Since the Kansas City Chiefs won Super Bowl 57, fans of the team have been deluged with offers for all types of commemorative championship gear including T-shirts, jerseys, hoodies, hats, coffee mugs – and toys?

Yes, Fisher-Price’s Little People Collector Line has a Super Bowl LVII Champions set ($30), with four miniature figurines representing Super Bowl and regular season MVP QB Patrick Mahomes, tight end Travis Kelce, defensive tackle Chris Jones and a Chiefs super fan.

The set is available to order through Feb. 21; go to the Mattel Creations website (orders are expected to ship on or before Aug. 31).

Fisher-Price isn’t the only toy maker immortalizing Mahomes & Co. On NFLShop.com, Funko has a limited edition set of 12-inch tall figures of Mahomes, Kelce, Jones and center Creed Humphrey ($199.99, only 2,023 sets made). It also has a 4.5-inch Mahomes Pop! Trading Card figure ($25) and a 5-inch Funko Gold Mahomes  premium vinyl figure ($12). 

Are toys of Super Bowl champs the Kansas City Chiefs for kids or adults?

Probably teens and big kids (adults). A growing ‘kidult’ market including collectibles, action figures, LEGO building sets, plush toys and sports trading cards now accounts for about 27% of the $29 billion toy market, according to research firm The NPD Group.

Toys targeting adults aren’t new, as ‘there was always a robust business for adult collectors of dolls, action figures, plush, and die-cast vehicles,’ James Zahn, editor-in-chief of toy industry news site The Toy Book, told USA TODAY.

Back in the mid-1990s, Hasbro’s relaunch of its Kenner Star Wars Power of the Force line of action figures ‘really lit the match for what became the first big kidult generation,’ Zahn said. ‘It opened the door for a lot of companies to start catering to adult collectors while maintaining a focus on their core business: toys for kids.’

As interest and sales continue to grow, sports licensing for limited edition toys tied to specific events such as the Super Bowl, ‘could prove to be an intriguing new revenue stream for the toy industry should the offerings catch on,’ Zahn writes on The Toy Book site.

Mattel began taking pre-orders Jan. 31 for the Super Bowl champions set, letting fans of the Chiefs or the Philadelphia Eagles get their dibs on the toys. Those who ordered an Eagles set had their orders refunded.

So we can expect more toys targeting adults?

That’s likely as interest has surged since the COVID-19 pandemic. ‘People who were never home with kids saw the value and benefits of play,’ said Adrienne Appell, executive vice president at The Toy Association.

With board games, building sets and puzzles, ‘they could teach their kids how it was an escapism. It was something that helped with mental health and stress,’ she said.

That timing tracks with Mattel’s building out of its popular Little People toy line. It released its first Little People Collector figurines of pop culture and sports icons in 2019 including The Beatles, Kiss and WWE.

The product line “was born from the idea that toys we love as children, when combined with things we have grown to love as adults, can make every adult smile and bring a little bit of joy,’ Chuck Scothon, senior vice president at Mattel told USA TODAY. 

Since then, there’s been Fisher-Price Little People Collector sets starring the cast of TV shows ‘Seinfeld,’ ‘The Golden Girls,’ ‘The Office’ and ‘Ted Lasso,’ as well as icons such as The Rolling Stones, Run DMC, Elvis and RuPaul.

This year, Mattel plans to release more than 50 new products. ‘The world of Little People Collector spans TV, movies, music, and sports and is growing faster than ever since its launch four years ago,’ Scothon said.

Also targeting kidults: the Funko Gold premium collectibles line, launched in 2021, with figurines of musicians such as Elvis Presley (sold out) and H.E.R., as well as athletes LeBron James and Walter Payton. And its New Pop! figures include Stephen Curry and Luka Doncic; on the way: two different Pop! figures of Dolly Parton and a five-piece set of rock band The Cure. 

