PHOENIX — Ty Gibbs knew his teammate had to win the final regular-season race to qualify for the Xfinity Series championship.
And yet Gibbs still spun Brandon Jones out of the lead on the final lap last week at Martinsville Speedway as Gibbs picked up his sixth win of the season.
Had he just settled for second place, Gibbs and Jones would have both advanced to Saturday’s title race to give Joe Gibbs Racing a pair of Toyotas in the winner-take-all four-driver championship finale at Phoenix Raceway.
So why did he do it?
“It comes down to just caught in the moment, and you know, selfish actions led to that,” Gibbs said Thursday at the Phoenix Convention Center.
The 20-year-old Gibbs — whose grandfather, Joe Gibbs, is a Hall of Famer in both NASCAR and the NFL and the owner of one of NASCAR’s top organizations — has had a miserable week in preparation of racing for his first national championship. He created it himself by preventing Jones from winning at Martinsville, where the crowd chanted “Thank You, Grandpa” as Gibbs celebrated the win.
Then after the race, Gibbs in an interview compared himself to Jesus when asked about being NASCAR’s newest villain. “I always go back to the same verse, that Jesus was hated first and among all the people.”
Gibbs said Thursday he regrets the comment and said he didn’t deliver the line the way he intended. But he regrets just about everything from last Saturday and has been on an apology tour at JGR, with Jones and with Toyota, which is furious one of its cars was knocked from the championship.
Because of Gibbs’ action, the title race comes down to one Toyota driver and three Chevrolets from the JR Motorsports trio of Noah Gragson, Josh Berry and Justin Allgaier. Drivers from every series — including Gibbs’ veteran teammates at JGR — have criticized Gibbs for Martinsville and his rivals are piling on headed into the finale.
“He doesn’t care. He lives in fantasyland,” Gragson said Thursday. “I have no clue honestly what goes through his mind. It’s got to be badass to live in the kind of world where you just have no real consequences or anything.”
His grandfather, however, insisted this week there would be consequences for his grandson. Ty Gibbs said Thursday he doesn’t know what they will be, but will accept any punishment headed his way.
He’s expected to be named the replacement for Kyle Busch in the No. 18 Toyota in the Cup Series — one of the top rides in NASCAR — and Gibbs doesn’t know if Martinsville has changed that.
“When tough things happen, and certainly nobody wanted that to happen, I said, ‘Now there’s consequences,’ and so we’re trying to walk through those with him,” Joe Gibbs said. “Ty is walking through it, I’m walking through it, and we’re still in that process. It was something that was heat of the battle. Everything is taking place. There was so much going on.”
Complicating the situation is that Jones is leaving JGR after Saturday’s race to drive for JR Motorsports next season and has no reason to help Gibbs win the championship. In fact, he could actively prevent him from the title by working with his future JRM teammates out of spite.
Additionally, Jones’ father, J.R., is an executive chairman at Rheem, which is a major sponsor of Christopher Bell at JGR. Bell will race for the Cup title on Sunday, and Rheem has given no indication it will take punitive action against the organization for Jones’ disappointing end with the team.
Ty Gibbs is a successful young driver: He won his NASCAR debut in 2021 and has 10 wins in 50 starts. He won the ARCA championship last season and has been doing double duty since July as the injury replacement in the Cup Series for concussed driver Kurt Busch. Gibbs will make his 16th Cup start the day after he races for the Xfinity championship.
But Gibbs has also been an aggressive driver — he even used the word “dirty” on Thursday to describe some of his on-track actions — and has been lambasted for multiple incidents even before Martinsville. He got in a fight on pit road with Sam Mayer in which Gibbs, while wearing his helmet, began throwing punches at Mayer. And NASCAR fined Gibbs $75,000 for a pit road incident in the Cup Series in which he nearly forced a competitor’s car into personnel.
Coy Gibbs is the vice chairman at JGR and Ty is his son. He’s defended him in the past, and while admitting the Martinsville race was “disappointing,” Coy Gibbs still had his son’s back.
