Brodie Butterfield, a tech worker in Australia, walked into his job one day and saw a colleague in a vintage Dale Earnhardt Sr. shirt. Earnhardt Sr., who won seven championships in the top-level NASCAR Cup Series before his fatal crash in the 2001 Daytona 500, transcended the sport in his iconic No. 3 car. Butterfield thought he’d found a fan, greeting his colleague with: “Raise hell, praise Dale!”
It didn’t land.
“He looked at me like I had two heads,” Butterfield told ESPN. “I knew he was a casual Formula One fan, so I thought maybe he’d broadened his horizons. After probing, [it] turned out he had a tenuous grasp on what NASCAR even was.”
NASCAR streetwear is in. The challenge is bringing NASCAR along with it.
“The idea that Drake even mildly knows who my dad is, is cool to me,” Dale Earnhardt Jr. told ESPN. “I got a chance to interview him at the Kentucky Derby last year, and I don’t think he knew who I was. He still might not know who I am, but he’s wearing the jacket.
“I’m certain somebody said, ‘Hey, here’s who Dale Earnhardt was.’ He might have gotten at least a two-minute refresher course on what the jacket was all about. I think if that’s all it is, that’s great. But if Drake ends up coming to a race and wanting to learn more, I think that will encourage a lot of people outside of that NASCAR bubble to come check us out.”
Earnhardt Jr. said that’s always been the challenge: making NASCAR and its personalities mainstream, like his father or Jeff Gordon. If doing that means playing into nostalgia, the Y2K renaissance is the perfect time.
“It’s funny,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “We kind of shift from decade to decade. We were obsessed with the ’80s. Before that, the ’70s. Now, everybody’s going: ‘Oh man, everything was better in the ’90s.’
“I think we should absolutely lean into the imagery and pop culture, but also what was happening in our own sport. Jeff Gordon was becoming a national — if not a global — icon, and I think we peaked around 2004. The ’90s was the buildup to that.”
Much like pop culture, modern NASCAR is trending toward the ’90s. North Wilkesboro Speedway — a beloved North Carolina track that hosted NASCAR’s top divisions from 1949 to 1996 — is back on the schedule after sitting in decay, thanks in large part to Earnhardt Jr.’s efforts to revive it. Meanwhile, the people behind some of NASCAR’s most iconic apparel are dialing back the years on their work.
Ryan Williams, a designer for Earnhardt Jr.’s JR Motorsports race team, remembers how his father wore giant NASCAR shirts and jeans when he was growing up. Back then, he hated it.
“I would be like, ‘I’m so embarrassed for him to pick me up from school or be walking around in the Home Depot with him. What is he doing?'” Williams said. “Now, it’s so fashionable to wear your dad’s clothes, and wear these big, goofy NASCAR tees. I’m so fortunate that’s a thing, because it’s my entire wardrobe.”
It also inspires Williams’ work for JR Motorsports. The team’s website is full of shirts that have throwback cues or follow a theme, like one with driver Justin Allgaier‘s car getting abducted by aliens in a cornfield. The sponsor on the shirt, Brandt, sells agricultural products.
“I’ll usually get on a kick where I’ll watch a movie or something, then in the shower later, I’ll come up with the idea of doing a shirt around it,” Williams said. “I think I watched ‘Signs,’ and then I was like: ‘Brandt. Professional agriculture. Crop circles. That sounds like a good idea.'”
Themeswerecommon back in the day. They’re also what inspire Harris Lue and Emily Butler, who design graphics and apparel for NASCAR drivers and teams through their firm, Lue Creative.
“I think the beauty of the old merch is, there were so many people doing it,” said Lue, who wore a ’90s space-themed “Yates Rocket” NASCAR shirt while we spoke. The shirt had a starscape background, blue beams of light all over and Robert Yates Racing driver Ernie Irvan‘s No. 28 car depicted as a hovercraft in the center.
“There were so many different vendors and printers that everything was unique,” Lue continued. “[If] they were designing for Robert Yates and the 28 car, they were coming up with things just for them. Now, everything has become so streamlined that a lot of it is templated. You can buy the same Ross Chastain shirt as you can the Brad Keselowski shirt.”
