Afternoon Edition |
August 14, 2026 |
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Videos of three NFL quarterbacks—Justin Herbert, Joe Burrow, and Jaxson Dart—and their significant others on the field at training camp have gone viral. These moments are part of a larger content campaign, a source close to the NFL told Front Office Sports.
—Ellyn Briggs
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Videos of three NFL quarterbacks sharing personal time with their significant others on the field at training camp have gone viral in the last week: Justin Herbert with fiancé Madison Beer, Joe Burrow with rumored girlfriend Olivia Ponton, and Jaxson Dart with girlfriend Marissa Ayers.
Sports Twitter has questioned the rapid succession of tender training-camp content, noting player partners have not previously had such a visible role in preseason activities.
These moments, it turns out, are at least partly coordinated. The viral canoodling-at-camp videos are part of a larger content campaign, a source close to the NFL told Front Office Sports.
It clearly fits the NFL’s recent efforts to reach women and girls, and it is part of the league’s “helmets-off” marketing effort.
“On the league and club level, we’ve engaged our players’ families and loved ones for years,” Ian Trombetta, the NFL’s SVP of social and influencer marketing, told FOS. “Whether it’s Training Camp, weekly practice or a major event like the Super Bowl, we look for authentic opportunities to highlight our players and the people who are part of their journey. … The content is authentic, genuine and relatable, and that’s resonated strongly with women and young fans, who are key growth audiences for the NFL.”
The NFL also shared with FOS it has been “scaling up its female-focused content,” and “will be doing even more in the future”—especially with the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics on the horizon, where women’s flag football will be played for the first time. In December 2025, NFL clubs approved a $32 million investment to develop and launch a professional flag football league that will feature male and female athletes. Several NFL teams have also allocated millions of dollars to local girls flag programs.
The Bengals declined a request for comment; the Giants did not respond. The Chargers told FOS they were not planning any formalized content around Beer specifically.
All Gen Z and professional content creators, Ayers, Ponton, and Beer are among the highest-profile NFL romantic partners—perhaps behind only Taylor Swift and Simone Biles. (Beer is also a pop musician.) Collectively, the trio has more than 70 million followers across Instagram and TikTok; the NFL, comparatively, has 53 million combined followers across both platforms.
When Herbert and Beer got engaged in late July, the NFL shared Beer’s photos of the proposal to its own Instagram account in a post that garnered more than 500,000 likes. According to digital analytics site Social Blade, that’s roughly 10 times more than the average NFL Instagram post nets.
Female audiences in the NFL have already grown, thanks in no small part to Swift, whose relationship with Travis Kelce made the music star into a regular fixture at Chiefs games and on broadcasts beginning in 2023. Merch sales, too, have swelled among female consumers.
This latest partner-centric content push by the league comes as the nature of sports fandom expands, particularly among young people: Research published by USC Annenberg and Acceleration Community of Companies in July showed approximately half (49%) of Gen Zers become interested in a new sport or athlete because of viral online content or something entirely outside the sport—like an athlete’s relationship.
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On Tuesday, I was at Spire Academy, a boarding school and sports facility in Geneva, Ohio, to attend the finale of the Patriot Games: the Trump Administration–backed national youth-sports competition honoring America’s 250th birthday. The event space felt part American Ninja Warrior taping, part Turning Point USA rally—complete with a strobe light-lined obstacle course, grandstands covered in hulking star-shaped decor, and plenty of pyrotechnics.
ESPN streamed the multiday event on its app, with on-site coverage anchored by some of its highest-profile talent, including Laura Rutledge and Jordan Rodgers. President Donald Trump flew in for the occasion; Pat McAfee was waiting on the tarmac to greet him. Disney CEO Josh D’Amaro and ESPN chairman Jimmy Pitaro also appeared alongside the president upon his arrival at Spire.
The network told Front Office Sports that McAfee was invited to attend the event as a guest of Trump, but it’s unclear whether the other top brass were there in any formal capacity. Despite its streaming and special-production support, ESPN was largely mum about the event on its linear airwaves all week—that is, until Wednesday after the event, when McAfee touted the games in a three-minute segment on his show.
“I think that thing is an incredible idea. I’m excited to see what it grows into,” McAfee said on air.
ESPN and Freedom 250—the organization created by the Trump Administration to execute celebratory programming for America’s semiquincentennial—did not respond to requests for comment about the Patriot Games’ future. But if McAfee’s remarks are any indication, Tuesday’s fanfare may have been a pilot episode.
—Ellyn Briggs
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Unrivaled ⬆ The 3-on-3 women’s basketball league announced its third annual Future is Unrivaled class, signing nine NCAA players to NIL deals. The year’s list includes college stars Madison Booker, Hannah Hidalgo, and Sarah Strong. Several 2026 WNBA first-round picks were members of last year’s program, including Azzi Fudd, Olivia Miles, and Lauren Betts, three of the first four selections.
Flag football ⬆ NFL commissioner Roger Goodell is among the executives attending the IFAF Flag Football World Championships in Düsseldorf, Germany, this week, where four Olympic qualifying spots are up for grabs ahead of the sport’s debut at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics. American Samoa beat the previously undefeated U.S. men’s team 38–32 in group play Friday. Executives from TMRW Sports—the company that will operate the NFL’s new professional flag football leagues—are also in Germany this week.
Gianni Infantino ⬇ New Zealand became the latest soccer federation to withdraw support for the FIFA president’s reelection bid, breaking with its regional body to join England, Wales, Norway, and Ireland in opposing Infantino. Three of FIFA’s six confederations have already pulled their backing over Infantino’s failed plan to sell stakes in the World Cup.
NFL+ ⬇ The league’s streaming service faced complaints Thursday night from subscribers who reported being unable to log in or access preseason games they had paid for, with six games scheduled and three exclusively available through NFL+. More games are scheduled this weekend, giving the league little time to resolve any lingering issues.
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The White Sox paid tribute to Illinois native and Sox fan Pope Leo XIV with a pope hat giveaway Tuesday night. What was originally planned as a limited giveaway for only 2,500 fans grew to 40,000 hats (officially called mitres in Christian liturgy) after the team quickly sold out of those initial tickets tied to the promotion.
“The only anxiety was: Can we get 40,000 here by the time of this day? So as soon as we figured out we could, it’s been a lot of fun to be part of,” White Sox VP Brooks Boyer told MLB.com. “We were talking about this before. Is there anything that has rivaled this where we’d have to say, we have to go to 40,000?
In honor of the pope’s time in the Windy City, Chicago White Sox Charities made a donation to his former order, the Midwest Augustinians Province, and Sister Mary Jo Sobieck of the Dominican Sisters of Springfield, Illinois, threw out the first pitch.
Fans at Rate Field also participated in a “sign of peace” during the fifth inning. The ritual is traditionally performed during Catholic Masses before churchgoers receive Holy Communion.
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