Miles and miles ahead

This story was originally published by CSN Chicago.

Miles Boykin had been dreading this moment.

Two weeks after celebrating his 15th birthday, the lanky wide receiver was thrust into the Providence high school football spotlight. Though not uncommon for a prestigious program to promote its top freshmen to varsity for the postseason, there was nothing ordinary about the 6-foot-4 athlete widely considered the future of a school with nine state titles. Only injuries had kept the Tinley Park, Ill., native from being called up full-time to varsity in the regular season, and head coach Mark Coglianese made it clear to Miles he wasn’t simply there to run prep team routes. Rather, offensive coordinator Bill Green planned on implementing Miles, a few months removed from his eighth grade graduation, if the situation necessitated it against a Wheaton Warrenville South team led by Northwestern-bound Dan Vitale.

For three quarters Miles nervously paced the Providence sideline with freshman quarterback Justin Hunniford, fearing a poorly-run route or dropped pass could mean the difference between victory and the end of the season for a senior group he had called teammates for less than a week.

Late in the fourth quarter, however, with the Celtics trailing by two scores but threatening deep in Tigers territory, Miles heard his coach call for him.

As Miles left the sideline and headed toward the huddle, he knew his time had arrived.

Slot Right, Cup Cowboy, Y-Go.

Boykin locked eyes for a brief moment with All-American senior tackle Ryan Ward, giving the apprehensive freshman a sense of comfort as quarterback Chris Salazar repeated the play call Miles had practiced all week yet hoped not to hear.

“OK,” he thought to himself, suddenly feeling a surge of confidence. “Let’s do this.”

[nbcsports_mpx url=http://vplayer.nbcsports.com/p/VHZQDC/chicago/select/B7ccvO4RRV8Z]

Lined up to the right at tight end, he stumbled out of his route but managed to get a step down the seam on trailing safety Mike Shelton. Salazar saw him and lofted a pass that appeared too far in front of the sprinting freshman. As the pass floated toward the 5-yard line, Miles lunged forward and corralled the ball with one hand, tumbling to the ground at the 1-yard line. Providence scored on the next play to pull within a score.

Although the Celtics came up short in that game – Wheaton Warrenville South finished as the runner-up in 7A – that play alone was enough for Coglianese, who first heard about Miles when the freshman was in fifth grade, to recognize that the Celtics’ future was in good hands.

“Right there we knew,” Coglianese recalls, “he was definitely going to be a special player.”

* * *

Mark Coglianese was in utter disbelief.

A former collegiate defensive back, he expected his secondary to be an integral part of the Celtics’ 2012 season. With four eventual college-bound athletes, including Iowa’s Kevin Ward, in the defensive backfield, opposing offenses weren’t expected to have much success through the air against Providence. But with each passing practice a certain sophomore wide receiver was leaving those talented defensive backs in his wake. Miles had flashed his potential as a freshman in that playoff game, but this was different.

“Every time he’d run a deep route he would just run by our defensive backs,” Coglianese says laughing. “I’m thinking, ‘Are we being nice to him? Are we that slow on defense?’ Because he constantly made us look bad, and I couldn’t understand it. Our defense was pretty good. He made us look bad.”

As it turns out, those practice repetitions were more about Miles’ talents and less about the secondary. Bumps and bruises kept him from being a large contributor on the varsity team, but Miles still managed 250 yards and four touchdowns in a run-heavy offense built around running back-turned-quarterback Dominic Lagone. The Providence coaching staff had toyed with the idea that year of playing Miles at quarterback, with the idea of the team’s best playmaker having the ball in his hands every year making too much sense. Ultimately they opted against that, leaving Miles at wide receiver to assist in his long-term objective. The move paid off handsomely for both Miles and the Celtics, who went 7-2 in the regular season and advanced to the quarterfinals of the 7A state playoffs.

Staying at wide receiver also allowed Miles to transform that potential into stardom as a junior. He began attending college camps, joined Core 6 Athletes training and became a regular in the weight room with his personal strength and conditioning coach Steve Purvin, who admitted Miles resembled a “Saint Bernard puppy” when he arrived for the first day of workouts.

“He’s got these big old hands, he’s got these big old feet, he’s got this big old lanky frame,” Purvin recollects. “If this guy has any athletic ability whatsoever, wow, do we have a pretty good player.”

Miles turned a corner as a junior, finishing the Celtics’ 7-5 season with 51 receptions for 730 yards and 14 touchdowns. But when the Celtics bowed out of the 2013 playoffs, a 27-26 loss in the final minute to East St. Louis, he realized something.

Having been a part of the varsity football and basketball teams for three seasons already, he had seen three different senior classes fall short of their ultimate goal of winning a state championship in both sports. He had watched tears fall, seen garbage bags filled as seniors cleaned out their lockers, and looked on as his devastated teammates embraced for the last time, having come up empty in their quest for greatness.

“He went through it for three years straight,” says his brother George III. “That was his inspiration to not have it happen to him.”

The next season a daunting schedule that eventually touted seven playoff-bound teams tempered expectations, even for a 2014 Celtics team returning two Division I receivers in Miles and Iowa-bound Nate Vejvoda, a talented sophomore running back in Richie Warfield and Hunniford returning as the team’s starting quarterback.

But Boykin and the Celtics quickly saw the fruits of their offseason labor yield positive results, including wins over three of the state’s most tradition-rich football programs: 21-10 over Joliet Catholic on Opening Night. 33-14 over Mount Carmel in Week 3. 41-27 over St. Rita two weeks later.

A Week 6 hiccup at Loyola, where a last-second field goal resulted in a three-point loss, acted as a reality check. But Miles and the Celtics responded with three straight wins to finish the regular season at 8-1, earning the program’s first conference championship in the CCL Blue, one of the nation’s toughest football conferences.

A dream regular season didn’t come without its cost, though. In the conference championship game against Brother Rice in Week 9, Miles suffered a fracture and multiple torn muscles in his left elbow. After sitting out two games, including a Round 1 win over Quincy, he returned against St. Rita – he borrowed a friend’s hockey elbow pad for extra protection – and dislocated his left pinky finger while completing a reception. It resulted in a partially chipped bone and torn ligaments, forcing doctors to insert a pin that kept him out of the Celtics’ quarterfinals win over Wheaton Warrenville South.

Around the clock treatment from his mother, as well as more equipment adjustments – Miles manipulated his “lucky glove” to allow the pin, which stuck out of his finger, room to maneuver – permitted him to get back on the field for a rematch with Mount Carmel in the semifinals. It was then that the legend grew again. Miles, with his left elbow padded up and his left hand wrapped up, caught seven passes for 121 yards and a score and threw a touchdown, leading Providence back to the state championship game, 48 minutes from his lifelong goal.

“At that point,” Miles remembers of his injuries,” it was championship or bust.”

It’s not cocky, but rather a true strategical assessment, that Miles admits taking it as “disrespect at this point” when he’s not double-teamed. Undefeated Cary-Grove, Providence’s opponent in the 8A state title game, agreed with the evaluation. Shadowing Miles with their top cornerback and safety, who at times lined up on the numbers, the Trojans limited Providence’s All-American wideout to a pair of receptions for 8 yards in the opening half. It paid off, too, as they led 14-10 with two quarters remaining in the season.

But 17 years of preparation, an elbow brace, a Styrofoam-wrapped pinky finger and a school’s hopes and dreams weren’t going to waste because of an opponent’s defensive strategy.

Late in the third quarter, Boykin showed why it wouldn’t be enough, either.

For the first time all night, he signaled to Hunniford for a sluggo route, dipping inside cornerback Zach McQuade before turning upfield toward the sideline. A perfectly thrown ball from Hunniford resulted in a 38-yard reception to break the game open. Providence scored later in the drive, with Warfield adding two of his four scores after halftime to lead the Celtics to a 31-28 victory, the Celtics’ 10th state title. The “Quest For X,” the team’s mantra at the start of the year, was complete.

In previous years Miles would watch each state championship game. Except one. Whichever class the Celtics had been placed in and eventually eliminated from, he turned off the television when that game aired, knowing he and the Celtics were talented enough to beat the eventual champion. He had always imagined what it would be like, to stand on a podium hoisting a state championship trophy for his teammates, family, coaches and school.

