Daniel Brewer arrived in London on Sunday morning wearing a Jacksonville Jaguars onesie and face paint, complete with black whiskers, brown spots and a blue nose. He had come with fellow fans from the English city of Reading to cheer on the Jags as they took on the Indianapolis Colts beneath sunny skies at Wembley Stadium.

“None of us naturally are Jags fans,” Brewer confided. “We all have our own roots, but because they signed a contract, they’ve got our hearts.”

The Jags have signed to play one game in London each season through 2020, making them the closest thing to a hometown team here. They’re the only U.S. team to make a multiyear commitment, according to the NFL.

Like most of the nearly 84,000 spectators who turned out for Sunday’s game, which Jacksonville won 30-27, Brewer’s favorite NFL team wasn’t on the field. Brewer first got interested in American football through a woman he met at college from Baltimore.

“So I’m a Ravens fan,” he said.

As the National Football League enters its 10th season staging games in London, the events have proven wildly popular, routinely selling out and drawing fans from across Europe. Brewer and many other fans here say they want more games — or even their own team.

Unlike football fans in a U.S. NFL city, though, those here divide their loyalties among the league’s 32 teams. Ride the tube — London’s subway — on game day and you’ll spot a jersey from every NFL team in a matter of minutes.

For instance, Brian Moody-Smith, a 50-year-old carpenter from Kent, was wearing No. 44 from the Washington Redskins, a number made famous by John Riggins. Moody-Smith watched Riggins, a freight train of a running back, on British TV in the early 1980s, when he led his team to victory in Super Bowl XVII with a 43-yard touchdown run.

More than three decades later, Moody-Smith is still awestruck. “He was the man,” he said.

Adrian Schlauri flew in from Zurich for Sunday’s game. As he stood in line with about 1,000 other people to buy merchandise, Schlauri explained why he was wearing a vintage Philadelphia Eagles jersey with No. 92, which is associated with Hall of Fame defensive end Reggie White.

“I’m an Eagles fan for about 12 years,” said Schlauri — half his life. “Reggie White is one of the best players we had.”

Schlauri got interested in the game because his father, Guido, also here with him on Sunday, played offensive tackle for an amateur American football team in Switzerland.

Many European fans say they are drawn to U.S. football because of the game’s complex strategy, its exciting, big plays and the NFL’s pageantry. Joe Luxford, wearing a Minnesota Vikings jersey, said he enjoys the outsize personalities and showmanship of the American players, such as retired Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver Chad Johnson, known for his elaborate end zone celebrations.

“It’s sort of like a theater-type performance,” said Luxford, an IT recruiting consultant attending Sunday’s game with childhood friends. “I know some English who don’t like that in Americans in general. But us lot, we like that.”

Given the NFL’s passionate following here, people like Jordan Mead, a restaurant manager, believe basing a team in London is a no-brainer.

“I think within the next five years, there’s got to be a franchise,” said Mead, wearing a Jags jersey with his name on the back.

But Nick Deaker, who drives a forklift and backs the Carolina Panthers, thinks fans here are too divided to make a local franchise work.

“I can’t see everybody changing their allegiance,” he said. “They might come down for the first couple of seasons just to test the water, but after that, I can’t see it lasting very long.”

The NFL will play three games in London this season and add a fourth to the series in 2018. Alistair Kirkwood, managing director of NFL International in London, says the league needs to look abroad for future growth.

But there are big logistical questions. For instance, would distance from the U.S. pose a competitive disadvantage for a team based in London, because of the travel time?

Kirkwood says the league has a lot of work ahead before it would consider expanding to London. He says the NFL needs to double its fan base here and make sure that a new team would strengthen the league as a whole — and that it would be sustainable for a generation or two of fans.

“If you were to do it,” said Kirkwood, “you’d want to do it with a guarantee of absolute success.”

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The broadcaster will call his last baseball game today, capping a 67-year career as the voice of the Los Angeles Dodgers. The game is in San Francisco, against the Giants, the team’s oldest rival.

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Former NFL player Nate Jackson’s new book Fantasy Man explores the growing business and competitiveness behind fantasy football.

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Chicago Cubs fans are both wary and excited as their team heads into baseball playoffs next week with the best record in the major leagues. The Cubs haven’t been to the World Series since 1945 and haven’t won since 1908.

