Ohio State vs Washington: How One American Football Game Convinced the World to Watch Unpaid Athletes on a School Night
Ohio State vs Washington: When a College Football Game Pretends to Matter to the World
HOUSTON—In a cavernous stadium the size of a small principality, two American collegiate armies will collide Monday night while the rest of Earth politely pretends to watch. The “College Football Playoff National Championship” pits the Ohio State Buckeyes against the Washington Huskies, an event that ESPN will beam to 190-plus countries, proving once again that the United States can export anything—even a parochial grudge match dressed up as planetary destiny.
From Buenos Aires to Bangalore, sports bars will flicker to life at unholy hours, serving lukewarm lager to expats who miss the taste of home and to locals who think a “Buckeye” is either a throat lozenge or a failed cryptocurrency. The game’s official tagline is “All In,” which is marketing-ese for “please ignore the unpaid labor generating billions in revenue while the NCAA clutches amateurism tighter than a Swiss banker clutches secrecy.”
Global implications? Oh, they abound, if you squint. The broadcast will chew through enough electricity to power Moldova for a fortnight, a carbon footprint shrugged off with the same breezy optimism Americans reserve for student-loan balances. Meanwhile, Chinese manufacturers—already the silent MVPs of every American jersey, helmet decal, and foam finger—will toast the spectacle with a Tsingtao or three, confident that supply-chain diplomacy is the only diplomacy still functioning.
Europe, bless its regulatory heart, will feign indifference while secretly live-streaming the fourth quarter on phones under café tables. The continent’s football purists will scoff at the word “football” being applied to a sport that mostly uses hands, then return to their own matches, where the only concussion protocol is a splash of magic spray and societal amnesia.
Africa, still waiting for reparations or at least a decent trade deal, will receive the game via satellite as part of a “cultural exchange package,” which is State-Department-speak for soft power wrapped in a Nike swoosh. Local commentators will gamely explain why a “Husky” is not a malamute but a purple-clad mascot for a university whose endowment rivals the GDP of Sierra Leone, minus the Ebola outbreaks.
Down in Australia, the clash begins at lunchtime Tuesday, allowing Sydney office workers to gamble on the over/under while pretending to analyze quarterly spreadsheets. The Aussies will admire the violence—always have a soft spot for organized concussion—and quietly calculate how many rugby players could be bought with the combined athletic-department budgets on display.
For the Middle East, the game serves as a brief, blessed distraction from realignment talks of another kind. In Dubai, expatriate Ohioans will gather in air-conditioned majlis-style sports lounges, their MAGA-red jerseys an ironic counterpoint to the kanduras swirling around them. The Huskies’ purple will be mistaken for a show of solidarity with some distant royal line, and no one will bother to correct the misconception.
Back in the States, politicians will tweet breathless platitudes about “young men chasing greatness,” blissfully omitting that the greatest chase is for the transfer portal and an NIL check big enough to cover rent on a Columbus duplex. The halftime show—some pop star lip-syncing while fireworks trace corporate logos—will be dissected by pundits who once covered Fallujah but now analyze choreography like it’s the Treaty of Versailles.
As the confetti cannons fire and the winning coach hoists a 30-pound hunk of Waterford crystal, the international feed will cut to commercial: an ad for a German luxury SUV driven by a grinning quarterback who, statistically, will blow out his ACL before the lease expires. Somewhere in the cosmos, a lonely Voyager probe sails on, its golden record still insisting we are a species capable of Bach and calculus. If only it had waited forty-five years for this particular broadcast, it might’ve chosen silence instead.
The final whistle will blow, the planet will keep warming, and the real winner, as ever, will be the broadcast conglomerate whose stock price spikes regardless of who covers the spread. But fear not, dear global viewer: in just eight short months, the NFL preseason kicks off, and we can all pretend this matters again.