“You just dream about it, and words can’t describe what it actually feels like,” he reminisces. “I just remember being happy in that moment, and all the hard work that it took to get to that moment is what made me happy. Not actually winning it, but all the hard work that it took to get to that moment.

“We did it for ourselves of course, but doing it for the program and everyone around the program, that was huge.”

* * *

Before Miles Boykin was rewriting the Providence football record book, winning a state title and filling moving boxes with recruiting letters, he was simply George’s little brother.

Growing up two years apart with an equally strong enthusiasm for sports, the pair quickly became both each other’s favorite teammate and fiercest rival. Soon after their grandparents introduced them to the movie “Space Jam” and bought them a Little Tykes hoop, the duo was off and running. Basketball became a passion, with their mother, Felicia, acting as the PA announcer – complete with flickering lights, introductions and play-by-play – for 4-year-old George and 2-year-old Miles. They eventually outgrew the plastic basketball hoop and graduated to the driveway, with the elder George tallying an undefeated record against the younger, though certainly not smaller, Miles.

And when they had finally lowered the rim to dunk on one too many times – “George breaks everything,” Miles said, laughing, with George later confirming – they moved to the local community center for drills with their father, George Jr., and park district teams that produced the first of what would become countless trophies sprinkled throughout the house.

Miles wanted nothing more than to be like his older brother, and George was happy to oblige. Not only because the pair became best friends through their common bond with sports but also because Miles was keeping up. George went as far as lobbying his eighth-grade basketball coach to allow Miles, then a sixth grader, to play on their team. Coach said no, yet a year later Miles moved up, and in eighth grade dunked for the first time.

“George was always taught to go and set the example,” their father says. “Miles would blaze the example.”

Nowhere was that made clearer than when it came time to pick a high school. Miles was set on attending Marist “all the way,” with Brother Rice also piquing his interest as multiple schools in the area courted the young rising star, mostly for basketball. But the recruiting pitches were over as soon as Felicia gave her input. She made it clear that as long as George was around, Miles would be following in his footsteps. That wouldn’t change. Once George graduated in two years, she said, Miles was free to choose whichever school he preferred. George had been the guiding light for Miles growing up, and he too was confident Providence was the right decision for his younger brother.

It became an important decision for George, too. Early in his junior year he suffered a concussion that ended his season abruptly. He played out the basketball season that winter before a doctor ruled that lingering effects from the injury would keep him out of all contact sports, including football and a promising soccer career.

He remained a focal part of the football team as a senior, providing leadership and acting as a de-facto coach for the tight ends. He felt close with the team, especially with his little brother having moved up full-time to varsity. But nothing could fill the void of strapping on the pads and donning his forest green Providence jersey one last time, so he did the next best thing.

He willed his No. 81 jersey to Miles.

By that time Miles, a sophomore, had grown to love Detroit Lions wide receiver Calvin Johnson, also No. 81 – the stark similarities in their builds and style at wide receiver helped – but understood that jersey preference was reserved for the seniors. But with George sidelined, he made the decision to have his younger brother, who had worn No. 81 as a freshman, carry on the legacy he had started by wearing his number. Miles proudly accepted.

For years it had been George carrying Miles. Now it was time for Miles to carry George.

“It was all for him. Every time I step on the field I’m always thinking of him, because he’s thinking of me,” an emotional Miles admits. “He’s always wanted me to win, always wanted me to succeed, never been jealous of me. He’s been the greatest thing that’s happened to me.”

Miles’ biggest fan hasn’t relinquished his title. Not by a long shot. George attended Quincy University during Miles’ junior year and hosted his younger brother when the Celtics drew a road contest against Quincy High School in the second round of the state playoffs. Miles caught a touchdown and threw another in the 55-27 victory and, as George remembers, “the whole town praised his name the next week.”

George transferred to local Lewis University as a sophomore to focus on becoming a pilot, and it also put him 20 minutes away from Providence. He attended all 14 of the Celtics’ games, with his brother honoring him every step of the way wearing No. 81. It’s the same number Miles will wear at Notre Dame.

Many will think of Heisman Trophy winner and NFL Hall of Famer Tim Brown when they see No. 81 run through the tunnel at Notre Dame Stadium on Saturdays. But as Miles jogs on to the field, living out his dream, he’ll think of George.

“It makes me really feel like I did my work. Even though I may not have thought I was the best brother, it makes me feel like I was,” George reflects. “It’s not hard growing up when you have a little brother that’s always there with you.”

* * *

No one close to Miles Boykin thought he would pick Notre Dame.

His mother was convinced Michigan State had wrapped up the commitment late in the process. His head coach thought Missouri had the right recruiting class to earn Miles’ commitment, while Illinois was also picking up steam on his list. His older brother thought Michigan could have been the choice, while Florida also figured to be a destination. Most Providence assistants thought Miles would look somewhere in the Big Ten.

“I was shocked when he said Notre Dame,” his father remembers, speaking for just about everyone closest to the highly sought-after recruit.

Miles’ decision to attend Notre Dame should have come as a surprise for one reason. He hated the Irish growing up. The majority of students at Providence Catholic were fans of the Irish, and Miles couldn’t stand it. So when Brian Kelly and the coaching staff began sending him letters, he brushed them off. He tossed them in one of three giant moving boxes that included letters from just about every major program, and went on with his recruitment. When then-offensive coordinator Chuck Martin first showed up at Providence, Miles wasn’t there because junior appreciation day allowed him to leave school early, which he did.

Notre Dame finally broke through when current offensive coordinator Mike Denbrock became Miles’ lead recruiter, convincing the talented junior to attend a game in South Bend.

“If you don’t like it, fine,” Miles remembers Denbrock telling him. “But at least we tried.”

Accompanied by his mother and quarterback (and Notre Dame die-hard) Hunniford, Miles got his first real taste of Irish football. The Golden Dome. 81,000-seat Notre Dame Stadium. Touchdown Jesus. The majestic 1,250-acre campus. Despite a snowstorm and frigid temperatures in the 20s, Miles quietly soaked it all in and watched the Irish defeat BYU with a brand new perspective.

“I loved it,” he recalls of his first visit.

Later that winter Miles attended a Notre Dame-North Carolina basketball game, stayed with wide receiver Chris Brown and got his first real look at the practice and training facilities; it was an important part of Miles’ recruitment – “I wanted to see the equipment all the time” – and cemented the Irish as one of his three finalists. It was about that time that the recruiting process forced Miles to grow up, a maturation process that helped him weed out other schools.

“Not every person is going to be 100 percent truthful to you, and you’re naive to think that if anybody does,” he says. “Around my junior year I started learning what was real and what’s not real. And at that point, that’s when you know you need to start cutting colleges down.”

After receiving 25 official offers he narrowed his list down to 10 schools. Of those 10, he visited Florida, Illinois, Michigan, Michigan State, Missouri, Notre Dame, Ole Miss and Wisconsin, while Oregon and Virginia Tech remained in the mix.

And each school had its pros. Michigan State had been the first school to contact Miles. Wisconsin had sent him his first real recruiting letter, a piece of mail he still remembers receiving. Illinois had been his first scholarship offer. Florida had impressed his mother most on their visit. His brother had been persistent on keeping Michigan alive as an option. Missouri had locked up one of the top quarterbacks in the 2015 class, Drew Lock. Joining Ole Miss and the incomparable SEC West seemed like a winning proposition for his NFL aspirations. The Oregon Ducks wowed him most when they visited Providence, and for a kid who loved equipment, well, the Ducks had that box checked.

Everyone close to Miles knew what those programs had to offer. But for Miles, each lacked the same thing: None were Notre Dame.

So in March 2014, when Kelly extended an official offer to Miles, it meant something more.

“That was the offer I was most excited about,” Miles says. “My mom cried in the car she was so happy for me, saying, ‘I know this is what you wanted.’ And at that point I knew it was going to come down to two schools: Notre Dame and Michigan State.”