‘When it comes to adult collecting, a lot of the time, it’s not about the actual stuff – it’s the thrill of the hunt. It’s the same feeling you had when you were a kid, when you heard the ice cream truck coming down the street. It’s like the prize in the cereal box,’ Funko founder Mike Becker told USA TODAY.

‘So when I created Funko, my goal was to capture that ‘feeling’ and I knew if I did that – all the rest would take care of itself,’ Becker said. ‘Twenty-five years later, Funko is bigger than ever, and our growth can be attributed to our community and fans, most of whom are adult collectors.’

But toys such as figurines don’t actually move or do anything.

They don’t have to, Appell said. She ordered the Chiefs Little People set for her son. ‘He’s not going to play with them, but I think they’re adorable.’

She imagines people populating their shelves and desks with Little People figures from ‘The Office’ and ‘Ted Lasso.’

‘It’s decorating your home office,’ Appell said. ‘It’s a form of collecting but it’s also a form of playfulness because and you look over (at them) and it puts a smile on your face.’

Follow Mike Snider on Twitter: @mikesnider.

MERIBEL, France (AP) — Mikaela Shiffrin didn’t hold on to a first-run lead and was beaten to gold by unheralded Canadian skier Laurence St-Germain in the women’s slalom at the world championships Saturday.

The American finished 0.57 seconds behind St-Germain after the final run to settle for silver.

St-Germain’s victory marked the first gold for Canada in women’s slalom since Anne Heggtveit won at the 1960 Olympics in Squaw Valley, which also counted as the world championships.

Lena Duerr of Germany was 0.69 behind and won bronze.

“Today was incredible, just a joy to race,” said Shiffrin, whose medal added to the gold she won in the giant slalom Thursday, two days after her head coach Mike Day split with the skier, and the silver in the super-G last week.

“Especially after the last weeks and everything that happened, I kind of thought if I can do some of my best skiing,” Shiffrin said. “Everybody is tired and it’s the end of a long push. I was so happy with my first run and really happy with a lot of sections on the second run. And here and there I backed it off a little bit and then it’s not enough for gold.”

The slalom was Shiffrin’s fourth event in 12 days at the worlds. The American didn’t finish her opening event at the worlds last week when she straddled a gate in the slalom portion of the combined, before winning a medal in each of the next three.

“At the end of two weeks, if I’m a little but tired, I cannot move quick enough in slalom,” Shiffrin said.” I mean, I can move quick enough in slalom, of course, I have a silver medal, but there is somebody who is going to be able to do it faster. That’s always the case.”

Shiffrin, the 2014 Olympic champion, won the world slalom title four times between 2013 and 2019 and took the bronze medal two years ago. She became the first skier, male or female, to win six medals in one discipline at world championships.

St-Germain was third after the opening run, 0.61 behind Shiffrin, before overtaking the American in the final run. Swiss skier Wendy Holdener, who was second going into the final run, straddled a gate and did not finish.

“I was really not expecting this, obviously. It’s unbelievable,” St-Germain said. “I attacked, had a bit of a mistake, just thinking go down, go down, go down, and it worked out, I guess.”

St-Germain’s previous best result at major championships was sixth in the slalom at the 2019 worlds. Sixth is also her best finish in a World Cup slalom, in Levi in 2020.

Saturday’s race was the last women’s event of the worlds. The championships close with the men’s slalom Sunday.

Ghana soccer player Christian Atsu has been found dead under the building where he lived in Turkey after last week’s massive earthquake, his agent said.

Atsu was 31 and had been missing since Feb. 6 when a powerful earthquake struck the region and followed erroneous reports that he had been rescued. 

Hours before the earthquake, Atsu scored the winning goal for his club Hatayspor in a game against Kasimpaşa S.K.

The earthquake has killed over 43,000 people and left thousands more injured. 

‘Atsu’s lifeless body was found under the rubble,’ Murat Uzunmehmet told reporters in Hatay. ‘Currently, more items are still being taken out. His phone was also found.’