“Now, they can just take a photo and plop it in,” added Butler, who sat next to Lue in her own space-themed shirt based on a ’90s Bill Elliott car. “To a lot of people, that’ll get the job done. But it’s art, and it should be art. People like when the work has been put in. There’s an effort behind it, and it’s really authentic and made special for them. I think that’s the difference between modern art and retro art.”
“In the long run,” Lue said, “if you make something cool enough, people who aren’t even into NASCAR might buy it.”
Lue and Butler saw that happen with a shirt they designed for Bubba Wallace and his sponsor, McDonald’s. The shirt showed Wallace celebrating with a fountain drink in hand, his upper body hovering over his 23XI Racing car as it spilled out from a carton of fries.
“It sold out because it was cool,” Lue said. “It was full blast, and it was fully McDonald’s.”
“We saw those everywhere,” Butler added. “[Lue] was at some random concert, and they were everywhere.”
For as often as NASCAR gets criticized for racing “rolling billboards,” Lue and Butler think for some buyers, it’s the branding that sells.
“The way that ’90s and 2000s NASCAR blended branding and racing, there’s never been anything like it that I’ve seen,” Lue said. “All the ball sports now, they’re putting logos on jerseys, but NASCAR and racing pioneered that. We found a way to sell every sellable space, and the merchandise itself — I mean, people buy M&M’s stuff and have no clue who Elliott Sadler, Ken Schrader or Ernie Irvan are. They just see M&M’s.”
That was the case for Flasch, a 25-year-old musician and content creator in Los Angeles who goes by just their first name. They started collecting throwback-style NASCAR jackets after visiting Japan and seeing them “in a bunch of stores.” When they got home, they found a brown M&M’s one for $20.
“I thought they were super cool,” Flasch told ESPN. “I got the brown one because it was my first one I saw in the USA, but I really liked the neutrality of it. I love the M&M’s branding and all the logos. To be honest, I don’t really care who the race-car driver is.”
Flasch, whose favorite jacket is a bright-blue Oreo one, almost went to a NASCAR race for their birthday last year. The plans fell through because of COVID.
“I would totally love to go to a NASCAR event in person,” they said. “I don’t really watch any sports, but I think race cars are cool even though I don’t really like driving in real life. I even have a lyric in my most recent song called ‘Popstar.’ The chorus is, ‘I wanna be a pop star, so I can drive a race car.'”
For some, vintage NASCAR is about the brands. For others, it’s about the designs. For Earnhardt Jr., it’s often about appreciating the past — the sport’s, the world’s and his own.
“We have a habit of thinking that everything in the past was better,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “We do that with music, we do that with fashion, and in NASCAR, a lot of those things remind me of my childhood. They remind me of a more innocent time, or what felt like an easier time. It was probably anything but easy.
“For me, there’s this part of the history of the sport that I never got to experience, and that was in anything from the ’70s on earlier. There’s always this pursuit of trying to get as close as you can to knowing what it would’ve been like to be there, and there’s also this never-ending quest of learning about my father — learning new stories and little anecdotes, and filling in the gaps of things about his career that I don’t know.”
Butterfield, meanwhile, keeps running into colleagues wearing vintage NASCAR merch. It remains to be seen if they’ll become fans.
“[Since the Earnhardt Sr. shirt], I’ve had two additional similar experiences with colleagues; one wearing a Kyle Petty shirt and the other wearing what I assume is a bootleg official’s jacket,” he said. “Both admitted to being fans of the ‘Cars’ film franchise, but neither followed racing of any kind.
“None of the three culprits could shed any light on why, other than: ‘It looks cool.’ I agree.”
MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. — Penn State quarterback Drew Allar said he was trying to throw the ball into the ground. Notre Dame defensive back Christian Gray dove for it anyway and — luck of the Irish — the ball ended up right in his hands.
A few seconds later, Gray and Notre Dame found themselves with a spot in the national title game after a thrill-a-minute 27-24 victory over Penn State on Thursday night in the Orange Bowl.
Gray’s snag of Allar’s ill-advised pass across the middle at the Nittany Lions’ 42 with 33 seconds left set up a 19-yard drive that ended with Mitch Jeter‘s winning 41-yard field goal.
The Irish (14-1), seeded seventh in this, the first 12-team college playoff, will have a chance to bring their 12th title and first since 1988 back under the Golden Dome with a game Jan. 20 in Atlanta. Their opponent will be the winner Friday night of the Texas-Ohio State semifinal in the Cotton Bowl.