He visited Notre Dame again in late March and once more in June, but what sold him most on the Irish was the trip to East Lansing he took two weeks later. The Spartans were his clear second choice, but he needed to place himself in a college setting that wasn’t Notre Dame to realize how much he appreciated the Irish and everything the university could offer him.

“The only real reason I took that (last) Michigan State visit was so I knew Notre Dame was the right place for me,” he admits. “And that’s what happened.”

It finally hit him as he and his mother drove home from Michigan State that early summer morning. He recalls with a smile his relationship with the players (“they’re just like me”), Denbrock’s enthusiasm (“he’s really what did it for me”) and Kelly’s embrace (“he accepted me, and that was the best part about it”) making South Bend the only place for him.

“I said, ‘Notre Dame? Miles, you didn’t like Notre Dame,'” Felicia remembers. “When we came back from the Michigan State he said, ‘I’m going to commit to Notre Dame.’ Do you want to take some time to think about that? And he said, ‘No, that’s what I want to do.'”

A shocking decision, his mother and father agree, but one that made too much sense for Miles.

* * *

One day after the 2014 8A playoff bracket was released, Miles Boykin received a peculiar Twitter mention.

A player from Quincy, the Celtics’ first-round opponent, wrote that he wanted an autograph from Boykin when the two teams squared off in six days.

It was yet another reminder that Boykin isn’t a typical 18-year-old kid. That much is true because of his 6-foot-4, 220-pound frame. His 38 1/2-inch vertical and his status as one of the country’s best high school wide receivers separates him, too. After Miles recorded a Providence-record five touchdowns in a Week 2 win over Minooka, Indians head coach Paul Forsythe sought him out after the handshake line and told him how special a player he was. The ever-humble receiver politely said thank you before Forsythe cut him off and repeated, “No, I really mean it.”

Football has become not just a passion for the Notre Dame freshman, but his life. His mother knows the correct way to receive a handoff, thanks in large part due to Miles carrying a football around the house 24/7. When his friends were hanging out on the weekend, Miles was attending Core 6 showcases, putting his talents on display for a national audience. When his classmates were attending parties, Miles was in the weight room working with Purvin on strength and conditioning routines Notre Dame had sent him to complete.

“When you’re an athlete and you have dreams such as mine you know that,” he says. “You know the sacrifices you have to make not being a normal kid. But that’s part of it. I wouldn’t trade it for the world. I know what I want to do and I know what my goals are. It just forces you to mature a lot quicker. I’m grateful for that.”

But at its core Miles is just a kid. He and fellow wide receiver Connor Creed ate hot dogs religiously before every game. He loves LeBron James, listens to Drake and plays Call of Duty. He retweets viral Vines on Twitter to his 4,000 followers, he still gets yelled at by his mom when he leaves the screen door open and ribs his father and brother, both lifelong Michigan football fans, about the 24-karat gold helmet he’ll be wearing on Saturdays.

But he has also grown up. And his parents have seen it firsthand. On recruiting trips, Felicia took a backseat during interviews and tours, allowing Miles to ask relevant questions and discern what was genuine interest from coaches and what was simply recruiting talk. She saw a maturing Miles in their car trips to college campuses, learning everything about her son what others had told her for years. Over the summer it was Miles coming to her with his weekly schedule, letting her know the dates he’d be working out and what books he needed to read for his upcoming classes in South Bend. His father marvels at Miles’ ability to listen, to be a “technician” with his game and still appreciate that he’s doing what he’s loved since first seeing Bugs Bunny and Michael Jordan on the big screen.

He does it,” Felicia says. “He’s responsible to know what he has to do to get to the next level.”

Ask him about Providence’s journey to their 10th state championship. You’ll never hear the word “I” or “me.” As he tearfully embraced his father in the aftermath of the victory over Cary-Grove he told him, “I can’t believe we done it.” Donning the No. 81 with a championship medal around his neck, like his brother had so desperately wanted to do before the concussion, Miles clutched George and told him, “We finally did it.”

“I don’t even want my name to be singled out,” he says. “I just want them to remember us a team.”

He won’t get his wish. Long after Miles completes his business degree from Notre Dame and perhaps plays on Sundays, Providence will remember it all. They’ll remember moving his fifth-grade football “B” team to the “A” team playoffs because he was so dominant. They’ll remember the team player who re-joined the varsity basketball team as a senior after doctors took the pin out of his finger, leading the Celtics to an unlikely conference championship. They’ll remember the All-American wide receiver earning the Chicago Tribune Preps Player of the Year award that put him in the same sentence as past winners Jabari Parker and Jahlil Okafor. They’ll remember the friendly face eager to share a smile and a hello with students he passed in the Providence Catholic hallways.

And he’ll remember them, too, long after his final walk past the trophy case he helped fill.

His journey is far from finished, and as his story shifts to South Bend he’s relishing the opportunity to add to his legacy. One more memory for those most important to remember him by.

“Those are the types of people they want to recruit, just winners,” he says. “I can definitely help add to the winning tradition (at Notre Dame), adding another championship.”

It’s a moment he’s no longer dreading.

Video produced by Scott Changnon.

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    Once more, with feeling

    NEW YORK — Again and again, over and over, they ask him how he FEELS. Well, this is the question to ask, isn’t it? The bus crawls through New York traffic and takes Jimmie Johnson from office building to office building. People wait inside. Kelly Live waits. Charlie Rose waits. USA Today … Mad Dog Radio … NFL Radio … TMZ. They wait for him on top of the Empire State Building. They wait for him outside the Time Life Building.

    How does it FEEL, Jimmie?

    How does it FEEL to come from nowhere to win your seventh NASCAR Sprint Cup championship, Jimmie? How does it FEEL to tie the two enduring legends of your sport, “The King,” Richard Petty and “The Intimidator,” Dale Earnhardt? How does it FEEL to be the best at what you do, to be inside a race car, rushing at the speed of chaos with 39 maniacs around you barely holding on? No, really, break it down for our audience, how does it feel to be you, Jimmie Johnson, championship race-car driver, part-time triathlete, millionaire philanthropist like Bruce Wayne or Tony Stark, loving husband, adoring father, everybody’s best friend and somehow, still, the nicest guy?

    How does it FEEL, Jimmie?

    “Insane,” he says. “It feels insane.”

    “Awesome,” he says. “It feels awesome.”

    “Wonderful,” he says.

    “Surreal,” he says.

    “Incredible,” he says.

    “I don’t know that I have the words,” he says.

    We’ve known each other a long time, Jimmie and I. We’ve talked about a lot of things through the years, about family and sharks, about food and dreams, faith and football, about kids and ice cream and how hard it is to not care when people boo.

    “Let me ask you something,” I say as the day crawls on, and he has been asked the question two or three dozen times, and his eyes begin to close because he’s worn out. “All these people keep asking you how you feel.”

    “Yeah,” he says. “Part of the job.”

    “I know,” I tell him. “But if you keep talking about how it feels, how do you keep anything for yourself?”

    He smiles at that and shrugs and looks out the window of the bus.

    * * *

    There is a giant hill near the small house where Johnson grew up. People tend to know he grew up around San Diego and so they might think about the sun and the beach, colorful sailboats and yachts. He gives off the impression of royalty. But that’s not the San Diego where he grew up. His town was called El Cajon. There are no yachts in El Cajon. His father operated heavy machinery. His mother drove a school bus. They made do. Jimmie would escape down that hill on his bicycle.

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    That hill — El Cajon mountain — is a road that seems to go straight down. Even in a car, it is a bit daunting. And for the young Jimmie Johnson it held all the secrets worth knowing. He would rush too fast down that hill, then faster, then faster still, until his parents would tell him to chill, and his friends would nervously call him crazy. Then he went faster again. At that speed, he found that he could feel everything. Fear. Breathlessness. Joy. Hope. Love. Pain. Oh, sure, there was always some pain. There was always another crash. Jimmie Johnson was the kid who showed up for just about every class photo wearing a cast or leaning on crutches.

    Well, he couldn’t help it. He needed that speed. He needed to race. There was something about being on the edge — barely in control and barely out of control — that called to him. He would do ANYTHING for that feeling because being on that edge was the thing that made him feel most alive. As the years went on, he realized that to get that edge, he needed to make connections. So he made connections. He realized that to get to that edge he needed to know people. So he met people — the Herzogs, the Chevy people, Jeff Gordon, Rick Hendrick, the people who could help him get where he so needed to go.

