Four months removed from the conclusion of his NFL debut, one in which he earned the league’s Rookie of the Year honors for his performance, Saquon Barkley’s career took another significant leap Monday night in New York.

And it was certainly an easy one to spot.

Barkley, the 22-year old with just one season of professional experience playing for a New York Giants franchise that finished in last place in the NFC East at just 5-11, was an attendee of the 2019 Met Gala. He did so while wearing a headline-grabbing, head-to-toe black ensemble known as a “short suit.”

Worth a laugh for its outrageousness - which was the point of the night's “camp” theme this year - the reality of Barkley’s mere presence at “fashion’s biggest night out” is of no small significance. Just the opposite, in fact, for his present and future, and potentially even that of the Penn State football program happy to continue to soak up his shining superstardom.

At an invitation-only event considered one of the most coveted through the whole year, Barkley was on the list.

Certainly, that Barkley is famous within the world of sports is already well-established.

He’d already been a phenomenon during his time with the Nittany Lions, first for hurdling defenders, then for his jaw-dropping runs, and eventually for the sheer enormity of his leg muscles. A player capable of generating his own highlight reel worth of carries, catches, and kickoff returns within the span of a single game, those qualities led to notoriety extending beyond the confines of Penn State or even the Big Ten.

So upon his gearing up for the 2018 NFL Draft, that Barkley was the one gracing the cover of Sports Illustrated came as no surprise. The story accompanying it, however, offered some of the pretext that, more than a year later, further illuminates his Met Gala appearance.

“Barkley’s team believes he has the potential to be the Face of the League, position bias be damned,” the story reads. “It may be a quixotic goal, but it is not hard to see why the group feels that way. Barkley is jocular, thoughtful, self-aware and rigorous about making eye contact… A broadcast journalism major, he’s at ease in front of a camera; it doesn’t take much straining of the imagination to envision him bantering with Jimmy Kimmel or hosting Saturday Night Live. But most important, he is willing. Willing to sit for interviews—he says he actually enjoys them—and willing to participate in (and at times orchestrate) a three-hour photo shoot. He’s neither bashful about his goals nor hesitant to work to achieve them.”

In many ways, Barkley’s very invitation to the Met Gala represents yet another step toward achieving those goals.

The elite among the fashion, entertainment, media, music, and film industries were all there, yes; Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Celine Dion, Kim Kardashian and Kanye West, Idris Elba, James Corden, etc. But the athletes on hand offer a better indicator of the significance of Barkley’s presence.

In one photograph, he can be seen with Tom Brady, Julian Edelman, and Odell Beckham, Jr.

Other athletes at this year’s gala included Dwayne Wade, Maria Sharapova, Serena Williams, Colin Kaepernick, Alex Rodriguez, and Formula One star Lewis Hamilton. Stars from the world of athletics in recent years also include snowboarder Shaun White, Cam Newton, and Roger Federer, to name a few.

Names with cache and notoriety beyond the world of sports, recognizable to the public at large who wouldn’t consider preprogramming ESPN into their remote controls, this is a turn into that realm of superstardom for Barkley. Some of these are names with individual sponsorship deals worth millions of dollars, some with their own media empires to go along with those advertising partnerships, all on a level beyond even the obscene wealth of professional athletics' status quo.

Clearly considered among the already established celebrities, or those on the verge of becoming one - having been individually approved by Vogue editor-in-chief and Met Gala co-chair Anna Wintour - Barkley is well on his way to becoming exactly that.

And if becoming the Face of the League is Barkley's ultimate goal, saying nothing of his charitable work and the goals that are baked into his on-field performances, this is yet another avenue from which he'll get there.