“Just catch the ball. Just catch the ball,” Gray said about his interception. “That was going through my mind, and I knew I was going to make a play.”
Allar explained he saw his first two options covered on the play, then wanted to throw the ball into the turf. But the throw, under pressure and across his body, didn’t have enough zip on it to reach either receiver Omari Evans or the ground before Gray slid in.
“Honestly, I was trying to throw it at his feet,” said the junior quarterback, considered by some to be a first-round pick if he leaves for the NFL. “I should’ve thrown it away when I saw the first two progressions were not open. I didn’t execute.”
It was the most memorable play of a game that was the best of what has been a sleepy few weeks of playoff football. It featured three ties, three lead changes and 31 points in the fourth quarter alone.
In the final, Irish coach Marcus Freeman will try to become the first Black head coach to win the title at college football’s highest level. Freeman, whose mother is South Korean, also is the first coach of Asian heritage to get this far.
“We found a way to make a play when it mattered the most,” Freeman said. “In my opinion, great teams, great programs, find a way to do that.”
Penn State coach James Franklin fell to 4-20 with the Nittany Lions against teams ranked in the AP Top 10.
“Everyone wants to look at a specific play,” Franklin said. “But there’s probably eight to 12 plays in that game that could have made a difference. I’m not going to call out specific plays or specific players. There are a ton of plays where we could have done better.”
Notre Dame quarterback Riley Leonard shook off a hit late in the second quarter that sent him to the medical tent to be checked for a concussion. He came back and led the Irish on four scoring drives in the second half, including the last one.
“He’s a competitor and competitors find a way to win, and that’s what Riley does,” Freeman said. “That’s what this team does.”
Leonard finished with 223 yards passing, including a key 10-yard dart to Jaden Greathouse to convert third-and-3 on the last drive. Leonard also had 35 yards rushing, and passed and ran for a score each.
With 4:38 left in the game, the senior quarterback hit Greathouse for a 54-yard score to tie it at 24 after a defender slipped.
The game started slow, but Riley’s injury injected life into things. He led Notre Dame on TD drives of 75 and 72 yards in the third quarter to take a 17-10 lead.
At that point, the fun was just getting started.
Penn State had its chances, and Allar, along with all those Nittany Lions fans, will spend the offseason reliving that last throw — or trying to forget it.
Penn State forced a Notre Dame punt and looked assured of at least going to overtime when it took over at their 15 with 47 seconds left.
After a gain of 13, Allar dropped to pass and had pressure coming. He threw across his body to the middle of the field, where Gray dove for the pick.
A review showed it was a catch, and the Irish were onto the next step on a road that looked all but impossible when they fell 16-14 to Northern Illinois back in September.
Nick Singleton ran for 84 yards and all three Penn State touchdowns. Off target for much of the day, Allar finished 12 for 23 for 135 yards with the interception.
“He’s hurting right now. He should be. We’re all hurting,” Franklin said.
The quarterback didn’t duck questions about the play or his role in the loss.
“We didn’t win the game so it wasn’t good enough, it’s plain and simple,” Allar said. “I’ll try to learn from it, do everything in my power to get better and just grow from it.”
When Leonard went out, backup Steve Angeli came in and injected life into the Fighting Irish offense on the way to its first score.
Angelli went 6 for 7 for 44 yards and moved Notre Dame to field goal range to trim its deficit to 10-3 just before halftime.
“We have a lot of confidence in Steve,” Freeman said when asked why he allowed the Irish to play aggressively when he entered.
The kickoff temperature was 56 degrees, unseasonably cool for South Florida — and making it the second-coldest Orange Bowl ever, next to the Georgia Tech-Iowa game in 2010 that started at 49 and felt like the upper 30s.
ARLINGTON, Texas — Texas coach Steve Sarkisian said Thursday that quarterback Quinn Ewers, with the emergence of name, image and likeness and the transfer portal, has become the face of this “new era of college football.”
Ewers initially committed to Texas, but he then opted to skip his senior year of high school and reclassify to the 2021 recruiting class before enrolling a year early and joining Ohio State during preseason practice.
Still the nation’s No. 1 ranked overall prospect, Ewers landed one of the first marquee NIL deals worth $1.4 million.
Ewers, who lasted one season with the Buckeyes before transferring to Texas, will square off against Ohio State on Friday night in the Goodyear Cotton Bowl with a trip to the College Football Playoff national championship on the line.