    He is just one of those people who cannot leave his fears alone. He needed to explore the fears, dance around them, poke at them if he can. It’s still true. Even after he made his name as a race-car driver and could do more or less anything he wanted, he still spent a vacation diving into the water so he could be thisclose to sharks. Why would a sane person do that?

    “Because I’m absolutely terrified of sharks,” he says, as if that explains it.

    * * *

    Richard Petty. Dale Earnhardt. Jimmie Johnson. It does boggle Johnson’s mind that he’s now in that company, officially and inarguably, one of NASCAR’s holy trinity to win seven championships. People can argue who is, in fact, the greatest of all time — and there will be those who believe it isn’t ANY of the three but instead is an Allison or a Gordon or a Richmond or someone like that. Johnson doesn’t care. He’s so happy to be in the discussion.

    Johnson never did race against Petty or Earnhardt, though he raced plenty against their sons. He did meet the legends. Well, he has met Richard Petty quite a few times, but he doesn’t really have any good stories about it. “What can you say about him that hasn’t been said a million times?” Johnson says. “He’s the King. He treats everyone with respect. He’s our greatest champion. He’s always been very nice to me, but he’s nice to everyone, you know? I don’t really know that I have more to add than that.”

    Johnson does have good stories, though, about the two times he met Dale Earnhardt.

    As part of Johnson’s effort to know people, he became friends with Ron Hornaday Jr., a four-time World Truck Series Champion, and a friend of Earnhardt’s. And one day, Hornaday sees Johnson and says, “Hey, you want to meet Earnhardt?” And of course Johnson says yes because Earnhardt was a legend by then. “People my age,” he says, “there was no one on earth cooler than Dale Earnhardt.”

    They walk in together, and Hornaday introduces Johnson. Earnhardt sizes up the kid; Johnson was 21 years old then. And then Earnhadt reaches for a little box and gives it to Johnson. “Here,” he says with no warning or explanation. Inside is a little pocket knife with Dale Earnhardt’s name on it. Johnson is overwhelmed.

    “OK,” Earnhardt says. “So what did you get me?”

    Johnson kind of stumbles around. “Um,” he says, “I didn’t know …”

    Earnhardt growls, “You know it’s YEARS of bad luck if you give somebody a knife and then don’t get a gift in return.”

    [nbcsports_mpx url=http://vplayer.nbcsports.com/p/BxmELC/nbcsports_embed/select/media/1Vbw8NF944aq?autoPlay=false]

    Johnson begins to turn red, “I mean …”

    Earnhardt goes on: “I don’t need your bad luck. I still haven’t won Daytona. I give you a knife and you don’t have anything for me, and now you’re telling me I have to walk around with your bad luck …”

    Johnson panics. He rushes outside and, using all the ingenuity he could muster up, gets a penny. He goes in and gives it to Earnhardt saying, “It’s a heads-up penny for good luck.”

    Earnhardt doesn’t say a word.

    “You know,” Johnson says now, almost 20 years later, “I wonder if he was messing with me.”

    * * *

    Did you see Johnson going crazy?  In the minutes after Johnson won that race at Homestead on Nov. 20, the one that clinched the seventh championship, he lost his mind. He danced. He jumped around. He hugged everyone and everything in his path. He screamed — screamed so loud and with such force that even days later he did not have his voice back.  He had won six championships before this one, and he celebrated those heartily, too. But this was different. This was unchained. This was Spinal Tap’s eleven.

    “I don’t even know who that guy was,” Johnson says as he looks at footage of himself going bananas.

    Shock, of course, had something to do with it. Johnson went into Sunday’s race needing to finish ahead of three drivers — Carl Edwards, Joey Logano and Kyle Busch — to win the seventh championship. And all race long, he could not beat any of the three. They all had better cars. They all had better track position. Johnson’s crew chief, Chad Knaus, had tinkered and gambled and even tried making a few rather desperate changes, but none of it mattered. Johnson just didn’t have enough car. Those three guys pulled away, and Johnson was left sitting in his car thinking of ways to be gracious when the inevitable loss happened. “I knew I wasn’t going to win,” he says. “I accepted it.”

    (All the while, his wife, Chandra, was a mess. Chandra is famous around the track for her relatively serene approach to watching Jimmie race. On Sunday, she admitted, she was in the fetal position).

    And then in the final 10 laps of the race, suddenly, a whole series of wacky things happened. Carl Edwards was in command of the championship when the caution flag came out. Poor Carl Edwards. He’s had a glorious NASCAR career, winning 28 races and more than $80 million in prize money, but something has always blocked him from being THE GUY. There was the time he tied Tony Stewart and lost the tiebreaker. There was the year he won nine races, including the last one, but fell short on points. And then there was this one, the time when he had the championship in his hand but a caution flag came out with 10 laps to go and it all went to hell.

    Edwards restarted on the front row, and he had Joey Logano behind him. Jimmie Johnson was behind Logano. And for the first time all day, Johnson thought: “Well, hey, maybe there’s a chance.”

    Logano, as is his style, made a bold move inside to try and beat Edwards on the restart — nobody in NASCAR restarts quite as aggressively and forcefully as Logano. He went so far inside that his car rolled over the painted area near the interior wall. And it was a winning move — his move would trap Edwards between cars, and there’s no escaping that spot. Edwards knew it, knew his race was over if he let Logano by, and so, in a desperate effort to block Logano, he swerved left. “I was a bit optimistic,” Edwards said ruefully afterward. He bumped Logano, and then lost control, leading to a fiery wreck that ended Edwards’ hopes and shut the race down for 30 minutes.

    “As soon as I got by that wreck,” Johnson said, “I thought, ‘Wait a minute. What’s happening here? I might actually win this.'”

    Well, that was certainly the thought in the Johnson camp, where Knaus was pumping his fist and Chandra was losing her mind and so on. During that 30-minute, red-flag delay, Johnson’s crew, his fans, and the many people around NASCAR hoping to see a bit of history were going out of their minds. It was going to happen! Jimmie Johnson! Seven championships! Impossible!

    And, inside the car, Johnson fell asleep

    “I guess I was calm,” he says, and even now he’s surprised.

    There was one more break to come Johnson’s way — he expected to be lined up in the third position, which would have been him on the inside lane with his championship competitor Kyle Busch on the outside. If there was one thing that was clear all day in Miami it was this: You did NOT want to be in the inside lane. That was the lane where Carl Edwards AND Joey Logano saw their dreams end. “You just can’t hold your speed on the inside at Miami,” Johnson says.

    But, NASCAR determined that Busch, not Johnson, should be in the third spot. Johnson broke free from Busch on the restart and took the lead.

    * * *

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    There’s an irony about NASCAR: It is the ultimate thrill ride — 200 mph on sheet metal and horsepower and all that’s left of your tires — but you don’t get to NASCAR and you don’t win championships through daredevil feats. You get to NASCAR through great racing, yes, but also by building relationships, by impressing sponsors, by pitching the Lowe’s-Budweiser-M&M’s-FedEx-Napa Parts-Chevrolet-Toyota-Ford car and by working within a team. You win championships by driving like the devil when your car is loose and seems to be on a sheet of black ice, yes, but also by understanding what you don’t know and trusting your crew to handle things. You win championships by controlling your car, but also by relinquishing control. It’s the shakiest of balances.

    And balance is what Johnson does better than anyone in the sport.

    So when everyone asks Johnson how he feels after the seventh championship, well, he tries his best, he uses the balanced words that come closest, but really, in a private moment, he will tell you: He doesn’t really know HOW he feels. It’s all too much to take in.

    “All my life,” he says, “I just wanted to race cars. It was never about the numbers. I didn’t want to win seven championships. I didn’t really want to win one championship. I mean, yeah, I wanted to win, but what I really wanted was to drive a race car.”

    Before this race, he said the thing he wanted was to feel like he did when he was a kid, to strip away all the money and all the fame and all the past glory and just feel that thing he used to stay up all night dreaming about, that thing that pushed him to go down El Cajon Mountain just a little bit faster than felt right.