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Golfing legend Arnold Palmer has died at 87.

He died Sunday evening at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Shadyside, a tertiary care hospital in Pittsburgh. NPR confirmed his death with UPMC’s media relations manager, Stephanie Stanley. The United States Golf Association announced Palmer’s death via Twitter.

Palmer won 62 PGA Tour events, fifth on the all-time list. He won golf’s biggest titles: the Masters, the U.S. Open, the British Open. He won seven majors in all.

But it wasn’t just the numbers that made Palmer an iconic sports figure.

He wasn’t the greatest male golfer of all time. That title usually prompts a debate about Jack Nicklaus or Tiger Woods or Ben Hogan, maybe Sam Snead. But the most important player? It’s fairly unanimous that Arnold Palmer was, true to his nickname, the King.

Palmer strapped a moldy, staid game on his back and gave it new life. He ignited golf’s popularity in the 1960s as he became the sport’s first TV star.

“He was someone who looked like an NFL halfback,” says ESPN.com senior writer Ian O’Connor. “He had arms like a blacksmith and giant hands, and he had those rugged good looks. And he was just a different golfer. Nobody had ever really seen anything like him in that sport.”

Palmer’s arrival as a champion pro in the late 1950s dovetailed with the emerging medium of television.

Whether he was winning tournaments or pitching products, Palmer’s looks, athleticism and talent made him a natural for TV.

But that was only part of what transformed admiring fans into a devoted following that became known as Arnie’s Army.

The Working-Class Kid Who Popularized An Upper-Class Sport

Palmer grew up in a working-class home in Latrobe, Pa., and ultimately he brought the game to the same kinds of people.

“Golf was always considered a blue blood, country club, elitist sport,” says O’Connor. “Arnold Palmer gave the sport to people who worked for members of the country club set.”

He’d play with his shirt tail hanging out. He’d flick away a cigarette before hitting, then swing for the fences and grimace like an average duffer if the result was bad. O’Connor says the class conflict was a motivating factor in Palmer’s career.

So was Palmer’s dad, known as Deacon.

Milfred J. “Deacon” Palmer was a greenskeeper, golf pro and, Arnold often said, the man who taught him everything he knew. Deacon was known for his honesty, and toughness. Especially with his son.

“He was tough on me. He never backed off,” Palmer said in a 2015 interview. “He played tough, worked hard, and he died a tough guy. He played 27 holes of golf the day he passed.”

It was Deacon who introduced Arnold to golf, with the instructions, “Hit it hard, boy. Go find it and hit it again.”

Palmer’s mom Doris softened the hard edges. A friendly woman, golf historians say Doris Palmer gave Arnold his people skills, which were a critical part of his legacy.

A Genuinely Nice Guy

“I’ve often said that Arnold puts up with people that neither you or I would put up with,” says Doc Giffin.

He was Palmer’s personal assistant for more than 50 years. Giffin remembers the many moments of Palmer walking among throngs of fans as he strode down fairways – the King and his army. Or Palmer talking to people in the gallery, joking with them, making paying customers feel like he wanted them there at the course.

Palmer would also take great care when signing autographs. One of his pet peeves was modern day athletes scribbling their names. Illegible autographs, Palmer thought, cheapened the fan’s experience.

But judging by his golfing success, Palmer knew when to tune out the adoring masses and focus on himself.

Most of the time.

There was that final hole of the final round of the 1961 Masters. Palmer had a one-stroke lead.

“And [he] had the ball in the fairway at the 18^th hole,” Giffin says, “and he saw a friend of his over at the ropes who waved him over. And he walked over there instead of staying with his golf ball. And the man congratulated him on winning his second straight Masters [Palmer won in 1960]. He said, ‘Thank you,’ went back to his ball, and knocked it in the trap.”

Palmer ended up with a six on the par four, and he walked off the final green one stroke behind.

“And lost the Masters that it looked like he had it in the bag,” Giffin says. “And he said, ‘I’ll never let that happen again.’ And he learned his lesson.”

Palmer made amends a year later at the same tournament. In a playoff, he made a back-nine charge to win the 1962 Masters.

Arnie And Jack

Our greatest sports heroes often have a foil. In Palmer’s case, it was Jack Nicklaus.

