The star power of University of Colorado at Boulder quarterback Shedeur Sanders was evident when he showed up at a pop-up event at University Hill in Colorado on April 27. He sold his clothing brand there worth almost $15,000, Legendary SS2.

Deion Sanders’ son arrived at the $100,000 Tesla Cyberbeast event to a waiting crowd able to spend time with him and buy merchandise from his clothing line. He was scheduled to be at Peckish, a chicken wing restaurant, for 3 hours, and a few fans waited an hour for him to indicate up. He spent over 90 minutes there.

“The one thing he understands is he needs to connect with people,” said Sanders’ business partner, Bam Hogue. “He has to deal with people. He doesn’t just deal with social media. It’s about meeting people in real life and getting to know your followers.”

On3 reported that Shedder’s NIL (name, image and likeness) valuation is $4.6 million, making him the No. 1 amongst college athletes. He also has 1.8 million followers on Instagram.

At the pop-up, fans could purchase $40 T-shirts ($60 for long sleeves), $80 hoodies and soccer jerseys, $40 trucker hats and $10 wristbands, amongst other items. Hogue mentioned that Shedeur has a licensing agreement with the University of Colorado Boulder. By using the varsity’s logo, they must pay about 12% royalties on all the pieces they sell.

The moment wasn’t lost as cameramen filmed the event and fans were asked to sign releases for perhaps a third season of the series to seem on Amazon Prime video.

More pop-ups are planned as Shedeur prepares for his final collegiate season. If he continues to play at the extent he has shown over the previous couple of seasons, he will probably be chosen in the primary round of the NFL draft in 2025.

I used to be born and raised on the South Side of Chicago and was a Chicago Bears fan until I used to be 18. Everything modified after I was 19. Not only did I resign the Bears, I renounced the fandom altogether and decided to grow to be a hired sports journalist with no emotional ties.

More on this later.

However, my younger brother Girard kept his faith and stays a loyal fan of Chicago sports teams, especially the Chicago Bears. He is a die-hard fan, and like many Bears fans, my brother has been over the moon since April 25, when the Bears signed quarterback Caleb Williams, a player some call the messiah. Fans are highly hopeful that 22-year-old Williams will lead the team from frustration to stardom.

“I feel like this is a new time for the Bears,” my brother told me on Sunday morning from his home in Germany, where he has lived and worked since 1989 as an opera singer. “I think there are a lot of positive things happening for the Bears.”

Girard and I actually have been talking about the Bears for a really very long time. Every Monday during the season, my brother laments lost leads, late-game losses, and surprising victories. For the past two seasons, talk has focused on Justin Fields, the recently departed quarterback who was drafted by the previous Bears regime in 2021. In March, after months of speculation, the Bears traded Fields to Pittsburgh, where he’ll compete with Russell Wilson for the starting title work.

My brother believes Fields is in a significantly better situation in Pittsburgh, and Williams – due to changes in the Bears front office and training staff – is in a significantly better situation in Chicago than Fields in 2021.

He emphasized that in 2017 the so-called brain trust Bears passed on quarterback Patrick Mahomes to draft Mitchell Trubisky.

“If Mahomes had come to Chicago back then instead of Trubisky, I don’t think we would have ever heard of Mahomes,” he said.

My brother, ever the optimist, believed in Fields. I used to be an agnostic, but I did throw some shade at the young quarterback because I enjoyed watching a Bears fan’s frustration after yet one more quarterback failure. “Justin Fields is playing on a much better team in Pittsburgh now than when he came to Chicago, and Caleb Williams will be in a much better situation than Fields,” he said.

It is true that the Bears have not had a terrific quarterback since Sid Luckman, who played for the Bears from 1939-1950 and led the team to 4 NFL titles from 1940-1946. Since then, there was a parade of quarterbacks, some higher than others, although only two have led the Bears to the Super Bowl.

In 1985, the Bears won the championship under Jim McMahon, who wasn’t stiff, but handed it over to Walter Payton, one in every of the best running backs in NFL history. Those 1985 Bears also had what some say was the best defense in NFL history.

“Jay Cutler was the last talented Bears quarterback,” Girard said. Cutler played for the Bears from 2009-2016. He leads the franchise in passing yards, passing yards, touchdowns, attempts and completions, but has no championships. Not close.

“He had a really good set of receivers,” Girard jogged my memory. “He’s the last successful Bear quarterback.”

Rex Grossman was the starting quarterback when the Bears reached the Super Bowl in the 2006 season and lost to the Indianapolis Colts. The game was notable since it was the first time two Black coaches – Tony Dungy of the Colts and Lovie Smith of the Bears – faced one another in the Super Bowl.

Grossman barely talks about the Bears’ great quarterbacks.

“McMahon had charisma, swagger and several division titles,” my brother said. – He may not have been a terrific quarterback, but he did his job.

My brother believes McMahon was the last Bears quarterback “to have the mystique and aura of winning.”

That is, until Williams.

Williams involves the party with credentials and glitter. He is a Heisman Trophy winner and an NIL-era quarterback who decides the fate of the team himself. At least it does for now. Williams spoke to the media at the NFL game but didn’t practice, work out or take part in the dog-and-pony show for the 32 NFL teams.

“I’m not being romantic and I’m not picking the Bears for the Super Bowl, but I just think it’s a good situation,” Girard said.

Beyond Williams, there is a deeper story about fandom and attachment. There is a spirit of hope that enables fans like my brother to make an emotional investment of their teams.

I withdrew from investing, but there was a time after I cared about it.

