Top 25 College Football: A Global Satire in Shoulder Pads By Dave’s Locker Foreign Correspondent, still jet-lagged from covering a Bolivian llama race The American ritual known as the AP Top-25 college football poll dropped this week, and—like a drone strike on good taste—it instantly colonized timelines from Lagos to Lahore. Why, you ask, should…
Jeremy McNichols: The Running Back Who Ran All the Way to the End of the Earth (and Found a Job in Doha) If you’d told a 10-year-old Jeremy McNichols in 2005 that his future résumé would one day list stops in Boise, Nashville, Jacksonville, Denver, Atlanta, Tampa, and—why not—Doha, he probably would’ve asked whether the…
Barcelona vs. Getafe: A Micro-El Clásico in the Shadow of a Burning Planet By the time the Camp Nou—sorry, the Spotify Camp Nou—flickers to life this Sunday, half the planet will already be doom-scrolling about methane leaks, crypto crashes, or whichever missile test North Korea scheduled for prime time. Yet, in a tidy 105 ×…
MILAN — On the surface, it’s just another Serie A fixture: Inter versus Sassuolo, the blue-and-black aristocrats against the fluorescent green upstarts from Modena’s concrete hinterland. Yet, from a safe distance—say, a barstool in Lagos or a betting app in Manila—the match becomes a perfect parable for the age: a study in how late-stage capitalism…
Saquon Barkley and the Quiet Collapse of the American Empire Dispatch from the Department of Late-Stage Spectacle, International Desk By the time Saquon Barkley’s cleats hit the artificial tundra of New Jersey this autumn, several things will already be on fire: the Arctic permafrost, British prime-ministerial credibility, and—if the betting apps are to be believed—the…
AJ Brown, the Philadelphia Eagles’ human highlight reel, is currently doing to NFL secondaries what global supply chains did to common sense during the pandemic—namely, shredding them into small, expensive pieces and shipping them overnight to stunned recipients. While Americans debate whether he’s the second coming of Terrell Owens with better manners or simply a…
The Man Who Guards the Quarterback—And the Fragile Illusion of American Exceptionalism By Diego Serrano, International Desk, Dave’s Locker To the rest of the planet, Lane Johnson is merely the 6’6″, 325-pound right tackle who keeps Philadelphia’s Jalen Hurts from becoming a chalk outline on the Lincoln Financial Field turf. But step back—say, to the…
The Gladiators of Inglewood: How the LA Rams Became a Global Parable of Excess By Marco “Gravedigger” Alvarez, Senior Cynic-at-Large LOS ANGELES—In most places on earth, a football team is merely eleven sweaty men and their accountant. Here, the Rams are a $5.4 billion pop-up cathedral whose consecration rites include drone swarms, crypto giveaways, and…
Minnesota Vikings: A Frozen Saga of Nordic Nostalgia and Global Existential Dread By Dave’s Locker International Desk The Minnesota Vikings—a team named after Scandinavian seafarers who once terrorized Europe with axes and questionable facial hair—have become an unlikely export of existential angst wrapped in purple polyester. From the fjords of Tromsø to the karaoke bars…
Rhamondre Stevenson and the Geopolitics of a Six-Yard Gain By Matteo “The Diplomat” Dragović, filing from a press box that smells faintly of bratwurst and existential dread Somewhere between the 40-yard line and the edge of civilizational collapse, Rhamondre Stevenson—a 6-foot, 247-pound human mortar round from Las Vegas by way of Oklahoma—carries the hopes of…
Zack Baun and the Global Theater of American Football: A Small Linebacker, a Large Stage By the time Zack Baun’s name appeared on NFL draft boards in 2020, the world had already endured a pandemic preview, watched Australia burn on live stream, and discovered that the most coveted commodity on earth was not oil or…
Across the planet’s bruised time zones, someone is always kicking a ball. While you debate whether to reheat yesterday’s coffee or finally answer that email, 22 souls in Lima are sliding through mud so thick it could double as a spa mask, and a stadium in Lagos is vibrating with the kind of collective delirium…
