Global Eye Roll as Ohio State Tries to Draft Bo Jackson’s Ghost—A Monument to Amnesia

**The Ghost of Bo Jackson Haunts Columbus, and the World Watches with Popcorn**

COLUMBUS, Ohio — In a universe where college football recruiting scandals erupt with the predictability of a Swiss cuckoo clock, the latest twist involving Bo Jackson’s spectral presence at Ohio State has achieved the rare feat of making the entire planet pause mid-scroll. Yes, *that* Bo Jackson—the Nike demigod who once shattered baseball bats over his thigh and outran physics in shoulder pads—has been invoked in Buckeye territory like a long-lost patron saint of biomechanical miracles. International observers, already numb to American higher education’s habit of turning 19-year-olds into IPOs, are leaning in with the morbid curiosity usually reserved for slow-motion train derailments or British cabinet reshuffles.

Let’s be clear: Jackson never attended Ohio State. He attended Auburn, where he collected a Heisman Trophy and presumably a few credits in “Being Bo Jackson 101.” Yet a rogue cabal of boosters—bored oligarchs whose fortunes smell faintly of soybean futures and payday lending—has reportedly floated the idea of erecting a life-sized bronze of Jackson outside the Woody Hayes Center. Why? Because branding, darling. Nothing says “We’re serious about 2025” like annexing the mythology of a man who hasn’t played a down since the Soviet Union was still a going concern. Across the Atlantic, European football ultras are cackling into their *pilsners*: *Americans are literally importing legends now? What’s next, a Messi statue at Leeds?*

The global implications are deliciously bleak. In Nairobi sports bars, patrons watching NFL RedZone between English Premier League matches now wager Kenyan shillings on how many more decades American universities can milk the amateur-athlete farce before the entire enterprise collapses under the weight of its own scented candle revenue. In Seoul, AI startups feed the Jackson-Ohio State rumor mill into sentiment-analysis engines, proving—scientifically—that irony has achieved negative yield. Even the Taliban, rumored to have a Fantasy College Football league in the Hindu Kush (scoring settings: 1 point per public execution, PPR), reportedly kicked the tires on adding the Buckeyes’ backfield, only to learn that Jackson remains technically ineligible because, well, he’s 61 and busy selling hunting bows on Instagram Live.

Meanwhile, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime lists “college football recruiting” right between arms trafficking and counterfeit antimalarials in its 2024 threat assessment. Secretary-General António Guterres, a man who once described Syrian peace talks as “simpler than the College Football Playoff selection protocol,” declined to comment on Jackson, though insiders say he muttered something about “post-trathletic thportth” before retreating into his espresso. In short, the world recognizes the Buckeye statue scheme for what it is: the final privatization of memory itself, a hedge-fund seizure of nostalgia, the logical endpoint of a civilization that turned a 40-yard dash into a futures market.

Back in Ohio, locals greet the hullabaloo with the weary stoicism of people who’ve survived river fires and LeBron’s Decision. “If it puts butts in seats and sells $14 bratwursts, slap his face on a mural,” shrugs Megan, a third-generation season-ticket holder who requested anonymity because her employer, a Columbus fintech unicorn, forbids “non-quantifiable optimism.” She notes that international students now comprise 18% of the student body, many lured by TikTok videos promising “American campus life,” which apparently translates to “subsidized gladiator camp with Panda Express.” They arrive expecting *Dead Poets Society* and leave with chronic traumatic encephalopathy and a communications degree—truly the neoliberal dream package.

So, as sculptors bid on the Jackson commission—one proposal features him hurdling a linebacker while holding a tuition invoice stamped “PAST DUE”—the planet keeps spinning, indifferent. We are all, in some sense, Ohio State boosters now, monetizing yesterday’s heroes for tomorrow’s clout. The statue will rise, cable networks will cut to commercial, and somewhere a child in Lagos will sell a Bo Jackson rookie card to pay for data to watch *Squid Game*. The circle of (after)life closes, lubricated by bitcoin and tears.

And when the bronze is finally unveiled, the international press corps will gather, record the spectacle, and file 600 words of sardonic copy before hopping the next flight to wherever absurdity germinates next—because in the attention economy, even ghosts have agents, and the invoice is always due.