LeBron James has Nike.

Dwight Howard has adidas.

Titus Ashby has Thomas the Tank Engine.

Ashby, who turned 2 on Jan. 25, is the latest viral sports star on YouTube. The video of his various trick shots was posted on Sunday by his father, Joseph Ashby, and has more than 914,000 views.

The video is a compilation of various basketball shots by Titus from last August to January. In the video, Titus nails some shots lying on his back, shooting down the stairs, and over his older siblings, and he hits nothing but net on a 7-foot high basket at a local gym near his home in Derby, Kan. (all using smaller balls).

And when it comes to official logos on his threads, Titus wears (practically) nothing but Thomas the Tank Engine.

Shooting the ball came naturally to Titus. The idea for a video came after he hit a no-look shot for his grandmother while his parents were out of town. "My mother-in-law was here with him and she was freaking out," Joseph Ashby, 31, told Playbook on Tuesday. "He doesn't really play with toys and his attention span is too short for movies. We just give him a ball and put it front of the basket."

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The national signing day tradition of putting a hat on is tired. Recruits can do better. If they want to really stand out and make a name for themselves during 11 hours of signing coverage, they need to start being more creative. They need to consider new ideas like these.

Tattoo reveal -- Putting on a hat is easy. Painless. But telling the world your decision by revealing a giant full-torso tattoo of your new school’s logo shows dedication. A new tattoo can also help you cover up any earlier verbal-commitment tattoos you may have etched into your flesh and now regret.

Snuggie reveal -- Why is America great? Because we can get a Snuggie of our favorite college team. There’s no reason for a recruit to limit his new school spirit to headwear when his entire body can be stylishly ensconced in school colors. Most announcements are made in the morning anyway, so this method doesn’t force a recruit to change out of his jammies.

Interpretive dance -- Oh, so football players are stupid, uncultured meatheads? People will have to change their tune when recruits begin announcing their decisions via interpretive dance. Why, is that a dance depicting the excitement and drama of the Land Run of 1889? That recruit must be committing to the Oklahoma Sooners! Is that a dance full of nothing but textbook football moves? We’ve got ourselves a new Alabama player.

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In celebration of the “Madden” video game’s 25th anniversary, EA Sports announced that the next iteration of the best-selling franchise will be titled “Madden NFL 25.”

According to the news release, the game will launch on Aug. 27 for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, with the cover athlete again being decided by a fan vote through ESPN.com and SportsNation.

This year, however, the cover vote will be separated into two brackets, with 32 current stars begging for votes on one side while 32 legends compete for a shot at the finals on the opposite side of the bracket. The top vote getters from each side will then square off in a legend-versus-current-star final that should be intriguing, to say the least.

Will we end up with a Hall of Famer going up against a superstar from the same team (think Barry Sanders versus Calvin Johnson), or will we get a rivalry for the ages, like a legendary Cowboy versus a modern-day member of the Redskins (Deion Sanders versus RGIII, for example)? Will Ray Lewis be involved, and if so, does he already count as a legend?

All those questions and more will be answered before the official “Madden” cover vote kicks off on March 11.

For ESPN The Magazine's Feb. 18 Music Issue, we gathered music playlists from the subjects of each of the feature stories. As part of our supplemental coverage on Playbook Sounds, we will be posting all of the Music Issue playlists over the next two weeks.

In ESPN The Magazine’s Music Issue, J. Freedom Du Lac writes how Beats by Dre headphones have changed the way athletes listen to music. Read the story, then check out the behind-the-scenes video and the photo gallery.

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Garrett McNamara made waves this week by catching the world's largest. Luckily, photographers were there to catch him and, in other sports venues, all sorts of athletes who made for these amazing images:

Photos of the Week: Jan. 28-31

The talk on the morning after the Super Bowl is as much about the commercials as about the game.

That ad chatter tends to be based on what spots people enjoyed most. What is often forgotten is the effectiveness of ads. In other words, what ads will result in the most incremental business?

The shocking result, according to one company's survey? Movies.

The top four Super Bowl commercials viewers said most influenced them to buy were all movies.

Zimmerman Advertising, a Florida-based marketing and advertising agency, surveyed 1,000 people before the Super Bowl, asking them opinions about the game's advertisers and if they would buy the brand. After the game, the firm surveyed another large group of people to find out what they thought of buying a particular product or service

The winner of the Z Super Poll?

"Lone Ranger," which saw a 19 percent rise in purchase intent, followed by "Fast And Furious 6" (+15%), "Oz" (+15%) and "Iron Man 3" (+12%). "Lone Ranger," "Oz" and "Iron Man 3" are films by Disney, a parent company of ESPN.

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