Cole Bishop: The Unlikely Global Ambassador of American Football

COLE BISHOP, THE ACCIDENTAL DIPLOMAT: HOW ONE AMERICAN SAFETY WITH A FRENCH NAME IS REDRAWING THE NFL’S GLOBAL MAP
By Dave’s Locker Foreign Correspondent (currently hiding from customs in a Reykjavik airport bar)

It’s hard to find a more American export these days than the National Football League, that padded pageant of concussions and commercial breaks. Yet in the league’s latest attempt to convince the rest of the planet that fourth-and-long is as universal as heartbreak, a 6’1″, 205-lb safety from Georgia—bearing the improbably European name Cole Bishop—has become the unwitting face of soft-power expansion. Yes, the same sport that once tried to sell the metric system on “yards” is now leaning on a guy whose surname sounds like a minor Anglican diocese.

Bishop, drafted by the Buffalo Bills in the 3rd round, is hardly a household name from Lagos to Lahore. But that is precisely why the NFL’s international office is salivating. He’s blank-slate enough to slap on a poster in Düsseldorf, yet sufficiently southern to reassure the domestic base that no one is surrendering the sport to soccer’s effete globalists. In other words, he’s the perfect compromise: neither overtly cosmopolitan nor stubbornly parochial—like ordering a Big Mac in Paris and finding the fries still soggy.

The league’s strategy, visible to anyone who has suffered through a 6:30 a.m. London kickoff, is to seed markets where “football” still means a round ball and theatrical ankle injuries. By 2025 the NFL plans to stage eight regular-season games outside the United States, from São Paulo to Sydney, with Bishop-labeled merch already queued up in Frankfurt’s pop-up fan zones. The thinking: if Europeans can warm to a man whose job title is literally “safety,” perhaps they’ll overlook the part where human bodies are weaponized for three hours every Sunday.

Global implications? Start with television rights. DAZN, the streaming platform that has hemorrhaged cash like a rookie QB in the red zone, just paid nine figures for exclusive NFL coverage in 200+ territories. Their marketing team insists Bishop’s “clean-cut, tackle-first vibe” tests well in focus groups from Bangkok to Bogotá. Translation: he’s less likely than, say, an Antonio Brown-type implosion to trigger awkward subtitles. Meanwhile, Chinese state broadcaster CCTV—ever wary of promoting violent Americana—has reportedly approved highlight packages featuring Bishop, citing his “disciplined angle of pursuit” as a metaphor for social harmony. Somewhere, George Orwell is updating his fantasy team.

Then there’s the geopolitical undercard. The U.S. State Department’s Sports Diplomacy Division (motto: “Because ping-pong worked once”) has floated the idea of dispatching Bishop on off-season goodwill tours. Picture it: a 23-year-old in a tailored suit attempting to explain pass-interference rules to a roomful of bewildered Norwegian teenagers who grew up on cross-country skiing. If that doesn’t cement transatlantic bonds, nothing will—except maybe another submarine deal.

Of course, the cynics among us—hello, dear reader—might argue that exporting the NFL is less about cultural exchange and more about exporting $14 Bud Light drafts. Bishop himself seems vaguely aware of his role as human billboard. In a recent Zoom call with international reporters, he admitted he’d never left North America until the league flew him to London for a promotional clinic. Asked what he knew about British culture, he replied, “Y’all drive on the wrong side and have weird bacon.” Diplomatic immunity revoked.

Still, the broader significance is hard to ignore. At a moment when globalization feels like a dirty word—tariffs, TikTok bans, and the slow-motion divorce of the UK from itself—the NFL is gambling that a single athlete with a cross-cultural surname can paper over a planet’s worth of resentment. If Bishop breaks up a pass in Munich this autumn and a kid in Mumbai decides to buy a Bills jersey instead of a Bayern Munich kit, the league will chalk it up as a win. And if he doesn’t? Well, there’s always next year’s draft, where another charmingly generic defender awaits his turn as the world’s most improbable envoy.

In the end, Cole Bishop’s greatest contribution may be confirming an ancient truth: whether you’re selling democracy or defensive schemes, nothing travels faster than a well-timed highlight reel—except, perhaps, the realization that everyone, everywhere, enjoys watching someone else get flattened for their entertainment. The world, after all, is one giant stadium, and we’re all just trying not to be the guy who misses the tackle.