Darin Gantt

CHARLOTTE Panthers backup quarterbackAndy Daltonwas walking from an offensive meeting to a quarterbacks meeting Monday morning, when he turned on his phone and got a notification.

1-0.

Cool, he thought, turning it off before getting back to work at his day job.

Then he got a few more as his next meeting ended, and he turned his phone back on.

2-0. 3-0. Then 5-0.

"Did you see this?" Dalton said with a grin. "This is pretty cool."

By the middle of the afternoon, he had a new line to add to his resume, along with being 26th in NFL history in passing yards and touchdowns. Monday, thanks to another phone notification, he could officially call himself an owner of a Premier League soccer team.

Yes, you read that correctly.

Two years ago, Dalton bought a "very, very, very, very low percentage" stake (that's four verys, in case you're counting) in Leeds United, just as they were being relegated from the Premier League.

"As an investor, that was great," he said. "Buy low."

Monday, Leeds earned promotion back to the Premier League thanks to a 6-0 win over Stoke, coupled with Burnley's 2-1 win over Sheffield United in the afternoon, Eastern Daylight Time.

So now, when he runs into Panthers owner David Tepper in the cafeteria on work days, they'll have more in common.

"Yeah, we have owners meetings and stuff that we've got to go to," Dalton said with a laugh.

While his share of Leeds isn't quite like Tepper's in the Panthers (more than four verys of difference), there's an aspect of it that Dalton understands at multiple levels.

"It's a fun thing to have some money in, you know?" he said, with an emphasis on the "fun" part.

He hasn't actually been to the city of Leeds or Elland Road, the home stadium of the once-powerhouse club. (Leeds was the final champion of the English Football League's First Division in 1991-92 before the top teams broke away to form the current Premier League.) And he sheepishly admits he doesn't know all the players but keeps up with it as he can while being an NFL quarterback, a husband, a father of three, and an occasional tennis player.

"I do have a lot going on," he said.

His interest in soccer began as a passing one, beyond being a participant.

"I mean, I grew up playing soccer, I knew the rules, but I didn't really know anything about the business of the sport," he said.

He was first hooked by watching Amazon's "All or Nothing" documentary about Manchester City's 2018 season, early in a run that saw them win five Premier League titles in six years. That was enough to intrigue him and provide an introduction to the sport.

"So I just watched it, and I was like, I'm kind of hooked on this; this is sweet," he said. "And you kind of figure out how the Premier League works; there's relegation and promotion. I didn't know any of that kind of stuff. So, it's like, OK, well, they're playing a Premier League game, but now they're playing an FA Cup game, and now they're playing a Champions League game. They just mix games in, so they're playing three or four competitions at once. It's wild how the whole thing works.

"I had no idea how any of that stuff works, and so I needed to know as a sports fan, I should understand how soccer works."

Now, he has an inside perspective or at least a "very, very, very, very low percentage" perspective of what he's into.

He knows enough to know that the team he's part of now just cashed a huge check for television revenues by moving up from the English equivalent of Triple-A to the Majors. And, he knows that unlike Manchester or London, Leeds is a one-team town, so they're in a good position to build on those earnings, now that big clubs like Manchester City, Liverpool, and Tottenham will be visiting as opposed to Preston North End, Hull City, and Plymouth Argyle (who, in one of the adorable quirks of English football, beat Liverpool in the FA Cup this year, one of those extra tournaments on the side that Dalton's only recently learned about.)

He thought Leeds were coming up a year ago, but a loss in the promotion playoff round left them in the Championship (Yes, the second division is called the Championship; just go with it before this turns into a Ted Lasso bit).

This year, there was no doubt. Leeds powered their way to 94 points through 44 games (three for each of the 27 wins, one for each of the 13 draws), securing their promotion with two games to play. And doing it in such dominant fashion Monday Joel Piroe had four first-half goals to pace the rout made it the kind of thing he could laugh about.

The Leeds promotion wasn't official until mid-afternoon, when second-place Burnley beat third-place Sheffield, at which point Dalton's phone buzzed again, informing him that he was, in fact, a Premier League owner. Sort of.

"I don't know every second of everything," he admitted. "I try to have my phone tell me when things happen."

But his draw to the sport is real. When there were a couple of soccer balls on the field of Bank of America Stadium Monday morning before they started working out, Bryce Young picked one up and started shooting imaginary hoops, Dalton was working on his footwork.

By the end of the day, he's dreaming of the day he can get to England with his family to get an up-close view of his investment.

"All my buddies are calling like, 'Dude, we've got to go,'" Dalton said. "It's a little harder when you've got a 10, 8, and 6-year-old, but it's definitely something we're looking forward to."

"But the plan is to get over there, and especially now, you know, being in the Premier League, I get to see some big clubs play."

Especially now that Leeds are one again.