‘The funeral of our football player Christian Atsu, who lost his life under the collapse, is on his way to be sent to his hometown Ghana,’ his team Hatayspor said on social media.’We will not forget you, Atsu. Peace be upon you, beautiful person. There are no words to describe our sadness. Rest in peace.

Atsu was part of Ghana’s World Cup squad in 2014 and previously played in England, Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands and Saudi Arabia before signing with Hatayspor in September.

Diana Taurasi is returning for a 19th season with the Phoenix Mercury, signing a multi-year deal, the team announced Saturday. 

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. 

‘Diana Taurasi belongs in a Mercury uniform, and we are grateful for the continued faith she demonstrates in our organization by returning year after year,’ Mercury general manager Jim Pitman said in a statement. ‘We look forward to more accolades, more historic moments, and more wins.”

The 40-year old Taurasi is a 10-time All-Star and three-time WNBA champion. 

She is the WNBA’s all-time leader in field goals and attempts, 3-point field goals, and attempts, and has scored 9,693 points in her career, also a WNBA record. 

The five-time Olympic gold medalist was voted the by fans as the greatest WNBA player of all-time in 2021. She was the first overall pick in the 2004 draft after winning three national championships at Connecticut.

Taurasi averaged 16.2 points, 3.9 assists and 3.4 rebounds last season for Phoenix, who finished 15-21 and lost in the first round to the eventual champion Las Vegas Aces. 

LIV Golf had a unique plan to reveal its 12 rosters over three days last week. Friday’s final announcement of the last four rosters was delayed to Monday, and it appears we now know why.

According to a report in the Telegraph, LIV Golf has made a last-minute acquisition of world No. 34 Thomas Pieters, a DP World Tour member who earlier this week voiced his displeasure about not being in the field at the PGA Tour’s Genesis Invitational.

The move is a positive addition for LIV and a huge potential loss for the 2023 European Ryder Cup team that’s already reeling from players and future captains who have departed for LIV.

Pieters would be the third new player to join LIV ahead of its 2023 season opener next week in Mexico, joining Mito Pereira and Sebastian Munoz.

EVANSTON, Ill. — Most people come home from Mexico with a suntan and a T-shirt. The Northwestern men’s basketball team brought back confidence, reassured the talent and cohesion the Wildcats saw during the off-season could translate into something good on the court.

Three months after that Cancun Challenge, the rest of the country is seeing the same thing.

After five consecutive losing seasons that put coach Chris Collins’ job in jeopardy, Northwestern has been one of this season’s biggest surprises. The Wildcats followed their upset of then-No. 1 Purdue last Sunday with a victory over 15th-ranked Indiana on Wednesday, giving them four wins over Top-20 teams. They’re currently second in the Big Ten and, at 19-7, are in good position to make the NCAA men’s tournament for just the second time in school history.

“It’s more joy than relief,” Collins said Friday. “I’ve always been someone that wants our guys to feel the happiness and joy when things go well. So I wouldn’t say really relief but joy and pride because of what these older guys, especially, have been through.”

Collins had success quickly after arriving at Northwestern in 2013. In his third season, the Wildcats matched the school record of 20 wins. The following year brought that trip to the NCAA tournament and a first-round win. With four starters from that team returning for the 2017-18 season, Northwestern seemed poised for a stretch of sustained success.

It didn’t happen. Northwestern finished two games below .500 that year and, two years later, failed even to reach double digits in wins.

“I think we just assumed that we were going to be that team again,” Collins said. “It doesn’t take much. We lost a little bit of that competitive edge, we lost a little bit of that hunger, that chemistry that made us good. Because of that, we took a step back.

“I don’t think I did a good enough job leading us through that,” he added. “Going to the tournament for the first time, winning a game, for our program that was like going to the Final Four or winning a national championship, and I don’t think we moved on from that.”