In his book Arnie and Jack, Ian O’Connor chronicles a 50-year duel on golf courses and boardrooms, as the two men competed in the business world as well. Personality-wise, they were, at least in the early years of their rivalry, polar opposites. Palmer was the people’s champ — gregarious, comfortable in crowds, a go-for-broke style of player. Nicklaus, about 10 years younger, was reserved, some say aloof and more scientific about the game.

Nicklaus easily beat Palmer in the record books. His 18 major titles still are the most anyone’s won. Palmer had seven. But Palmer had the adoring fans.

For all their battles through the 1960s, O’Connor says it was a moment in the early 2000s that prompted him to write his book.

Palmer and Nicklaus were well past their primes. O’Connor figures Arnie was in his early 70s and Jack, early 60s. They were paired together for a round at the Masters.

“They were putting on a green and Arnold finished,” O’Connor remembers, “and he picked up his ball and he walked over to the fans circling the green, and he sat down in a guy’s chair. Everyone got a big laugh. Meanwhile, Jack is standing over a putt and he’s grinding. He’s trying to make the cut, trying to contend, trying to win despite his age!”

“And he looked up and he shot Arnold a really angry stare. If looks could kill! And I happened to be there and it struck me that these guys have been battling, on and off the course, for so long. It’s probably the greatest rivalry in the sport’s history. That was the first seed [of the book].”

O’Connor says the two men competed on golf course design projects; they even competed for status as the top ambassador of the game.

But O’Connor says there’s no question the rivalry was tempered by friendship.

“I think deep down,” says O’Connor, “Jack knows he couldn’t have been Jack without Arnie and Arnie knows he couldn’t have been Arnie without Jack. There is respect and affection there.”

Touched By A King

Palmer was a friend of presidents, but a man who never forgot his roots. He lived half the year in his native Latrobe. His dual appeal — charisma and humility — didn’t organically turn Palmer into a global, celebrity athlete. That happened with the help of Mark McCormack, whose IMG became the biggest sports marketing company in the world. Palmer was McCormack’s first major client.

While the two of them spread Palmer’s fame, golf started to boom. The number of players and courses increased dramatically in the 1960s. By some accounts, in the early part of the decade, Palmer’s heyday, 350 to 400 new courses were built each year.

It wasn’t all Palmer’s doing. But he lit a fuse. With equal parts swagger and humility when he played.

And a smile for strangers who came to the course to watch a golfer, and left feeling like they’d been touched by a King.

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#NPRreads is a weekly feature on Twitter and The Two-Way. The premise is simple: Correspondents, editors and producers from our newsroom share the pieces that have kept them reading, using the #NPRreads hashtag. Each weekend, we highlight some of the best stories.

From digital editor Joe Ruiz

Soon after helping his Texas A&M Aggies knock off the top team in the country, Thomas Johnson, a breakout wide receiver, gave up football for reasons we may never truly know.

What led to his decision and the consequences that followed, irreparably affected numerous lives and led to the deaths of two people: Dave Stevens, allegedly at the hands of Johnson via a machete, and Patti Stevens, Dave’s widow, who took her own life shortly after her husband’s death.

Johnson now awaits mental health treatment in order to stand trial, but this ESPN story focuses on the signs both seen and missed in Johnson as he grew up, became a football sensation, departed the sport and university community, and eventual descent toward the morning of Oct. 12, 2015.

The issue of mental health and the consideration of those who must deal with it — family members, law enforcement, and ourselves — is at the heart of this piece. And lest we forget the Stevens family and their lives, the Dallas Morning News has deftly reported this story as well. I suggest reading their coverage on this ultimately tragic saga as well.

From Two-Way reporter Rebecca Hersher

You must read this profile about California gang culture, published in California Sunday Magazine and written by novelist and radio storyteller and reporter and cultural critic Daniel Alarcon. The Ballad of Rocky Rontal is the story of a young man from California caught in an situation that could not end well.

The great thing about this piece is that Daniel Alarcón doesn’t give too much away too fast, and I’ll try not to ruin that here. This is what you need to know about the subject of the piece, Rocky Rontal: he was never, he says, allowed to have a childhood.

Rontal was born and raised in Stockton, California. His father was a violent man and he drank. Rocky tried to protect his mother from his father, until the man beat his 10-year-old son so badly that his mother kicked her husband out of the house. By the time he was 13, his older brothers were both in juvenile detention and Rocky was the man of the house. He started stealing, first fruit, then cars.