    Did he?

    “When people ask me how I feel,” he says, “I tell them best I can. I want people to share in this feeling i have. … But I don’t tell them everything.”

    * * *

    The second time Johnson met Dale Earnhardt, well, it’s a much shorter story. Johnson was hanging around with some buddies at Earnhardt’s garage when they all saw The Intimidator’s car roll slowly by with its windows pulled up. Suddenly the car stopped, and it backed up, and the window came down.

    “Hey,” Earnhardt said to Johnson. “You work for me?”

    “No sir.”

    “Then get the hell out of here. I don’t need no lawsuits.”

    And the window rolled back up and Dale Earnhardt drove away.

    At the end of that magical race at Homestead, there was one final restart, and after that Johnson heard “Clear” from his spotter, meaning the race and that seventh championship was his. Then came the disbelief and the crazy dancing and screaming and joy and hugs from his wife and children and the greatest compliment a driver could ever get.

    “Jimmie,” Dale Earnhardt Jr. would say to his friend as he pulled Johnson close, “Dad would think you’re such a badass.”

    The fourth wheel

    MIAMI — Carl Edwards has to know that he’s sort of the odd duck in this year’s Chase. Here, you have Kyle Busch, defending champion, force of nature, superstar. There, you have Jimmie Johnson, six-time champion, legend of the sport.  And third, completing the triangle, you have Joey Logano, 26 years old, phenom trying to insert himself into the story, everybody’s favorite young villain, the future of NASCAR.

    And here is Carl Edwards, 37 years old, a former dirt-track driver who ground out 28 victories in an excellent 13-year career but has never quite crashed through, never won a championship, never quite broken out of the pack of those excellent and professional drivers who make up the heart of NASCAR. People who know him probably know him as the guy who does a backflip when he wins. That’s fun. But it isn’t exactly what he wants.

    When you look at a list of the drivers who won the most races without winning a championship, you see this:

    1. Junior Johnson, 50 wins

    2. Mark Martin, 40 wins

    3. Fireball Roberts, 33 wins

    4. Denny Hamlin, 29 wins

    5. Carl Edwards, 28 wins

    Edwards knows this, knows it better than anyone. He knows there’s a difference in how people look at you when you’ve won a championship — knows there might even be a difference in how you look at yourself.

    Watch: NASCAR Sprint Cup Championship (Sunday at 1:30 p.m. ET on NBC, NBCSports.com and NBC Sports App)

    “Winning a championship,” he says, “it just means that, you know, you go to bed Sunday night and know, hey, you did it. You beat the best in the world. And we’re the champions … at least until they start racing again. I guess that’s what it comes down to. That’s about the longest a win can last in this sport.”

    Edwards has had his share of championship heartbreak, beginning with his loss to Tony Stewart in 2011. The two were actually tied in points after an epic duel at Homestead, but the championship went to Stewart because he won more races than Edwards that year. NBCSN has shown that race this week, and Edwards admitted that he watched maybe 10 minutes of it. After that, he was so motivated he was ready to jump in a race car immediately.

    There were other close calls, but now, he’s back, and he will not pretend that it’s just another week. When someone asked all four drivers if they were going to try and treat this week differently from other weeks, the other three guys said, “No.” They talked about how you have to treat this race like any other, prepare the same way. Edwards had a different answer.

    “For me,” Edwards said, “I’m going to be honest, this week does feel different. I mean, yes, we do have to go do the same job, like these guys said. But for me, each moment, I almost have to pinch myself, like, ‘Hey, this is really it, we’re getting to do this.’ So this is more excitement for me personally.”

    “Would winning a championship change your self-perception?”

    “Well, yeah, it would be great. I think it would be great … you can print that. It would be great for a different reason for me at this point in my career, though. I’m starting to just realize how difficult this is.

    “As far as self-perception, probably like most race car drivers, I kind of have an ego problem already. So that could put me over the edge, honestly.”

    Edwards’ advantage could be the track. He has won the pole twice at Homestead and has won the race twice, finishing top five five times in his 12 starts. He just won at Texas, which is a similar track that uses a similar tire setup. “There’s not a better race track,” he says. “Statistically, this is as good as it gets for me.”

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    And his dirt-track background sets him up well too. The toughest part of competing in a winner-take-all race is that you have to find a way to win no matter what gets thrown your way. In other races throughout the season, you just do the best you can with what fate deals you. There is always more than one winner in a regular season NASCAR race. There’s the driver that takes the checkered flag, but there are also those who had to overcome numerous problems, mechanical issues, tire trouble, poor pit stops, whatever, and somehow finished seventh or 10th or something like that. Every week, you will hear drivers and crew chiefs say happily, “We got the most out of our car today.”

    But for the four drivers left in the Chase, that’s not really an option on Sunday. It’s all about winning.

    “Carl’s real good at driving through the limits and being able to compensate for something not being right the with the car,” his teammate and competitor Kyle Busch says. “He’s able to make more out of it. So that sets him up pretty well.”

    “I think that comes from his dirt background,” Johnson says. “He’s used to dealing with cars that just weren’t exactly right.”

    “Yeah, that’s nice for people to say,” Edwards himself says. “But this is NASCAR, you have the best drivers in the world, they’re ALL good at making the most of their car. The other three drivers in the Chase are incredible. I don’t really think I have an advantage in that. All of us are good at that.

    “I do feel like, yeah, I like the challenge. I feel like if they would spray the track down with water and said, ‘OK, everybody race,’ I would enjoy that struggle. … But I’ll enjoy this week no matter what. It’s fun. This is what I like.”

    One for the history books

    MIAMI — There is a funny thing about sports dreams. You know, the kind you have when you’re a little kid. You dream about hitting the game-winning home run. You dream about catching the game-winning touchdown pass, or swishing the game-winning basket, or scoring the game-winning goal, or making the putt that wins you the Masters.

    Few of us ever get to do it, of course. But that’s not the funny part.

    The funny part is that the people who DO get to do it, well, they find that it isn’t exactly like the dreams. Take Jimmie Johnson. He has won six NASCAR Sprint Cup Championships. Six. Only two men — Richard Petty and the late Dale Earnhardt with seven — have any idea what that’s like. But to be realistic, even they don’t know EXACTLY what it is like because the sport has grown so much bigger, the money has grown so much bigger, the pressure has grown so much bigger. So many people are counting on you. So many people are rooting against you. Gigantic companies have many millions of dollars at stake.

    And so even though this is all Jimmie Johnson ever wanted — to be the best race car driver — those first five championships felt nothing at all like his childhood dreams. He didn’t even ENJOY them, not in the way we understand the word “enjoy.” Yes, he was very proud of what he and his team did. Yes, he thrilled in the racing, the speed, the challenge, the victories, the opportunities that came with being the best stock-car driver in the world. But it wasn’t fun, if that makes sense. It wasn’t that innocent joy that went along with all those childhood daydreams, that feeling of the world going in slow motion, that intoxicating blur of champagne and happiness and wonder. He would stay up at night, staring at the ceiling, thinking about how he could stay on top.

    In 2013, when Johnson was 38 years old and won his sixth championship, the feeling was closer to what he had hoped. By then, Johnson had let go of a lot of things, a lot of the insecurities. He had stopped worrying so much about pleasing everyone. But even that wasn’t EXACTLY what he had dreamed about.

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    “You’re like, ‘Wow, this is nutty, this is stressful, can I do it?'” Johnson says. “You have all of these things weighing you down. When I won those first few championships, it wasn’t fun AT ALL. There was always more to do, you know? In ’13, it definitely felt different. I felt different. That was the most fun I’ve ever had racing for a championship by far.

    “Still, some days, you wish you could feel that thing you wanted as a kid, you know, that place you see in the movies or hear about in stories, and it is surreal, and the world stops and time stops, and it is perfect.”

    So that’s what this time is about. Johnson is 41 years old. He’s a legend of the sport. He has won six championships and 79 races and more than $150 million in prize money. He has won multiple races every year since he was a rookie. The legacy, if such a thing matters, is secure.

    And so, this race is for him.