“It’s not been an easy journey for him,” Sarkisian said Thursday. “There’s been ups, there’s been downs, there’s been injuries, there’s been great moments, there’s been tough moments. … But at the end of the day, he’s always stayed true to who he is. The guy’s been a steady sea for us.”
Ewers has been making college football headlines since Ohio State offered him a scholarship when he was just in middle school. This week, Buckeyes coach Ryan Day recalled meeting Ewers for the first time when he was an eighth-grader visiting a Buckeyes football camp.
“He was a boy at the time really, who just had a tremendous release,” Day recalled. “And I remember grabbing him and grabbing his dad and said, ‘Man, you got a bright future ahead of you. I don’t know if this is good or bad, but we’re going to offer you a scholarship to Ohio State.'”
C.J. Stroud, who has since led the Houston Texans to the NFL playoffs, emerged as a star quarterback for the Buckeyes then, prompting Ewers to transfer to Texas.
“Boy, it was strange how it all shook out,” Day said. “He decided he really wanted to play. And it was disappointing for us, but we certainly understood. From afar I’ve watched him. He’s a really good player. He comes from a great family, and he’s had a great career at Texas and a lot of people here still have good relationships with him and think the world of him.”
At Texas, Ewers has started in 27 wins and led the Longhorns to back-to-back playoff appearances. This season, he has thrown for 3,189 yards and 29 touchdowns with 11 interceptions.
Ewers noted that the “coolest part” of the NIL era is being able to provide for his parents. He has even hired his mom, making her CFO of his finances while giving her a salary.
“Which is nice just because all the effort and work they put into me growing up,” he said. “I mean, when we were living in South Texas, they both quit their jobs and moved up to Southlake [to support Ewers’ budding athletic career].”
Whatever happens in the playoff — whether it be a loss Friday or a national championship victory against the winner of Notre Dame–Penn State on Jan. 20 — Ewers’ career at Texas figures to be coming to a close.
Though Ewers still has one season of eligibility remaining, blue-chip quarterback prospect Arch Manning appears primed to finally take over in Austin next season.
Manning, the nephew of NFL quarterback greats Peyton and Eli Manning, who could become the No. 1 overall prospect for the 2026 NFL draft, has backed up Ewers for two seasons waiting for his opportunity. Sarkisian even momentarily benched Ewers in favor of Manning during Texas’ 30-15 loss to Georgia on Oct. 19.
Still, Ewers figures to have options.
ESPN football analyst Mel Kiper Jr. ranks him as the No. 6 quarterback prospect eligible for the upcoming draft. Rumors have also emerged recently that Ewers could put off the NFL for another year and transfer to a third school for millions more in NIL money.
Amid those distractions, Ewers has thrived in the playoff bouncing back from oblique and ankle injuries from earlier in the year to complete 69% of his passes with four touchdowns in Texas’ two victories.
In the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl quarterfinal, Ewers tossed 29- and 25-yard touchdown passes in the overtimes, lifting Texas to the 39-31 win over Arizona State.
“I’ve just been proud of him,” Sarkisian said, “because he’s found a source for him that has been a motivating factor, where he can play free and play loose and play confident.”
Ewers added that, whatever the future holds, even contemplating it now would be “selfish,” with a national title still in reach for him and the Longhorns.
“I owe my teammates the best version of me right now,” he said. “I can’t be looking forward or I’ll trip on the rock that’s sitting right in front of me. I’ve got to be locked in on what’s right here.”
Jake Trotter covers college football for ESPN. He joined ESPN in 2011. Before that, he worked at The Oklahoman, Austin American-Statesman and Middletown (Ohio) Journal newspapers. You can follow him @Jake_Trotter.
Jan 9, 2025, 02:44 PM ET
ARLINGTON, Texas — Texas starting right tackle Cameron Williams will return for the College Football Playoff semifinal against Ohio State on Friday, Longhorns coach Steve Sarkisian said Thursday.
Williams suffered a right knee sprain in the playoff opener against Clemson. The injury forced him to miss Texas’ quarterfinal overtime victory over Arizona State.
A junior, Williams has played in 37 games in his career with 16 starts for the Longhorns. Williams is rated as the No. 28 overall prospect and fifth offensive tackle in ESPN’s NFL draft rankings.
