The Global Gladiators: Alcorn State vs. Mississippi State and the Theater of the Absurd In the grand amphitheater of American college football—where unpaid laborers risk lifelong injury for the glory of institutions that pay their coaches in Gulfstream jets—Saturday’s pairing between Alcorn State and Mississippi State has somehow ricocheted onto the world stage. From the…
Atlético Madrid: The Last Rebellion in Football’s Age of Algorithmic Cheerfulness By Dave’s Foreign Correspondent, currently self-medicating with vermouth in a Madrid bar that still smells like Franco’s aftershave MADRID—While the rest of the planet optimizes itself into oblivion—streaming mindfulness apps between drone strikes, ordering oat-milk lattes to be delivered by teenagers who can’t spell…
Palmeiras vs Internacional: A Rumble in Brazil That Might Just Decide the Fate of Civilization (Or at Least the Weekend Mood of 215 Million People) RIO DE JANEIRO—When Palmeiras and Internacional jog onto the pitch at Allianz Parque this Sunday, the rest of the planet will be dutifully worrying about inflation, wars, and whatever new…
Atlético de Madrid: The Last Reluctant Superpower of the Age of Excess By Our Man in the Departure Lounge Somewhere between the 60-minute mark and the existential dread that passes for extra time at the Metropolitano, it hits you: Atlético de Madrid is the only elite club left that still looks faintly embarrassed about being…
Jesus Aguilar: The UFC’s Reluctant Diplomat in a World Already Punch-Drunk By the time Jesus Aguilar steps into the octagon this weekend in Las Vegas, the planet will already be nursing a collective hangover from the daily news cycle—Ukraine’s drone ballets, China’s property-sector implosion, and whatever Elon Musk tweeted at 3 a.m. local time. Enter…
Alejandro Garnacho, the 19-year-old Argentine winger who still looks like he should be sneaking into bars with a fake ID, has managed to become a geopolitical metaphor in shin pads. While most teenagers are busy failing their driving tests or discovering that love hurts, Garnacho is busy reminding us that the world’s most volatile economies…
Arkansas State Football: How a Sun Belt Sideline Became the World’s Most Honest Mirror Jonesboro, Arkansas—population 78,000, median income “let’s not,” and home to the Red Wolves—doesn’t usually sit at the geopolitical adults’ table. Yet every autumn, when the team jogs out in scarlet helmets that gleam like a freshly opened wound, the planet’s quiet…
SEOUL—On the eastern rim of the world, where the Han River meets the Yellow Sea and the morning fog tastes faintly of soju and regret, a man named Younghoe Koo boots oblong leather into orbit and accidentally becomes a geopolitical curiosity. To the average American fan, he is the Atlanta Falcons’ reliable foot, a fantasy-football…
Star Thomas, the 26-year-old Bahamian sprinter whose name sounds like a cancelled Disney Channel pilot, has just become the fastest legal export from the Caribbean since offshore banking. Clocking 9.76 seconds in the 100 metres at the Rabat Diamond League, she shaved two-hundredths off her own personal best and, more importantly, shaved several million dollars…
Monaco FC: A Principality’s Glittering Anomaly in the Age of Football’s Imperial Overreach By Dave’s Locker, International Desk The first thing you notice about AS Monaco FC is that it shouldn’t exist. Not in the sense that, say, democracy in 2024 shouldn’t exist—more like finding a Fabergé egg in a food bank: gorgeous, valuable, and…
Gunner Stockton and the Peculiar American Sacrament of Quarterbacking by Our Man in the Cheap Seats, Somewhere Over the Atlantic Somewhere between the war in Ukraine and the latest TikTok dance craze, a 19-year-old from south Georgia named Gunner Stockton has become the object of trans-Atlantic fascination. To the rest of the planet—where “football” still…
North Texas Football: Where Gridiron Dreams Meet Geopolitical Reality By Our Man in the Airport Lounge (Still Waiting for the Non-Existent Dallas–Pyongyang Direct) Denton, Texas—population slightly smaller than Reykjavík, slightly larger than the standing army of Luxembourg—has improbably become the latest laboratory for exporting American anxiety in shoulder-pad form. The North Texas Mean Green just…