    “I feel different going into this championship than I have ever felt before, there’s absolutely no doubt about that,” Johnson says. “As weird as it may sound, I’m more comfortable in my own skin than I’ve ever been. And that’s a major player. I have nothing to prove to anyone, and I don’t care what other people think. I really don’t. I’m racing this weekend for me and my family and my team. I don’t have any outside baggage that’s on me. That was other years. There was plenty of that stuff. None of that matters to me anymore.”

    He endured an odd year. It began like most Jimmie Johnson years do — he won in Atlanta in the second race of the year and followed that up three weeks later with a win at Fontana. And then he and his team went into a bit of slump. In a 15-race span, he finished in the top five four times while finishing 20th or worse six times. He and his crew chief Chad Knaus struggled week to week. There was the talk — which has grown louder the last couple of years — that Johnson was close to the end. “I definitely missed driving up front,” Johnson says.

    Watch: NASCAR Sprint Cup Championship (Sunday at 1:30 p.m. ET on NBC, NBCSports.com and NBC Sports App)

    Then came the Chase and it has been absolutely perfect. He breezed into the second round, then won the first race, Charlotte, to automatically move into the third round. He promptly won the first race of the third round, in Martinsville, to qualify for Sunday’s final four. Johnson’s team has had two stress-free weeks to prepare the car for this final race, and while nobody knows if that will make a difference, well, it can’t hurt.

    And Johnson is just enjoying it. “I’m excited,” he says. “And I’m fresh. I don’t know if it will change as we get closer to the race, if the nerves will come. But I don’t think it will.”

    He is well aware, of course, that winning this title would tie him with Earnhardt and Petty for most championships — so aware of it that ever since he won the race in Charlotte he has been wearing a helmet with Petty and Earnhardt’s photos on it and the words “Drive for Seven.” He says that if he could tie those two legends of the sport, it would mean the world to him because it would connect him to history.

    But, again, he promises not to let that inflate into pressure.

    “I never race for stats,” he says. “I’ve never raced for stats, for fame, for money. I’ve just always loved racing. I feel like I’m more in touch with that, in tune with that, than I’ve ever been in my career.

    “I think about those dreams I had as a kid, dreams all of us have in our own way I suppose. I guess I want that moment. I’ve done this for a long time. And I’d love to have that moment.”

    Promises, promises

    MIAMI — Two years ago, Joey Logano showed up for his shot at destiny … and he was scared out of his mind. He doesn’t like to say it that way. He would prefer to just say, “I was nervous. Because I didn’t know what was happening. And I think that’s where nerves are going to come from.”

    He was just 24 years old then and he was trying to join Jeff Gordon and Bill Rexford as the only two drivers to win a championship before turning 25 years old. But it was different for Logano. He’d been preordained to be NASCAR’s next superstar ever since he was a teenager. “Sliced bread,” they called him — as in “best thing since …” — and while he sort of got a kick out of the nickname and the expectations when he was a kid, those things soon felt like an anchor tied to his waist.

    “Sliced bread,” people would mutter savagely every time he finished out of the top five.

    “Sliced bread,” people would taunt him because he won just three races in his first five full seasons.

    “Sliced bread,” other drivers would mock when they felt like Logano pushed his aggressiveness too far.

    Then in 2014, it finally came together for Logano. He won five times. He came to Homestead with a real chance to win the championship … only he readily admits that his head just wasn’t in the right place. “I couldn’t settle my mind down,” he says. “I was thinking about what could happen … or what’s going to happen … what’s the week going to look like … what’s the feeling on Sunday going to be … what is it going to feel like like getting in the car … do I have what it takes?”

    Here Logano smiles. He’s famous for that smile.

    Watch: NASCAR Sprint Cup Championship (Sunday at 1:30 p.m. ET on NBC, NBCSports.com and NBC Sports App)

    “I think that’s the big one. ‘Do I have what it takes?’ I didn’t know then. I know now.”

    “What do you know?” 

    “I know the challenge ahead. I’m prepared for that. I’m ready for that, ready for the pressure. I’m more than ready, I’m excited about it. I’m genuinely pumped. It’s like a complete 180 from last time I was here.”

    There are times when it feels like Logano has been racing forever — and he HAS been racing full time since 2009 — but he’s still just 26 years old. He’s five years younger than Jimmie Johnson was when he won the first of his so-far six championships, three years younger than Dale Earnhardt when he won his first of seven. And he’s five years younger than any of the other drivers in the Chase this year.

    And it’s the combination of youth and experience that makes him unique … and dangerous. NASCAR people will tell you: Young drivers go FAST. The great Junior Johnson used to say, “They don’t know no better — they haven’t hit the wall yet.” So younger drivers push closer to the edge than might be prudent out of youthful exuberance and daring. That makes them go extremely fast, yes, but then they tend to burn out (or spin out or get spun out).

    Logano has that speed. But he has more or less stopped burning out.

    “When you’re flirting with the edge, you’re going to step over it from time to time,” Jimmie Johnson says. “And he has. I think he’s figured out how to inch his way up to the edge instead of flying over it like he did three or four years ago.”

    “For me,” Carl Edwards says, “a switch has gone off the last couple of years for Joey. He’s just so fast everywhere. I have a feeling he’s going to be VERY fast on Sunday. He’s hungry. He wants this very badly. You could argue that he doesn’t have a lot of experience or whatever but I’ve been around long enough. I’ve watched how he’s been approaching this. I think he’s got a ton of confidence.”

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    The other three drivers talk a lot about handling whatever adversity comes this week, being patient, always, in the immortal words of NASA legend Gene Kranz, “Working the problem.” Logano talks about these things too, but more he talks about being aggressive … and being aggressive … and when that doesn’t work, to keep being aggressive.

    “Attack all day,” Logano says of the gameplan. “That’s it. It’s the way our team is. It has been for the last three years or whatever. That’s what we found to be successful for us. Race aggressively. Attack every minute. I start the race and say, ‘I’m here to win,’ and I have that ‘I will not get beat’ attitude throughout the race. Whether that’s good or bad, well, it’s different for other people. Probably it’s a lot different. But it works for us.”

    And when you ask him how he will deal with the frustration that might come with a poor pit stop or a car that won’t quite adjust to conditions or the ever-changing conditions of the track, he smiles again.

    “Frustration is OK,” he says. “It’s OK as long as it’s channeled in the right way. But there’s never that feeling of ‘We’re just not going to win today. It’s just not our day. We suck.’ There’s never that feeling. Because I know we don’t suck. I know I’m a very good race car driver. I know I have a very good race team. And I know we can handle this.”

    The Magic Man

    MIAMI — The wonderful thing about the press conference for the NASCAR Championship Four — just three days before the big race — is that you have all four of the contending drivers sitting on the stage side by side. And because they are sitting next to each other, you can get just a small feel for how they feel about each other and their chances and everything else coming into the winner-take-all final race.

    Joey Logano, for instance, is totally pumped up, super happy. Why not? He won last week to become one of the four drivers to have a chance to win a championship Sunday. This is the dream, man.

    Jimmie Johnson seems calm, beyond calm, like he’s done this whole thing a million times before, which is pretty close to true.

    Carl Edwards looks a bit dazed, but in the best of ways. He’s 37 years old now and he has won 28 races and more than $80 million, but he has never won a Sprint Cup Championship. He looks like a guy in a dream.

    And then there’s Kyle Busch. He looks, um, lethargic.

    “Do you guys like each other?” someone asks the group.

    “Kyle,” Logano says, “we’ll let you answer that.”

    Watch: NASCAR Sprint Cup Championship (Sunday at 1:30 p.m. ET on NBC, NBCSports.com and NBC Sports App)

    Busch looks out with a bit of a bewildered expression, as if someone has just woken him up from a nap. “I am exhausted,” he would say later. And when asked why, he would say, “I am always exhausted.”

    “Do you like each other?” was the question to the group.

    “Right now, yes,” Busch says. “In about 25 seconds, no.”

    Kyle Busch has the aura now. For so many years, he was the guy with unlimited potential, the impossibly talented driver who won a lot of races but always should have won more. Busch himself bought into the hype. He lashed out. He got into numerous dust-ups. Fans loathed him. He beat himself up continuously. In the words of his team owner Joe Gibbs: “He always felt like he was letting himself and his team down, like he wasn’t living up to his great talent.”