Rocky ended up at a state reform school, and then in juvenile detention for breaking another boy’s ribs in a fight.

He was 15 when an adult first called him a gang member.

From there, things go unsurprisingly badly for Rocky. The subtitle of the piece is “How do we forgive the unforgiveable?” I’ll leave you with the sentence that, about halfway through, made my stomach turn in anticipation and dread:

“This is the story of two terrible crimes. Here’s the first.”

From political reporter Jessica Taylor

Believe me, I completely understand college football fandom. Just check my Twitter feed on Saturdays in the fall if you don’t believe me. But there are things far more important than football, and that was the issue Penn State faced last weekend. The school is just few years removed from and still trying to heal after the Jerry Sandusky scandal, where the school’s former assistant coach was convicted of multiple counts of sexual abuse of young boys over the course of decades. Last Saturday, the school decided to honor the 50th anniversary of the late head coach Joe Paterno — who an independent investigator, former FBI director Louis Freeh, had found had concealed Sandusky’s actions, as did court testimony; Paterno and his family maintained he did not.

But by honoring Paterno’s legacy so soon — which, if judged by football wins and losses alone is good — the wounds left open the horrible scandal were not even addressed or seemingly considered. And it’s impossible to remove the Sandusky scandal from Paterno’s legacy. When the school newspaper editor wrote an editorial opposing the school’s plans to honor Paterno, she got hate mail from alumni and fans calling her a “clueless treacherous traitor,” and worse. “I hope God can forgive you for your actions, I sure the hell can’t,” one person wrote. Oh, the irony.

The Undefeated’s Mike Wise has a must-read on why the seemingly tone-deaf move by the school is so damaging. He movingly writes of his own horrific experiences of being sexually abused by an uncle as a child and the shame and torment it caused him. “The people who stood to honor Paterno may have meant no harm. But to Sandusky’s victims, to all victims of child sexual abuse, pining for Penn State’s past is the opposite of love,” Wise wrote.

Ultimately this decision was about far more than football, and in that, Penn State failed, Wise argues:

“It’s not up to the Penn State community – the unaffected fan in the stadium’s third row – to decide how Paterno’s legacy should be treated. It’s not up to his widow, Sue Paterno, who persuaded the university to have this weekend.

“It’s up to the men who were molested. They get to decide.”

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Yahoo has revealed that it suffered a massive cyber breach in late 2014, which the company believes resulted in theft of information about the accounts of at least 500 million users.

The Internet responded in stride — as it has to all recent Yahoo-related news — with the regular tide of jokes about Yahoo’s dinosaur status.

But the reactions, spreading fast through Twitter, also revealed which Yahoo asset is most valuable to this social media demographic: fantasy sports.

OK, here are some facts.

Yahoo is an Internet giant, with more than 1 billion monthly active users. It sprawls through a variety of services, including blogging site Tumblr, photo site Flickr and a series of themed sites like Yahoo Finance and Yahoo Sports, which includes fantasy sports.

For the uninitiated, it’s the wildly popular digital expression of fandom — and a multibillion-dollar industry — where people draft virtual teams of actual players and compete based on the players’ success in real games. Yahoo is one of several places to play fantasy sports, and its offerings include football, baseball, basketball, hockey, car racing and golf.

Of course, this is all fun and games — perhaps a reflection of the growing familiarity of this plot, a constant presence of hacks in the news.

But this breach is one of the largest we’ve seen revealed, and it is of a service that for many users may interlink with their entire digital presence.

Yahoo says a “state-sponsored actor” — as in, a foreign government hacker — got into Yahoo’s network and stole information that “may have included names, email addresses, telephone numbers, dates of birth, hashed passwords.” All this took place in late 2014.

Yahoo says it is notifying all the affected users and taking other steps to beef up security to block any authorized access to any accounts. But also: “We are recommending that all users who haven’t changed their passwords since 2014 do so.”

Even if there was good timing to reveal a big hack, for Yahoo this wouldn’t be it.

The Internet company is on the verge of closing a $4.8 billion merger with Verizon. The telecom giant says it “will evaluate” the ongoing investigation and currently has “limited information and understanding of the impact” as Yahoo only informed Verizon of the security incident “within the last two days.”

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