The Walrus of Global Gridiron: How Andy Reid Became the 21st Century’s Last Emperor
Andy Reid and the Last Empire: How One Overalls-Wearing Kansan Became the NFL’s Global Overlord
By Dave’s Locker International Desk
PARIS—Somewhere on the Boulevard Saint-Michel, a philosophy student is arguing that the twenty-first century has no emperors. He should ask the barman streaming Chiefs games on his phone at 3 a.m. local time. Because while Europe was busy debating micro-dosing and debt ceilings, Andy Reid—part walrus, part offensive savant, full-time paternal sphinx—quietly built the only empire still expanding in 2024. The territory? Minds, screens, and the last remaining attention spans of a planet that can’t decide if it’s dying or just reloading.
Let’s zoom out. The NFL’s annual revenue now tops $18 billion, eclipsing the GDP of Iceland and, more importantly, making Roger Goodell the unelected finance minister of a nation-state that plays on Sundays. Who is the viceroy of this synthetic country? Not Tom Brady’s crypto grin, not Taylor Swift’s private-jet contrails, but a 66-year-old man who dresses like he’s permanently en route to a backyard barbecue in Minsk. Andy Reid’s visage—mustache like a Cold War interrogator, clock-management face like a hung-over airline pilot—has become the flag emoji for an age when American soft power is mostly soft serve.
Global implications? Consider this week’s headlines. In Manila, jeepney drivers debate whether Mahomes is better than Marino using data plans they can’t really afford. In Lagos, counterfeit “Chiefs Kingdom” hoodies outsell the national soccer jersey three-to-one. And in Kyiv, a trench-warfare Telegram channel pauses the drone footage to argue about whether Reid’s screen-pass addiction is genius or cowardice. When your playbook is discussed in the same breath as artillery grids, congratulations—you’re no longer regional.
Reid’s genius is imperial in the most post-modern sense: he colonizes time. American football, that four-hour commercial occasionally interrupted by violence, is an attention tax on the world’s most precious resource. Reid has figured out how to make the tax feel like a dividend. While European football managers cling to century-old formations like holy relics, Reid treats X’s and O’s like Tinder swipes—if it works, super-like it; if not, ghost it by halftime. The rest of the globe, desperate for any distraction from inflation, wildfires, and the slow-motion TikTok of civilization, gratefully signs the terms of surrender.
And surrender they have. The NFL’s international series now colonizes London, Munich, São Paulo—basically any city with a stadium large enough for a flyover and a mediocre halftime act. Each game is less a sporting event than a soft-power expo: F-18s roaring overhead while Reid calmly diagrams a shovel pass on the sideline, as if to say, “Yes, we have stealth bombers, but have you seen our jet-motion?” The message is unmistakable: resistance is futile, here’s a cheeseburger.
Of course, empires rot from the calorie count. Reid’s own silhouette—once the friendly neighborhood dad who could hide an entire play sheet under his stomach—has become a Rorschach test for American excess. Abroad, commentators note that the coach’s girth is itself a geopolitical flex: only a superpower could afford to let its generals reach 300 pounds and still win. Meanwhile, French TV pundits sigh that Reid’s sideline ketchup addiction is “très Baltimore,” which is either an insult or the highest compliment available in the EU.
Yet the darker joke is on us, the viewers. We tune in to escape politics, only to find the red states and blue states have been replaced by red zones and blue tent revivals. Every touchdown is a ballot cast for the eternal present, every replay review another committee meeting where nothing changes. Reid, blissfully chewing gum like a cow meditating on cud, is the perfect avatar for governance by committee that never adjourns.
So what does it mean for the world that the most stable institution left standing is coached by a man who once challenged a reporter to a cheese-steak-eating contest? It means we’ve entered the era of performative permanence: things collapse elsewhere, but the Chiefs keep converting third-and-longs. In a universe of supply-chain snarls and climate dread, there is something almost soothing about Reid’s play sheet—an inscrutable Mandala renewed weekly, promising that somewhere, somehow, the next blitz will be picked up.
Conclusion? The empire may be in decline, but the emperor just called a timeout to ice his own kicker, and we’re all still watching. Somewhere in that paradox lies the secret of Andy Reid’s global reign: he wins without appearing to try, consumes without seeming to swallow, and exports a game so baroque it distracts from the baroque collapse happening outside the stadium lights. If that’s not imperial, nothing is. Turn up the volume, humanity. The walrus has the conch.