    Last year, it all changed. What a year that was. Busch got into a wreck at Daytona that threatened to end his entire season — for a brief time it seemed like his career might be in danger. Even once the doctors got a handle on his condition, Busch was supposed to be out for a minimum six months. Three months later he was standing — wobbly but standing — in the hospital room when his wife Samantha gave birth to their son Brexton.

    Then he came back to the track … and he was essentially unbeatable. In a beautiful five-week span, he won at Sonoma, at Kentucky, at Loudon and finally at the Brickyard 400 in Indianapolis — his first major victory. He won so much that he easily qualified for the Chase even though he’d missed 11 races. Then he made it to the final four, and he ran away to victory at Homestead for his first championship. In the last few laps, he was singing the theme song for “Vocabularry” — his infant son’s favorite TV show.

    A magical year like that, yeah, it changes a person.

    “No,” he says now, “it doesn’t feel a whole lot different.”

    A magical year like that, um, it sort of changes a person?

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    “Well, look, it hasn’t been terribly different on the racing side,” Busch says. “Personally, with Brexton at home and stuff like that, that’s different. Having him come to all the races, that’s pretty fun. We certainly enjoy the time that we have on the road. But, you know, I’m just me.”

    So, OK, maybe a magical year like that doesn’t change a person — but don’t tell the other drivers that. They see a different Kyle Busch. There was always a saying in the garages about Kyle Busch during those years when he could not quite put everything together: If he ever wins a championship, watch out.

    Now that he’s won one, yes, watch out.

    “He just has so much confidence now, you can see it,” Johnson says. “I mean, he was always a confident guy, but it’s different, I think. Now, he’s a champion. Now, he KNOWS.”

    That is exactly the thing that is apparent as Kyle Busch sits off to the side during the press conference — it’s like he’s separate from the other three. He knows. He’s the defending champion. He’s the closest thing this Chase has to a favorite. He’s the guy in the best position to take over this sport, to be the new Dale Earnhardt, the new Bobby Allison, the new Richard Petty. A year ago, after he won his championship, he boldly said he’d like to win 10 in a row. When people laughed, he made it clear that he wasn’t joking.

    “It’s not about what we did last year,” he says. “We’ve already got that one. It’s in the bag. This is about going out there THIS one. It’s one race. It doesn’t matter what the situation is this week, doesn’t matter what comes your way, you have to figure out a way to win.”

    That, more than anything, might be what makes Kyle Busch the favorite. Right now, there is no stock-car driver anywhere who can make more out of less than Kyle Busch. Just last week in Phoenix, he had a tepid car that was running around 15th for most of the race. Through sheer relentlessness, a few adjustments on the car and a bit of driving brilliance — especially on restarts (Busch is a wonder on restarts) — they somehow finished second and could have won.

    “Oh, Kyle can make some magic,” Johnson says. “And knowing him, I’ll bet he will on Sunday.”

    No more fun and games

    Cam Newton, at his best, is a magical player. He does things that blow minds. He throws 30-yard darts that slip by defensive backs before they can react. He avoids sacks not so much by eluding them as by simply standing up through them, a brick house in the Big Bad Wolf’s wind. Newton takes off running and in the open field he is both halfback and fullback, able at times to split defenders in two the way Gale Sayers could, able at other times to blast through a defender, not unlike the way Neo blasts through Agent Smith at the end of “The Matrix.”

    This is Newton at his height, when the conditions are right, when his team is playing great and the opponent is in retreat and, as the Magic 8-Ball says, “All signs point to yes.”

    This was Newton last year for a 15-1 Panthers team that went to the Super Bowl.

    Something has changed this year, of course. That part is obvious. It isn’t that Newton is playing badly. His numbers are down, yes, and the Panthers are 3-6 and in last place. But he’s still among the top five or 10 quarterbacks out there. And there have been a few familiar moments. He threw for four touchdown passes against San Francisco. He has had a couple of dazzling runs. He has put his team in position to win for the most part, including last week against Kansas City. It isn’t like Newton suddenly forgot how to play football … he’s still Cam Newton.

    But something has obviously changed.

    What? There are a few clear possibilities. The Panthers’ defense was otherworldly last year, forcing turnover after turnover, setting up Newton and his offense with golden opportunities time and again. That has more or less stopped this year. The Panthers are starting inside their own 20-yard line more often. This has affected the Panthers’ offense generally and Newton specifically. He’s thrown only 10 touchdown passes this year. All the numbers are down.

    On offense, the line has been beat-up and inconsistent, and that has knocked Newton off his game. He has thrown off his back foot more often, and that usually leads to bad things. It did last week when the Panthers seemed about ready to put away Kansas City — a retreating Newton threw a pick-six that put Kansas City back in a game that should have been over. Newton has dealt with injuries, too — he missed the game against Tampa Bay, and he wasn’t himself in others.

    Watch: Saints vs. Panthers on Thursday Night Football (7:30 p.m. ET on NBC, NBCSports.com and NBC Sports app)

    And, perhaps most of all, teams have been taking their free shots at him at every turn. Newton is 6-foot-5, 245 pounds and a great runner, so teams obviously have to tackle him hard. But there’s no question opponents have taken this to an extreme this season. They have hit Newton late a few times, stolen some shots to the head, unloaded some knockout blows. And, for the most part, there have been no penalties to accompany the hits, possibly BECAUSE Newton is so big and powerful.

    This has driven Newton to distraction. Newton seems to believe the whole world is ganging up on him. A couple of weeks ago, he flatly said that the late hits are “really taking the fun out of the game for me. At times I don’t even feel safe.”

    Newton has a beef. But more to the point here, all of this leads to this rather simple theory that I have about Cam Newton.

    He needs to be having fun to play his best football.

    And this year, he’s just not having any fun.

    Great athletes tend to feed off different motivations. Some want to be loved. Some seem to get a huge kick out of being despised. Some are motivated by fear, others by anger, still others by fame and fortune. Tom Brady, for instance, STILL seems to motivate himself by disrespect (you might have heard that he was selected in the sixth round of the NFL draft) even though it has been years since anybody disrespected him (Roger Goodell aside). Meanwhile, a player like Carolina’s impeccable linebacker Luke Kuechly seems to motivate himself through the daily challenge of figuring out how to break up an offense — it is like a puzzle for him.

    Newton apparently grazes off joy. He wears the hats. He does the dances. He gives away the footballs. The bigger the lead, the more fun he has, the better he plays. The louder the crowd, the more fun he has, the higher he soars. This is part of what makes Newton such a joy; through it all, he PLAYS football the way kids PLAY football. It’s a game. And it’s so much fun when everything is working and everyone has come together.

    This is something people around the Carolina team have noticed for years. There have been times that people inside the organization have wondered if Newton could be serious enough to become a great NFL quarterback. Soon enough they realized that it was the wrong question, realized that being serious doesn’t suit him or his play. You probably noticed how serious Newton looked in the Super Bowl last year. That didn’t turn out well.

    Marty Schottenheimer is one of the many coaches who noted that you can’t have fun in the NFL if you lose. The Panthers are coming off one of their worst losses in recent franchise history, a complete giveaway to the Chiefs. Their playoff situation looks pretty dire — Carolina might have to win out. The key will be getting Newton to start having fun again.

    The remarkable rise of Andy Murray

    For years, there was this fun argument going on about Tiger Woods and Roger Federer. The argument assumed that both men are the best who ever played golf and tennis (an open debate, obviously). And it led to one question: Who is better at their sport?

    The argument never really went anywhere because for every point (golf requires beating the WHOLE field rather than one opponent at a time), there was a counterpoint (one mediocre/bad day in golf does not sink a golfer’s chances, but it can end a tennis player’s tournament).

    For every factor that points to the difficulty of golf (it is so mentally challenging that even the great golfers will miss cuts with some regularity — Phil Mickelson missed 11 in his career) there is another that points to the difficulty of tennis (it is so physically grueling that many of the greatest players — John McEnroe, Bjorn Borg, Martina Hingis, Justine Henin, Mats Wilander, on and on — won their last Grand Slam singles title by the time they turned 25 years old).

