WMU vs Illinois: A Microscopic Midwestern Skirmish the World Pretends to Ignore by Special Correspondent M. LeClair, filing from a windowless bar in Kinshasa where the satellite feed keeps cutting out For the uninitiated, Western Michigan University (WMU) and the University of Illinois are not nuclear powers—at least not officially—so the 27-21 upset in Champaign,…
UConn Football: The World’s Most Expensive Geography Lesson By Roland Devereaux, Senior Correspondent, Dave’s Locker Storrs, Connecticut – A place whose greatest export is alumni who pronounce “Connecticut” correctly, and whose football team has recently become an unlikely case study in globalization’s crueler punchlines. While European leagues are busy stockpiling Qatari cash and South American…
A Left-Hander’s Fastball as Global Rorschach Test: Max Fried and the Geopolitics of a Curve PARIS — Somewhere in the Marais, an art dealer is trying to flip a signed Max Fried jersey for the price of a studio flat in Lisbon, arguing that the Atlanta Braves left-hander is the closest thing 2024 has to…
UFC 320: When the Octagon Becomes the World’s Most Honest Diplomatic Channel Dave’s Locker International Desk | São Paulo → Las Vegas → Riyadh By the time the blood had dried on the canvas at UFC 320, three continents had already filed diplomatic cables about the main event. Not because the Dagestani champion had delivered…
Pachuca 3–1 Cruz Azul: A Tiny Mining Town Reminds the Planet That Money Still Can’t Buy Everything—Except Maybe VAR The Estadio Hidalgo sits 2,400 metres above sea level, far enough from Mexico City that the smog thins and the oxygen thins faster. On Tuesday night, as a chill wind whipped across the Sierra Madre, Pachuca’s…
The Telegraph & Argus: Yorkshire’s Last Provincial Punch Line in a World That Forgot to Laugh By Our Man in the Global Waiting Room, Still Holding Yesterday’s Paper Bradford, West Yorkshire – If you mention the Telegraph & Argus at Davos, the average delegate will assume you’ve mispronounced “cryptographic argot” and invite you to pitch…
The Great Boca-vs-Westchester Proxy War: How FAU vs FIU Became Earth’s Most Watched Slight Inconvenience By Dave’s International Desk, still jet-lagged from a layover in Doha where the duty-free screens were showing cornhole On the surface, tonight’s collision between Florida Atlantic University and Florida International University is a mid-week Conference USA tilt played in a…
Eastern Kentucky vs Marshall: Appalachian Grudge Match as Proxy Theater for the World’s Slow-Motion Collapse Dave’s Locker – International Desk HUNTINGTON, West Virginia – While COP28 delegates in Dubai were congratulating themselves on a lukewarm promise to maybe, possibly, think about phasing down fossil fuels “when convenient,” roughly 22,000 people wedged themselves into two decaying…
The World Holds Its Breath While South Carolina Argues Over a Football Score By Dave’s Foreign Correspondent, currently sober enough to file copy from a bar with Wi-Fi that smells faintly of regret and onion rings. In a week when the Arctic belched out its hottest June on record, when a German bank quietly asked…
Match of the Day: A Global Spectacle, Sponsored by Existential Dread By Our Foreign Desk Correspondent, somewhere between the bar and the abyss LONDON—Somewhere in the bowels of Broadcasting House, the BBC’s flagship football digest rolls off the production line every Saturday night like a precision-guided missile aimed squarely at the nation’s collective sofa. But…
Sainsbury’s Argos: The Quiet British Invasion of Global Living Rooms By the time you finish reading this sentence, another Argos “Fast Track” van will have screeched away from a Sainsbury’s car park somewhere in the Home Counties, bound for a semi-detached house whose occupant just ordered a £39.99 air fryer at 2:17 a.m. in a…
Tudum: The Global Echo Chamber We Never Asked For If you’ve ever wondered what the sound of late-stage capitalism clearing its throat would be, Netflix has helpfully provided the answer: “Tudum.” A two-syllable onomatopoeic belch that now doubles as a fan-festival, streaming strategy, and, increasingly, a soft-power flex. Last week the traveling circus—equal parts trade-show,…