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There also were extenuating circumstances. Northwestern played its home games at Allstate Arena while Welsh-Ryan Arena was renovated during the 2017-18 season, and saying the place lacks atmosphere is putting it nicely. It’s outdated, spartan and near-impossible for students to get there, and it’s easy to see why DePaul finally abandoned it.

Then came COVID. And rebuilds. While Northwestern was just a game below .500 last year, there was a new athletic director, and Derrick Gragg made it clear Collins needed to make progress.

He didn’t need to spell out what would happen if Collins didn’t.

“We (didn’t) look at that,” senior forward Robbie Beran said. “Obviously that’s out of our control. We just tried to focus on the game in front of us, try to get better and win games. You win, it kind of solves a lot of the stuff.”

Having lost its best player from last season — Pete Nance went to North Carolina as a graduate transfer — Northwestern was picked to finish 13th in the 14-team Big Ten. But Collins believed there was more to his team than outsiders were seeing.

He was pleased with the development of guards Boo Buie, Chase Audige and Ty Berry. In the off-season, the Wildcats recommitted to the fundamentals, defense in particular.

When Northwestern held then-No. 13 Auburn to 43 points in a 1-point “rock fight” in Cancun, Collins and the Wildcats knew they were going to be fine. Though they promptly got thumped by Pittsburgh upon their return, they rebounded with a convincing win at Michigan State, then No. 20, in East Lansing, Michigan.

“I was like, man, our guys, there’s something there. There’s a fight to us. There’s a resilience and we’ve got a chance to be pretty good,” Collins said.

Buie and Audige are both averaging 15 points or better, and it was Buie’s bucket that clinched the win over Indiana. On the other end, Northwestern is allowing 61.9 points per game, 20th in the country.  

The biggest key, however, has been avoiding the strings of losses that kill a season. Lose one or two in a row, OK, you can recover from that. Lose five or six, and somebody better go chase the wheels because they have most definitely come off.

Northwestern has lost consecutive games three times this season but has not lost three in a row.

In another sign of their mental toughness, the Wildcats have gone 6-2 on the road, including wins in Columbus (Ohio), Madison (Wisconsin) and Bloomington (Indiana) as well as East Lansing. And with that victory over Indiana, they showed they can handle the pressure that comes with their new spotlight. 

“I don’t think we change our philosophy at all,” Beran said. “We continue to stay on our mission, worrying about ourselves and trying to come out every single day and compete and be the hardest-playing team in the country.”

A team that, to everyone’s surprise but their own, could be playing deep into March. 

Follow USA TODAY Sports columnist Nancy Armour on Twitter @nrarmour. 

Eric Bieniemy’s next job won’t be a promotion to the top rung of coaching from the offensive coordinator job he held with the Kansas City Chiefs.

The Washington Commanders announced Bieniemy as the team’s new assistant head coach and offensive coordinator on Sat. In Washington, Bieniemy will be charged with improving an offense that ranked 24th in scoring and 27th in yards per play last season.  

Bieniemy will also call plays for the first time in his NFL coaching career. In Kansas City, head coach Andy Reid was responsible for the play-calling, while Bieniemy had an extensive role in developing the game plan. In Washington, there will also be a significant question mark at quarterback. Head coach Ron Rivera said second-year quarterback Sam Howell has the inside track for the starting job for the 2023 season, with veteran Carson Wentz still on the roster as of now.

Bieniemy, 53, was the Chiefs’ offensive coordinator since 2018. With Patrick Mahomes as quarterback, the offense consistently ranked among the best in the league. He helped the Chiefs win Super Bowl 54 to cap a season in which Kansas City had the top-ranked offense. This past season, Mahomes captured his second career MVP award as the Chiefs won Super Bowl 57.

After the game, Reid specifically mentioned Bieniemy as a catalyst for the Chiefs’ success. During owners’ meetings last year, he made a passionate plea for Bieniemy to receive a head-coaching opportunity, per multiple reports. 

“Eric Bieniemy has been tremendous for us and I think he’s tremendous for the National Football League,” Reid said in a news conference Monday. “I’m hoping he has an opportunity to go somewhere and do his thing, where he can run the show and be Eric Bieniemy.”

