"That's just how I was raised. I feel like Northwood, the basketball gym felt like my home since I'm there so much, before, during and after school... I just wanted to help out. That was really it."
You'd have to catch me off the record to answer that question. The implication was clear: Now that every school can pay players -- either through direct revenue share or name, image and likeness dollars -- Big Ten schools are no longer disadvantaged in recruiting by everything from booster bag men to shoe company AAU connections.
Jack Hughes's overtime goal to win Olympic gold is hockey history, maybe the single most important physical object in American hockey history. The Hughes puck is a pure distillation, the sudden-death difference between defeat and world-champ status in one small, black disc of vulcanized rubber and entrance-fee bait.
I think, for me, it's his skating and the speed in the middle of the ice more than anything. I really believe that he's attacking in the middle of the ice, he's demanding the puck in the middle of the ice, and he's doing a great job using his size and speed going through people.