…You’re gonna be booing Lane Kiffin this week, and he knows it, writes The Athletic’s Will Leitch. This weekend Lane and LSU will head into some of the most hostile territory on this and any of the seven other planets, plus Pluto: Oxford, Mississippi. There will be loads and loads of security and police officers there. If you want to commit a petty crime in Mississippi that day, it might be your time to shine. 

I went to a fashion show, but I didn’t see Lauren Betts or Suni Lee, or Jordyn Woods and Karl-Anthony Towns (the man, not my cat). Athletes were spotted all over Fashion Week, though. More on my show experience below! 

They say money talks, but really, if you’re ever trying to convince someone to do something, what you need to offer up is a Rolex. John Brice of USA Today interviewed coaches, agents, and player reps to unearth their craziest college NIL stories. 

WBPL Championships are here. Here’s the history of women’s pro baseball. And here are their walkup songs. And here are the celebrations. May the best women win. 

David Skilling, you son of a b, you’ve done it again. In his ‘Culture of Sport’, Skilling explains why some partnerships work with an original SportsMarketing Library. If you consider yourself a lifelong learner, it’ll be worth your dollars. You pretty much have to trust him because Skill is in his name. 

If you follow OffBall, you probably know I’m no expert on cards or collectibles. I didn’t exactly fake it well with Taylor Fritz.

But on a bus to upstate New York yesterday, surrounded by fashion writers and influencers, I opened my first pack of Pokémon cards. And something about the way the plastic opened felt really nice. It felt like it might be the beginning of something. I’ll keep you posted on that. 

When Bleecker Trading, a New York City memorabilia and card store offered to bring me up for the Collina Strada show at Storm King, it was a no-brainer. I’ve been a big fan of Collina Strada for a while. So much so, for a feature in my basketball magazine, Flagrant Mag, I put Izzy Harrison in Collina dresses. 

The show wasn’t sporty, or even sports adjacent, but the trading cards of it all were so fun. I wore my most whimsical yet sporty outfit I could put together — an upcycled Trent Green jersey dress layered under another dress, knowing I’d be posing for my own personal trading card. And I admit it felt a little silly wearing a sporty dress to a big time cool girl NYFW show, but with the way collectibles, cards, sports, and fashion seamlessly fit together, I felt like I didn’t have to overthink it too much. 

Writer Nina Orm says that these days, culture is an asset. Rookie cards, jerseys, and high value merch outpaces the S&P 500 (something I know a lot about…). They’re an entire industry separate from sports. 

I learned just how true that was. I was allowed behind the scenes before the show. I watched the models putting final touches together before they walked the grassy catwalk. Carly Rae Jepsen performed. The afterparty had tarot readings, a tequila fountain, immaculate views, vegan food (thank you!!!). I also met a lot of cool writers. Like Amanda Yen of Business Insider, who filled me in on all of this tennis tea I somehow missed.  

One of the best parts was going deep on collectibles with Mary Arris, also known as MaryGambleGamble on IG and YouTube. Mary is a charismatic, bubbly, passionate content creator and card collector. She makes content for her own channels and for Bleecker Trading. 

Her favorite part of the show was also my favorite part: “There was such a buzz from taking home that tangible trading card…other people really seemed to like that too,” she said. 

Collecting is her job. It’s no different than day trading, she tells me. But she got into it as a hobby. “I think that the best is going with your friends and opening up packs, it’s a social thing, making it a competition surrounding that, but it’s an indirect gamble,” she told me. 

Her favorite card is a 1985 Michael Jordan Fleer card, which also happens to be the most counterfeited card. She has a pair of them, actually— a PSA 5 and a PSA 6, which I now know is their grading system. The same card as a PSA 10 is worth millions. 

It may be a social thing, but she’s profiting, too. She held onto a LeBron James rookie card through his Decision, Part 2 (or are we counting this latest Decision as Part 3? Oh, my editor tells me this, in fact, was Decision, Part 4! So many decisions to make) just to see how the worth would shift. It more than doubled, jumping from $4,000 to $8,500 when he announced he was headed to the 76ers. 

She has a blast with it, you can tell. But says she’s longing for more women to join the space. Surely Bleecker Trading and similar brands appearing at fashion shows is a good place to start. 

“I want more daughters to be involved in it with their dads. There have been some daughters that come up to me and say hi and that’s priceless,” she said.  

She may have made a newbie collector of me. 

Thank God Jalen Brunson is back in the news, because after his May/June/July streak of being everything everywhere all at once, it was a lonely August without him. I was starting to have withdrawal. Over the past week or so, the King of New York has been an active, hands-on king. 

He showed face at Harry Styles’ residency in NYC. And the U.S. Open. 

Anyone who is anyone in NYC has hosted SNL, so it’s exciting he’ll be ticking that off his big city bucket list for the show’s season 52 premiere on September 26.

And, a promise has been bestowed upon the good people of former New Amsterdam (did you know it was called that once) by its Queen, Mariska Hargitay, that we’d see Brunson in SVU soon. Which is exciting, because I need 30 more minutes of their Emmys open.