“Look, he’s my kid. I appreciate his aggression. But sometimes you got to pull back a little bit. This is a place where we need to pull back some,” Coy Gibbs said. “Just talked to him and explained to him that doing that affects not just him, it affects our whole company, all our sponsors, all the people we deal with, Toyota, obviously affected Brandon.
“Those are things maybe you’re not thinking of in that split second, but hopefully we can get with him and educate him on those things.”
Gibbs has a long way to go to change the perception he’s created for himself, particularly as he’s poised to move into the tougher Cup Series next season. He certainly seemed humbled Thursday, but knows he’s got to prove himself on the track to change opinions and earn the respect of his rivals and JGR teammates.
“I have to face the fact that I made a mistake and I have to do the hardest of work to fix these issues,” Gibbs said. “I put myself in this position, I didn’t have to make it such a hard week. And it really hurts me because it’s my family’s team, and we’re one big family. All their hurt and anger affects me. I’ve gone over the scenario millions of times. If I could redo it, I definitely would.”
Auburn wide receiver Malcolm Simmons, an expected starter this season, was arrested Wednesday on a charge of domestic assault with strangulation or suffocation, according to Lee County (Alabama) Sheriff’s Office records.
Simmons was booked into Lee County Jail at 7:20 p.m. ET. His bond was set at $20,000.
An Auburn spokesperson said in a statement, “We are aware of the situation, are gathering the facts, and will address the situation.”
As a freshman last season, Simmons was second on the team with 40 receptions, including three going for touchdowns. He also returned a punt for a score.
He is one of the players Hugh Freeze mentioned at SEC media days earlier this week, when the Auburn coach said he thinks this can be his best receiving corps since he was at Ole Miss.
Simmons is the second Auburn player to be arrested this month. Linebacker D.J. Barber was dismissed from the team last week while facing multiple drug charges, including trafficking marijuana.
MADISON, Wis. — The status of Wisconsin cornerback Nyzier Fourqurean for this season is now unclear after a federal appeals court overturned a preliminary injunction that had granted him another year of NCAA eligibility.
In a 2-1 decision rendered Wednesday, Seventh Circuit judges reversed the ruling by a lower court, after the NCAA appealed.
Fourqurean, a fifth-year senior, had argued that his first two college seasons at Division II Grand Valley State should not count toward his eligibility.
Vanderbilt quarterback Diego Pavia is expected to play again after winning his court case last year on the grounds that his two seasons at a junior college do not count. The NCAA is appealing that decision but granted a blanket waiver that will allow Pavia and other athletes who played at non-NCAA Division I schools prior to enrollment an extra year of eligibility if they were going to exhaust their eligibility this year.
The path forward for Fourqurean, a projected starter, is less clear with Wisconsin’s season opener against Miami (Ohio) on Aug. 28 just over six weeks away. Messages sent to attorneys listed as his representatives in court documents, as well as spokespeople for Wisconsin football, were not immediately returned.
The NCAA released a statement after Wednesday’s ruling, noting it “will continue to work together to provide unparalleled opportunities for student-athletes and future generations.”
“The member-approved rules, including years of eligibility, are designed to help ensure competition is safe and fair — aligning collegiate academic and athletic careers to provide high-level opportunities and benefits to hundreds of thousands of student-athletes,” the NCAA said. “We are thankful the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals today reversed the district court’s decision.”
Fourqurean testified during a U.S. District Court hearing in February that he would make “hundreds of thousands of dollars” in name, image and likeness compensation if he were to play this season. After judge William Conley granted him the preliminary injunction, Fourqurean pulled out of NFL draft consideration and took part in spring practices.
Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.
ATLANTA — As Alabama looks to improve upon last season’s 9-4 record in its second season under head coach Kalen DeBoer, those within the program are well aware of the lofty expectations but say they enter this season with a greater sense of comfort surrounding the program’s future under DeBoer.