I used to be 13 years old on December 29, 1963, when the Chicago Bears defeated the New York Giants to win the NFL championship. This was a much-needed healing tonic for the Rhoden family. My mother died of breast cancer in August 1963. Her death ripped an enormous hole in our family and left my father a 44-year-old widower with a 15-year-old daughter and a 12-year-old son (me) and my 7-year-old little brother.

The Bears’ 1963 championship was a welcome distraction.

Girard doesn’t remember much about the Bears’ championship – he celebrated his eighth birthday five days earlier. He would must wait, wait and wait. And wait until he did, never losing faith.

The Bears won the Super Bowl in 1985. Girard lived in San Francisco, doing what singers do, working on his craft and waiting for a break. By 1985, I had long since fallen off the fan train.

I bounced back for good in the tumultuous yr of 1968. The assassination of activist Martin Luther King Jr., the civil rights protest, the Black Power movement, and the Vietnam War made sports fandom appear to be an opiate, a distraction. Deeper evaluation by journalists revealed that many skilled and college sports teams were guilty of racism. In 1968, Gale Sayers, the Bears’ great young running back, blew out his knee. Athletes were pieces of meat, treated like cattle by team owners who had an iron fist over the players. This is a degree that one in every of my favorite players, center fielder Curt Flood, made when he accepted MLB’s reserve clause.

Who had time to grow to be a fan?

Now I root for issues and individuals. I care about Bears general manager Ryan Poles succeeding because I’m old-fashioned enough to imagine that when one black man does well, the community advantages. Poles is a former player whose job is to make the Bears competitive.

As fans, Girard and Chicago Bears Nation encourage Poles because they need the Bears to be relevant and competitive. “My hope is not just for Caleb Williams, but also for the general manager and what he has been able to accomplish,” Girard said.

As a hired sports author, I used to be only excited by the stories I wrote, the individuals who read them, the athletes and the issues I wrote about – no loyalty to the team. The downside to being a hired sports author is that sometimes I do not appreciate how much the people we call fans care. My brother is very concerned about this. “When I was a kid, when the Bears lost, I just had a bad day,” he said. “It doesn’t happen anymore, but I just love rooting for them and I enjoy the struggles they went through – constantly losing to Green Bay.”

In 1989, he moved permanently to Germany, starting his opera profession. His devotion to the Bears has never waned and has only grown stronger.

“Being a Chicago Bears fan has strengthened my connection to the place I grew up in,” he said. “It’s something you can keep alive at least once a week during football season.”

After a Super Bowl appearance in 2007, the Bears made the playoffs once in 11 years. Bears fans like my brother have had one disappointment after one other with a string of quarterbacks, some good, others higher than adequate: Kyle Orton, Cutler. The Bears traded for Trubisky in 2017 and chosen Fields in 2021.

Bears fans know this story all too well. I mention it in moments of wonder, only to ask why it is going to be different this time.

“We learned a number of things from Justin Fields. We learned that you could’t herald a brand new man and expect him to be the messiah,” Girard said. “You have to have a really solid foundation. We don’t expect him to do it alone.”

Fans of the movement in hope. They work this manner: when it rains, they see the sun, when it is sunny, they see the monsoon.

Now the Bears are telling fans they finally have their guy. Williams is the franchise’s newest dream salesperson. He can be the one to steer frustrated Bears fans to the promised land. Williams is the best potential point guard they’ve drafted in franchise history.

I remind my brother that the Bears have finished in the bottom half of the NFL in scoring in 25 of the last 31 seasons. Girard jogs my memory that last season, the Poles received winger DJ Moore from the Carolina Panthers, who in March exchanged for Pro Bowl winger Keenan Allen. On April 25, the Bears took over Washington winger Rome Odunze with the ninth pick in the draft.

The only thing I can say to my brother is what I at all times say: “Keep the faith.”

He at all times does it.

The push to bring HBCU players into the NFL, launched publicly by former Jackson State head football coach Deion Sanders, was met with a setback as no HBCU players were drafted this yr, as in 2021.

This is despite the creation of recent initiatives such as the NFL-backed HBCU Legacy Bowl and HBCU Combine in 2021 and 2022.

Four HBCU players are reported to have been recruited in 2022, and last yr the only player drafted by the New England Patriots was Jackson State cornerback Isaiah Bolden, chosen by the New England Patriots in the late seventh round. Two HBCU players, Virginia State linebacker Willie Reed and Howard University offensive tackle Anim Dankwah they were expected be the HBCU players more than likely to be drafted.

But as The Athletic reported in 2023, the NFL is a business, and team executives are reluctant to make use of draft picks, even in late rounds, on players they consider cannot advance to the next level.

Reporter Jim Trotter spoke with six NFL general managers made up of a variety of demographics, including race, team status and age. Everyone agreed that the level of competition in the Football Championships (FCS) subdivision cannot compete with the Football Bowl subdivision. That matters greater than the success of HBCU players.

“I don’t think they’re outright prejudiced; rather, HBCUs are not a priority,” Arnold said. “There has long been a belief that if you can play, they will find you — and that still remains true,” Orlando Arnold, an Alabama State graduate and licensed agent who represented 4 HBCUs clients, told The Athletic. “But at an HBCU, there’s a lot about player visibility. Does he have statistics? Does it have any measurements etc.? Do people answerable for cooperation with schools actively cooperate with scouts and evaluators and inform them about the player? Ultimately, especially with the transfer portal, we’re not getting as many NFL-caliber players as we used to.

Trotter also indicated that he believed that fight in the NFL for equal treatment of black employees is true, but creating a narrative that the NFL is taking revenge against HBCU players does a disservice to this credible fight.

Trotter’s contract with NFL Media was reportedly not renewed after he pointedly asked NFL commissioner Roger Goodell if he planned to deal with the lack of black media representatives. In response, Trotter filed a wrongful termination lawsuit against the league.