Bieniemy also interviewed for the head-coaching role with the Indianapolis Colts, who on Monday hired former Philadelphia Eagles offensive coordinator Shane Steichen.

Eric Bieniemy’s trajectory

Prior to his promotion to offensive coordinator, Bieniemy was the Chiefs’ running backs coach (2013-17). He held the same role with the Minnesota Vikings from 2006-2010.

Bieniemy began his coaching career at his alma mater, Colorado. He coached running backs in 2001-02 and was the running backs coach at UCLA from 2003-05, adding the title of recruiting coordinator his final year there.  

In 1990, Bieniemy won the national championship as a senior running back for the Buffaloes and was named a consensus All-American. He was drafted in the second round of the 1991 draft by the then-San Diego Chargers and played eight seasons in the league. 

Advocates for racial representation among coaches feared the odds of Bieniemy landing a head job job as head coach dwindled with each passing year. Bieniemy’s plight has been emblematic of the upward mobility obstacles many Black coaches in the league face. 

According to USA TODAY Sports research, which tracked interviews using team announcements and news media reports, 15 different teams have interviewed Bieniemy in the past five hiring cycles.

Now, he’s heading to the Commanders, still as an offensive coordinator. 

Commanders’ outlook

Rivera relieved former Washington offensive coordinator Scott Turner shortly after last season ended. The search included interviews with: 

Thomas Brown, Los Angeles Rams assistant head coach/tight ends coachCharles London, Atlanta Falcons quarterbacks coachAnthony Lynn, former Chargers head coach and current San Francisco 49ers assistant head coach/running backs coachGreg Roman, former Baltimore Ravens offensive coordinatorPat Shurmur, former NFL head coach offensive coordinatorEric Studesville, Miami Dolphins associate head coach/running backs coachKen Zampese, Commanders quarterbacks coach

Who replaces Bieniemy in Kansas City?

In accordance with the Rooney Rule, the Chiefs will have to interview at least one external minority candidate for their offensive coordinator vacancy. Quarterbacks coach Matt Nagy, however, is a leading candidate for the the job, NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport reported.

Nagy served as the Chiefs’ offensive coordinator from 2016-17 before being hired as the Chicago Bears’ head coach. He returned to the staff this past fall after he was let go by the Bears. 

Follow Chris Bumbaca on Twitter @BOOMbaca.

SALT LAKE CITY – Ben Affleck as Phil Knight. Matt Damon as Sonny Vaccaro. Viola Davis as Deloris Jordan. Chris Tucker as Howard White. Marlon Wayans as George Raveling.   

 ‘Air,’ the new movie directed by Affleck and written by Alex Convery, tells the story of Nike’s pursuit to sign Michael Jordan and rescue the shoe and apparel company’s fledgling basketball division.

Nike’s gamble and Jordan’s decision changed the sneaker world almost immediately and continues to have an impact in fashion, sports and marketing 40 years later.

Air Jordans turned into a cultural phenomenon, selling millions shoes, making millions of dollars and leading to the Jordan Brand line of shoes and apparel under the Nike umbrella.

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The film does not include anyone playing Jordan – “Because I thought that the minute I turned the camera on somebody and asked the audience to believe that that person was Michael Jordan, the whole movie falls apart,” Affleck said.

Jordan had just one request: Viola Davis must play Jordan’s mom.

Affleck met with a small group of reporters to discuss the film, which reunites him with his good friend Matt Damon. ‘Air’ is the first film with their new production company called Artists Equity. The film is out in theaters on April 5.

Questions and answers have been edited for length and clarity.

Q: What was the inspiration for this movie?

Affleck: ‘There is no one inspiration for this. It’s not a story from any one person’s point of view. It’s really my own look at these events, and if it’s about anything, it’s about what Michael Jordan meant to the sporting world, to the world at large. The way he was and what he did transformed sports, transformed sports marketing, transformed the way athletes were compensated, treated.’

