, if you look at the team, there’s some very good core players here.”Khan, after having experimented (and failed) with various front office power-sharing models, reworked the organizational hierarchy to give Meyer maximum leeway and a big role in the general manager search.“This, right now, is not the most respected logo in the N.F.L. — it’s not,” Meyer said in an address to team personnel, vowing to change that.Jacksonville JaguarsN.F.L. owners have long been fascinated with innovative or triumphant college coaches, and although some flourished at the pro level, many, including Nick Saban and Steve Spurrier, struggled to adapt. In the N.F.L., recruiting prowess is neutralized. Motivational tactics that might work with 19- and 20-year-olds might not work on grown men. Roster limitations and the salary cap, intended to foster parity, wrest control from control freaks. So can injuries and meddlesome owners.Spurrier was 56, same as Meyer now, when he — regrettably, he says — rushed into accepting a head coaching job in Washington, where he came to learn that the owner, Daniel Snyder, would be rather involved in personnel matters. In their first year together, in 2002, Snyder pushed Spurrier against his objections to play the rookie quarterback Patrick Ramsey, and the next year released the second-stringer Danny Wuerffel, who played for Spurrier at Florida. Unable to pick even his backup, Spurrier later told his wife, Jerri, that he’d be done after that season.“I was offered a bunch of money, and I did not use an agent, and I wasn’t probably as careful as getting things in writing as I should have,” Spurrier said. “I did a poor job also, and I’ll admit to that. But the situation ran me out.”Neither Spurrier nor Saban — nor any of their college brethren, really — inherited a situation quite as favorable as Meyer’s in Jacksonville, where he can develop a franchise quarterback while continuing to stockpile talent with four other 2021 draft selections in the top 65.Khan’s words might teem with optimism, but the Jaguars are still going to lose — more often, perhaps, than Meyer, whose worst season as a college head coach was 8-5, ever has. Meyer’s ability to cope with defeat may determine his longevity in the N.F.L.“That’s the first thing I talked to him about when he took the job,” Mullen said. “I mean, ‘How are you going to handle that?’ Ten-and-six is a great year, and I don’t know if he would ever view 10-6 as a great year.”Meyer had far more success than the last two N.F.L. hires plucked from the college ranks, Matt Rhule (hired by the Panthers) and Kliff Kingsbury (Cardinals), but he recognizes that he must adapt on a number of fronts.Already he seemed to misjudge the extent of the backlash generated by the hiring of a strength coach, Chris Doyle, who left Iowa’s staff after several current and former players said he had promoted a culture of bullying and racism. Within hours of the Fritz Pollard Alliance’s condemning the decision, calling it “simply unacceptable,” Doyle resigned.Recruiting players is one of Meyer’s strengths, but unlike in college, where he often had several face-to-face conversations with potential players, he didn’t speak with any prospective free agents until after they signed. The Jaguars signed more than a dozen free agents, including several veterans who played for Meyer and his coaches, like running back Carlos Hyde, who said it was a “no-brainer” to rejoin him.“We’ve been lucky,” Meyer said. “A lot of guys are here training. But we haven’t had a team meeting yet. In college, you probably would have had 50 by now.”But as he is fast learning, Meyer is not in college anymore. More

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      Tim Tebow Retires From Baseball

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyAt the End of a Winding Path, Tim Tebow Retires From BaseballThe Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback turned Mets minor leaguer has ended his unlikely run at being a two-sport athlete.Tim Tebow never found the same success professionally that he did in college football. But he drew attention at every stop.Credit…Vera Nieuwenhuis/Associated PressFeb. 17, 2021, 8:57 p.m. ETEnding one of the more surprising — and unlikely — attempts at a two-sport career, Tim Tebow, the superstar college quarterback turned N.F.L. curiosity turned minor-league baseball player, announced his retirement from professional sports on Wednesday.“I loved every minute of the journey, but at this time I feel called in other directions,” Tebow said in a statement released by the Mets, who signed him to a minor-league deal in 2016. “I never want to be partially in on anything. I always want to be 100 percent in on whatever I choose.”While Tebow never went beyond Class AAA in baseball, he drew a great deal of attention, because of both his exploits on the football field and his charitable endeavors. He is the author of several books and has done missionary work around the world. He was often polarizing, though, with fans of both sports regularly disagreeing about his value and potential, as well as his outspokenness as a Christian. But wherever he went, Tebow drew a crowd.I never want to be partially in on anything. I always want to be 100% in on whatever I choose. Thank you again for everyone’s support of this awesome journey in baseball, I’ll always cherish my time as a Met! #LGM— Tim Tebow (@TimTebow) February 18, 2021
      “It has been a pleasure to have Tim in our organization, as he’s been a consummate professional during his four years with the Mets,” said Sandy Alderson, the president of the Mets. “By reaching the Triple-A level in 2019, he far exceeded expectations when he first entered the system in 2016, and he should be very proud of his accomplishments.”Tebow, 33, showed tremendous athleticism at every stop of his journey, but after a standout career at Florida, during which he won the 2007 Heisman Trophy and two national championships, he never found the right fit professionally.A first-round pick of the Denver Broncos in 2010, he struggled to make his run-heavy approach to playing quarterback work in the N.F.L., but he did manage a surprising close to the 2011 season. After going 7-4 as a starter, he shocked the sport by leading the Broncos to an upset of the Pittsburgh Steelers in the wild-card round of the playoffs.Tebow’s peak as a professional athlete came after the 2011 N.F.L. season when he led the Denver Broncos to an upset of the Pittsburgh Steelers in the wild-card round of the playoffs.Credit…Aaron Ontiveroz/The Denver Post, via Associated PressThat success was short-lived, however, as he was traded to the Jets before the next season. After arriving to much fanfare, he threw just eight passes for the Jets over the course of two games and was released. Attempts to catch on with the New England Patriots and the Philadelphia Eagles went nowhere.A year after his release from the Eagles in 2015, Tebow, who had not played organized baseball since his junior year in high school, was signed by the Mets.“This decision was strictly driven by baseball,” Alderson insisted at the time of the signing. “This was not something that was driven by marketing considerations or anything of the sort.”Tebow homered in his first professional at-bat, but over all he hit .223 in four seasons, with 18 home runs. In 2019, he hit .163 with four homers for Class AAA Syracuse.In announcing his retirement, he acknowledged the Mets fans who had pulled for him in his quest to join the ranks of Bo Jackson and Deion Sanders, athletes who reached the pinnacle in both football and baseball.“Thank you again for everyone’s support of this awesome journey in baseball,” he said. “I’ll always cherish my time as a Met.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More