Meme After Meme Shows Jayden Daniels Made One of the Dumbest P.R. Fumbles in Sports History
Reason · RC · trust 31/100
(Photo: Kevin Langley/Icon Sportswire EHB/Kevin Langley/Icon Sportswire/Newscom) Hello and welcome to another edition of Free Agent ! This week, it's time to get a life ( or don't? ).
We've got a full newsletter this week, starting with the funniest thing to happen in sports this week—not Jayden Daniels' letter to LSU, but the reaction to it. Then I'll play jury and deliver a verdict on a couple of other major sports scandals involving Kawhi Leonard and Shohei Ohtani (both, coincidentally, Los Angeles sports stars). All rise!
Has any famous athlete ever had such an unnecessary public relations fumble as Jayden Daniels' demand that LSU stop using his name, image, and likeness (NIL)?
The Commanders quarterback is getting relentlessly mocked online by almost everyone —not just random people online, but even professional teams in other leagues. Examples if you click below:
— Dan Steinberg (@dcsportsbog) August 15, 2026
Daniels was apparently so bitter at LSU assigning his no. 5 jersey to sophomore cornerback D.J. Pickett that Daniels sent a cease-and-desist letter (on August 5, naturally, but reported on by ESPN a week later ) telling the school to stop using his NIL. But, in a textbook example of the Streisand effect, now everyone is talking about him and how silly this demand is.
Even if Daniels' NIL contract expired long ago , his demand that no. 5 be retired reeks of entitlement. Especially on the collegiate level, football numbers don't get retired often because there are a gazillion people on the roster. While he did win the Heisman in his senior year, the team was just 9–3 in both of his LSU regular seasons (a season ending in the ReliaQuest Bowl is not exactly the stuff of history).
The funny thing is, this is basically Daniels complaining about someone doing marketing for him for free. LSU used his likeness to promote themselves, yes, but also to promote their famous alumni. "If you like us," the marketing might imply, "why not go buy this very successful former player's NFL jersey?" In theory he could have asked for payment or a cut of proceeds in exchange for NIL rights, but now that ship seems to have sailed with the feud going as public as it has.
There are malevolent P.R. fumbles (drunk driving, domestic abuse, etc.) and ones the victim can eventually laugh along with ( butt fumble ), but Daniels found the sweet spot as a totally unnecessary loser in this fight. He has, of course, expressed no humor about the situation, issuing a statement that says, "I have been locked in on training camp and that's been my number one focus." (He could have at least used ChatGPT to come up with a lame no. 5 joke!)
I, for one, will cut my drinking tonight from five beers to four—out of respect for Jayden Daniels.
I'm very flummoxed by anyone who's looked into the Kawhi Leonard salary cap–circumvention scandal and still thinks Leonard and Los Angeles Clippers owner Steve Ballmer are innocent.
The latest news comes from ESPN , which reports that "the NBA has found no evidence showing LA Clippers owner Steve Ballmer funneled money through team sponsors to pay Kawhi Leonard in order to circumvent the salary cap, according to three people with knowledge of discussions between the two sides in recent days."
The NBA and I apparently have different interpretations of what "evidence" is.
The smoking gun in this case is an endorsement deal Leonard signed with Aspiration, an eco-conscious banking company that paid Leonard a combined $48 million. Seven months before that deal, Ballmer invested $50 million in Aspiration (on top of millions he had already invested). And, to my absolute bewilderment, Leonard's endorsement deal didn't actually require him to do anything to promote Aspiration. Leonard also had a no-show endorsement deal with Daktronics, a Clippers sponsor who made the massive scoreboard at the team's arena.
What is the point of a marketing deal that doesn't involve any marketing?
The NBA's likely argument (though they say ESPN's report has "numerous and significant inaccuracies" and their investigation into the situation is ongoing) seems to be that Leonard and Ballmer did nothing wrong, but that the team's employees may have broken salary cap rules by introducing Leonard to team sponsors (who, the NBA seems to think, made useless no-show endorsement deals because they like losing money?).
If the NBA found that Leonard indeed had these no-show endorsement deals but that Ballmer and Leonard (and his agent, his uncle Dennis Robertson) did nothing wrong, then it needs to tighten up its salary cap rules. They would be far too easy to game, especially now that team owners, players, and sponsors see what they're allowed to do without reporting anything to the league.
As I wrote back when the scandal first began , "I'd bring down the hammer if I were the NBA." Instead, the NBA is apparently negotiating with Ballmer for how to resolve the investigation. Weird!
I am confused by some of Leonard and Ballmer's defenders. Some of the defenders seem to be conservatives who would prefer that journalist Pablo Torre have gotten all of this wrong. I don't share Torre's politics—at least as far as I can tell from him having socialist Zohran Mamdani and the worst antitrust enforcer this century , Lina Khan, on his podcast . But if you want to judge this situation based on politics, let it not be forgotten that Ballmer donates millions to Democrats and liberal causes, and that Aspiration was founded by Democrats, one of whom is heading to prison (Leonard, for what it's worth, seems to keep his politics quiet).
If anything, Torre deserves credit for being willing to go after these progressives.
Many a jealous baseball fan would love to see Shohei Ohtani's honorable and clean reputation turned to dust by smoking-gun proof that he bet on baseball while his interpreter, Ippei Mizuhara, took the fall. But thanks to a thorough investigation by ESPN's Tisha Thompson, plus federal prosecutors,…
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