Q: This is nothing like ‘Argo,’ of course, but it’s a period piece where the audience knows the ending going into it. Is there something about telling these types of stories that you like where, you know, it’s not so much about getting to the ending, but how it got done?  

Affleck: ‘That’s interesting you say that because it’s actually very much like ‘Argo’ in that regard from a purely technical standpoint. Like, if you remove what the actual plot details, the specifics of the plot details are, and look at it from a mechanical structural point of view as an exercise, it’s exactly that. Like, I hate that. It makes your job just much harder, and I looked at it like, ‘(Why do) I keep painting myself into this corner where (I) choose this story and then realize, like right at the beginning, the audience knows how it ends.’

‘So you’ve lost the ability to surprise the audience with the ending in any way. But I think what it does for me as a director, because I’m a real believer in the simple principle of, the sort of duality inherent in filmmaking, which is that have-to-have: the movie has to feel realistic, it has to feel authentic, and it has to surprise the audience. … Initially what I remember talking to Matt and saying is ‘I feel like this movie’s got to be 90 minutes.’ Like you could never be bored at any moment. What people are telling you has to be new, funny, insightful, revelatory, or it’s going to be out of the movie.’

Q: What kind of level of cooperation did you get from Michael and/or what are some discussions you might have had before the meeting?

Affleck: ‘There’s no story without him. I’m not interested in doing a movie that Michael feels is inappropriate or doesn’t reflect how he feels about the story. By the same token, when I reached out to him – and I’ve been fortunate enough to have a few interactions with him, get to know him a little bit over the years – one of the things that was really telling about Michael was that I got the sense that he was not interested in somebody doing hagiography or a self-aggrandizing.

‘He was like, ‘Hey, here’s a few things, that this is what I know and this is what’s meaningful to me.’ He didn’t seek to have any input about anything around at all that happened that he didn’t have first person information about. I thought he had an extraordinary integrity in that way. He was probably the only person I talked to who didn’t want to editorialize about everybody else.”

Q: How did this come about?

Affleck: ‘I wasn’t thinking about doing the story at all until I got the script from Skydance and Mandalay, and I thought, ‘Wow, this is a spectacular story,’ and what I liked was that it was a story about people aspiring to something and struggling, each of them struggling, and it felt very real, but also felt like an opportunity for humor, pathos, and passion, and meaning. Also, a big part of this was we started this new company, this new studio, that sought to build this new model of financing and producing movies that would compensate artists in a reputable, equitable way, and I want to try to fight to demonstrate and show the value in dramas. …

‘Got the script, talked to Matt. I said, ‘Hey, do you want to play this part, work on this with me?’ He loved it. We were starting this company, we were like, ‘This is a perfect movie to use to launch this company,’ and we were engaged in closing the financing, and putting together the deal, and one of the things we were looking for was a project that we could use to prove the model. The themes of this movie were really resonant with some of the ideas underpinning this new business that we wanted to start. So it was a really fitting effort in that way.”

Q: What was it like working with and directing your friend Matt Damon?

Affleck: ‘I can’t imagine having more fun, and the one thing that made me think is why haven’t we been doing this for 20 years? I think we kind of made a mistake, and thought, ‘Oh, people associate us with one another too much, and it’ll get over-branded, or associated as sort of Matt and Ben,’ when we first came out, and then we ended up going our own ways, and I remember sitting there with him, saying, ‘I wish we hadn’t. I wish we had spent more (time doing movies together).’ Because what happens in life is that your life in large measure just turns out to be the people you’re working with, because that’s the people you’re spending so much time with, and the lesson for me was it matters so much more (spending time with) the people that you love and respect, and like being around, and who respect you and treat you well, and you feel comfortable with, than it does how much money you make, or whatever accolades you get, or titles, or something that people give you. That’s the fruit of life, and I’m glad I figured it out for us.’