    Anyway, it was fun to talk about, even if it never really led anywhere. But there is something that does seem to be emerging about the wonderful dominance of Woods and Federer. You might call the two effects “dishearten” and “hearten.”

    All of this, eventually, will take us to Andy Murray. Hopefully.

    Tiger Woods was such a force in golf that he disheartened his opponents. He broke their spirit. They could not beat him, not when he was on his game, not when he was slightly off his game and, quite often, not even when he was very much off his game. There’s an old Jack Nicklaus line that is even more true for Woods: He knew he would beat you, you knew he would beat you, and he knew that you knew he would beat you.

    FIfty-eight times, Woods was either in the lead or tied for the lead going into the final round. He won 54 of them. He won the first 14 major tournaments he led after 54 holes.

    And how did this uncommon mastery of a sport that is supposed to defy mastery affect other golfers? It crushed them. Sure, there were supremely talented golfers in Woods’ time, several who are in the World Golf Hall of Fame. But let’s put it this way — from the time when Woods broke onto the scene and breezed to the 1997 Masters title to when he won the U.S. Open on one leg, there were 46 major championships.

    Tiger Woods won 14 of them, as mentioned.

    The other 32 majors? Well, 25 different golfers won those 32 majors. Vijay Singh and Phil Mickelson won three. Mark O’Meara, Retief Goosen and Ernie Els won two each. Those five terrific players — four already in the Hall of Fame with only Goosen waiting — won fewer majors than Woods COMBINED. And the other 20 majors were won by 20 different golfers. It’s a clear pattern: Everyone would show up at the majors with the hope that Woods was way off his game. Then, and only then, did they have a chance.

    His magnificence was unassailable. It was meant to be enjoyed and feared but not challenged. The best golfers on earth not named Tiger Woods had to console themselves with the huge sums of money that Tiger brought into the sport and the hope that maybe someday he would stop winning everything and leave some tournaments for everyone else.

    So, yes, Tiger Woods was disheartening.

    Roger Federer, somehow, was the opposite. He was every bit as dominant as Woods — the numbers are even more striking. From 2003, when Federer won his first Wimbledon to 2010 when he took the Australian Open, there were 27 Grand Slam tournaments. Federer won 16 of them, more than half, and reached the final in another six. The only other tennis players to win Grand Slams in Roger’s time: Rafael Nadal, who won six, and five others who managed one each.

    But it was different somehow. There was something magnanimous about Federer’s beautiful game, something that opened up possibilities in the minds of other tennis players. Golfers would see Tiger Woods hit miracle shots out of trouble and make every important putt he looked at and they would think: NO SHOT. But Federer would hit some implausible running forehand winner or spin a drop-volley with such touch that it would not even bounce, and the other tennis players would think: I WANT TO DO THAT!

    That begins with Nadal, of course. He seemed to be just the latest in a long line of Spanish and Latin American clay-court specialists — Sergi Brugera, Gustavo Kuerten, Gaston Gaudio, Albert Costa, Juan Carlos Ferrera — who would show up at the French Open to win and then disappear like top-spinning swallows of Capistrano.

    Nadal, though, was stirred to take his game to a higher place. He has spoken eloquently about how the inspiration of Federer took him there. Nadal has won all four major championships and 14 Grand Slam tournaments in all — he has his place now in the inner circle of all-time tennis greats. His rivalry with Federer might just be the greatest in tennis history. Nadal has controlled it for the most part with shots that kick up high and attack Fed’s backhand like wasps. Still, their tennis has lifted the sport.

    Novak Djokovic was next. He had both Federer AND Nadal to contend with, something that certainly could have left him entirely discouraged. At times, he did indeed seem discouraged. Djokovic does not have quite the grace or touch of Federer nor the ferocious power of Nadal. He found his own path — foot speed, instincts, hitting balls on the rise, imposing return of serve and sheer ambition. He has now won 12 Grand Slam titles, including the career Grand Slam. He has a winning record against both Federer and Nadal. He too has a place in tennis’ inner circle.

    All of which brings us to Andy Murray. He has been around a long time. It is tempting to think that Murray is younger than he is, but he was born in the same month as Djokovic (Murray is actually a week older). He is less than a year younger than Nadal. He played in his first Wimbledon in 2005. He has endured more or less the ENTIRE period of Roger and Rafa and Novak’s dominance.

    He did not just endure that dominance, he was repeatedly smacked down by their dominance. The first 10 times he reached at least a Grand Slam semifinal, he was knocked out by Nadal (four times), Federer (three times) or Djokovic (two times)*. If anyone had good reason to grudgingly accept that he was born at just the wrong time, it was Murray.

    *He was also beaten once in a semi by Andy Roddick, another slap in the face — he couldn’t even be the best ANDY on the court that day.

    And Murray seemed, well, to put it delicately, just the type of person who would grudgingly accept that he was born at just the wrong time. Murray in 2008, when he was 21 years old and had not yet won a single significant tournament (no offense to the Qatar Open) nor reached the final of a Grand Slam event, wrote an autobiography called “Hitting Back.” Nobody was entirely sure WHY he wrote an autobiography at that time, but he did indeed hit back — at British tennis, at the media members who doubted him (he was refusing to even talk to the BBC at the time) and at the unfair obstacles he seemed sure that everyone was putting in his way and his way alone. He came across as a very angry young man, though nobody was entirely sure why.

    Then, maybe the answer why was obvious. Federer was majestic then. Nadal was ascendant. Djokovic won the Australian Open that very year. There seemed to be no room in the tennis world for Andy Murray, and he seemed to know it.

    So what happened from there? The book kept getting updated as Murray began growing up. The paperback version of that book was called “Coming of Age.” And then the book title was updated and titled  “Seventy-Seven: My Road to Wimbledon Glory.” That happened in 2013, after Murray broke the 77-year British drought and won Wimbledon. By then, he was a different tennis player and a different man. He had won the Olympics in London. He won the U.S. Open that year. He had found himself.

    And I would argue that it was, once again, the inspiration of Federer, who inspired Nadal, who inspired Djokovic, who inspired Murray. Andy improved everything about his game. And he did it by building up every single part of his game. He doesn’t really do anything specifically better than the rest of the world. But you know those Sprint commercials where Sprint basically admits it’s not QUITE as good as Verizon, but it’s 99 percent as good for half the price?

    Murray doesn’t quite have Djokovic’s return of serve (no one in tennis history does) or his pure speed — but it’s probably 99 percent.

    Murray doesn’t quite have Nadal’s bullfighter tenacity — win or die with honor — but he’s probably at 99 percent.

    Murray doesn’t quite have Federer’s ability to hit the “gaga shot” that tilts an opponent’s head the same way shaking a pinball machine does — but he’s probably at 99 percent.

    In other words, at least as I see it, Murray created a game that is like an homage to those masters he has been trying to beat. He does a little bit of everything, and he brings along some of that youthful rage and intensity, and here he is: Murray is now the No. 1 player in the world.

    It is unclear if he will stay at No. 1 for very long. Djokovic seems worn down by his own extraordinary rise, but he has still made the final of nine of the last 11 Grand Sam tournaments, winning six of them. Djokovic also dominated the head-to-head matchups between them, winning 24 of 34 matches and eight of the 10 times they played in Grand Slams. It seems a pretty good bet that he will be back, and so this could be just a Murray blip, a fluke of timing.

    Or it could be more. Either way, for Murray to reach No. 1 after all these years is an extraordinary thing.

    When Tiger Woods hit the golf scene, you will remember there was a lot of talk about the generation of golfers he would give rise to, the young golfers who, seeing what he was doing, would find a way to take golf even higher. We might be seeing that with golfers like Rory McIlroy and Jason Day and Jordan Spieth, though it is too early to tell.

    Federer’s impact is clearer. He came into the sport during a lull, just as the Pete Sampras-Andre Agassi era was ending, and he played sublime and previously unimaginable tennis. And his tennis genius has helped create three of the greatest tennis players who ever lived. I’m sure he didn’t mean to do that. But, hey, who DOESN’T want to be Roger Federer?