How an Indiana State vs Montana Football Game Quietly Shook Global Breakfast Prices

Indiana State vs Montana: A Quiet Midwestern Rumble That Somehow Matters to the Rest of the Planet
By Our Man in the Cheap Seats, Dave’s Locker Global Desk

PARIS—Somewhere between a baguette shortage and the latest French pension strike, the news ticker flashed the words: “Indiana State vs Montana.” Instantly, three-quarters of the world yawned, two Parisian hipsters asked if those were new craft-beer labels, and a hedge-fund algorithm in Singapore pinged a buy order on wheat futures. Welcome, dear reader, to the glorious insignificance that somehow still rattles the planetary cage.

Let’s set the scene. Indiana State—motto: “Not the one with the racecars”—fields a modest football squad whose players, according to international scouting reports, are “built like corn silos but run like dial-up internet.” Facing them is Montana, whose entire state population could fit inside a single Mumbai train car, yet whose fans travel so far they rack up enough frequent-flyer miles to qualify for EU citizenship. Last Saturday in Terre Haute (French translation: “High Ground,” which is about as existentially optimistic as you can get in Indiana), the two met in what the NCAA politely calls an FCS “showcase,” and what the rest of the globe calls “a Tuesday.”

But here’s the cosmic punchline: the game finished 27-20, Montana edging Indiana State in a contest whose ripple effects are now being felt from Murmansk to Mombasa. How? Allow me to explain without spilling my €9 espresso.

First, the global supply chain. Indiana’s fields feed half the planet’s hogs, and Montana’s wheat ends up in everything from Algerian couscous to Japanese cup noodles. Any time 22 padded Americans collide on artificial turf, satellite imagery shows combine harvesters slowing ever so slightly, giving commodities traders in London an excuse to spike grain prices “on weather-adjacent sentiment.” Translation: a missed extra point in Terre Haute just made your croissant 3¢ more expensive. Liberté, égalité, inflation.

Second, the geopolitical optics. While the U.S. State Department drones on about “rules-based order,” both teams happily accepted a six-figure check from a betting conglomerate headquartered in Curaçao, whose board of directors includes a former Belarusian energy minister and a silent partner rumored to be the Dalai Lama’s tax attorney. The livestream, broadcast via a Maltese satellite to 73 countries, was briefly interrupted by Russian hackers who replaced the third-quarter ads with a looping GIF of a bear on a unicycle drinking Pepsi. Cyber Command called it “a minor nuisance.” Pepsi called it “robust engagement.”

Third, the cultural exchange program nobody asked for. Indiana State’s kicker, a graduate transfer from Melbourne who arrived thinking Terre Haute was a type of cheese, has become an accidental TikTok star in Indonesia for his pre-kick ritual: eating a single chicken tender while humming ABBA’s “Money Money Money.” Meanwhile, Montana’s linebacker shipped a box of local huckleberry jam to a fan in Lagos who’d never heard of Montana but now insists on pronouncing it “Mon-tan-ya” like a Bond villain. Soft power, delivered via USPS flat-rate box.

And what of the fans? In the stands, a delegation of German engineering students took copious notes on stadium Wi-Fi speeds, concluding that the only thing slower than Indiana State’s secondary was the concession stand’s contactless reader. They left muttering about “digital underinvestment” and wondering if the Midwest is what happens when a region tries to save money by running its entire infrastructure off a single AA battery.

Still, the real winner may be irony itself. Two landlocked states with a combined coastline of zero meters just influenced maritime shipping lanes because the post-game fireworks spooked a flock of migratory birds whose GPS-like magnetic sense redirected them over the Atlantic, delaying a cargo vessel full of Ukrainian sunflower oil. Somewhere, Poseidon checks the commodities index and sighs.

In conclusion, Indiana State vs Montana was billed as a quaint collegiate pastime, but in our hyper-connected age of accidental consequences, it turned out to be a Rube Goldberg machine aimed squarely at your breakfast table. So the next time someone tells you a Midwestern football game doesn’t matter, remind them that somewhere in Dakar, a baguette is now 3¢ pricier because a kicker from Melbourne missed a 42-yarder after an ill-timed ABBA earworm. The world is small, the jokes write themselves, and the universe, as always, has a wicked sense of humor.