“I feel like especially last year, it is hard, man,” Alabama linebacker Deontae Lawson told ESPN on Wednesday at SEC media days. “You’re coming from Coach Saban to Coach DeBoer, everyone — everyone — is going to have something to say. Everyone wants to know, ‘How’s the new coach?’ or ‘What’s the difference?’ or something like that. But yeah man, we were all for Coach DeBoer. I remember he walked in — the first day he walked in — we all sat up in our chairs ready to go. And from that day we all been on the DeBoer train, probably more now than ever.”
Last year, Alabama lost four games and finished outside the Associated Press Top 10 for the first time since 2007. It was the third time in 11 seasons the Tide missed the playoff, this time finishing No. 11 in the selection committee’s final ranking but getting bumped from the 12-team field to make room for three-loss ACC champion Clemson.
While preseason favorite Texas has garnered the most spotlight here at the College Football Hall of Fame, where media days are being held, there’s a quiet confidence brewing at Alabama.
“We’re starving,” Lawson said. “We’re not hungry, we’re like starving. And that’s different. That’s different. … Just to see no one transfer out of here when the time came, man, it just shows you that we got guys that’s willing to do what they have to do to make us the most successful team that we can be. I’m just super excited. I know the guys are ready, and we go at it with each other every day, and I’m sure we all can’t wait until we see a different color jersey even though we haven’t even got into camp yet.”
DeBoer said he’s spending less time building the culture of the program and more time breaking down what happened in the four losses last year, and how they’ll operate when certain situations happen.
“That’s where we have to be better,” he said. “because we fell short, five- six- seven-point losses. It’s one play here, one play there that might have changed the outlook of the game.
“In some cases, it wasn’t something anyone was doing wrong, it was just, ‘Man, be better,'” he said. “It’s not on the players, it’s not on the coaches, it’s just reps. Repetitions. Just do more together, more time together helps you feel more comfortable.”
Even with a new quarterback and a familiar face in first-year offensive coordinator Ryan Grubb, who was with DeBoer at Washington, DeBoer said his gut feeling about this year’s team is simply having a better sense of who it is.
“You still don’t know Week 1 exactly what it’s going to look like, right?” he said. “… I know what I’ve got with these guys. It doesn’t guarantee you anything, but it gives you optimism, a lot of excitement, and continue to keep it honed in and headed in the right direction all together.”
DeBoer has said that if the season started today, Simpson would be the starter, but he continued to stress that he will be tracking all of the quarterbacks’ throws at practices, and watching their poise and leadership. Simpson, the most experienced of the bunch, completed 58% of his passes for 381 yards in three seasons at Alabama. Austin Mack was with DeBoer at Washington before following him to Alabama, where he went 2-for-3 for 39 yards and a touchdown in his lone appearance last season. Incoming freshman Keelon Russell was the No. 2 overall recruit in this year’s ESPN 300 and was the 2024 Gatorade High School Football Player of the Year.
DeBoer said Simpson doesn’t want to let anyone down — almost to a fault — and wants to make sure the young quarterback knows that, “if you’ve given everything you have, you’re not letting us down because he didn’t convert a third down, or didn’t have a drive that ended in a touchdown. … you don’t have to live in that, the fear of failure.”
“When you’re not experienced … sometimes you feel like, ‘Man, I want to go make that play,’ and it isn’t the right calculated risk to take,” DeBoer said, “… or things happen a little faster because you don’t have enough of those reps, but he’s done a great job. He’s working hard to make sure he’s taking care of the football, leading us. He’s obviously a great teammate.”
Alabama offensive lineman Kadyn Proctor said he’s confident in the pass protection “for whoever’s back there” at quarterback. He, too, said he’s confident in DeBoer, whom he said shares some of the same qualities as former legendary coach Nick Saban.
“I knew that our athletic director wasn’t just going to choose anybody to have this position,” Proctor said, “and if coach DeBoer being there is the right fit, then I’m behind it.”