The Last Full-Contact Diplomat: Why the World Still Cares About Jim Brown, Dead or Alive By our man in the cheap seats of global memory Cleveland, Ohio, is not, by any stretch of diplomacy, a world capital. Its river once caught fire—twice—an achievement even Beirut politely calls déclassé. Yet when news of Jim Brown’s death…
Adrian Peterson and the Global Trade in Disposable Heroes By Our Man in the Cheap Seats, Somewhere over the Mid-Atlantic PARIS—Because nothing says “universal human values” quite like a 38-year-old American running back still hawking his wares on the open market, Adrian Peterson has once again become an unlikely diplomatic incident. The NFL’s erstwhile MVP—whose…
Elijah Moore and the Global Trade in Disposable Humans By Pascal “Paz” Delacruz, Senior Correspondent, Dave’s Locker International Desk CLEVELAND—Somewhere between the Cuyahoga River and the Sea of Japan, a 23-year-old wide receiver discovered that passports, Instagram followers, and 4.3-second 40-yard-dash times do not, in fact, grant diplomatic immunity. Elijah Moore’s offseason odyssey from the…
Buffalo, New York – Population: 278,000, Average January temperature: –3 °C, Collective blood-alcohol level on game day: incalculable. Thousands of kilometres away, the good citizens of Baltimore are busy convincing themselves that crab cakes and Old Bay seasoning constitute a personality. Between these two post-industrial monuments to American decline, an oval ball will be hurled…
Niagara Falls: The World’s Most Photogenic Glitch in the Geological Matrix By Dave’s Locker International Desk From the deck of the Maid of the Mist—now rebranded, of course, as “Mist-Xperience™ Premium Voyage: Poncho Included”—you quickly realize that Niagara Falls is less a waterfall and more a global congregation of humanity’s collective short attention span. On…
COLE BISHOP, THE ACCIDENTAL DIPLOMAT: HOW ONE AMERICAN SAFETY WITH A FRENCH NAME IS REDRAWING THE NFL’S GLOBAL MAP By Dave’s Locker Foreign Correspondent (currently hiding from customs in a Reykjavik airport bar) It’s hard to find a more American export these days than the National Football League, that padded pageant of concussions and commercial…
Baltimore Ravens: America’s Gothic Opera, Now Playing on Every Continent By Our Man in Perpetual Transit Somewhere over the Mid-Atlantic, 37,000 feet above whatever fresh geopolitical disaster is brewing below, the in-flight Wi-Fi hiccups just long enough for the passenger in 14C to miss Lamar Jackson pirouette out of a collapsing pocket and flick a…
Buffalo, New York – The moment Damar Hamlin’s torso hit the turf at Highmark Stadium, the world’s collective attention dropped faster than the Dow on a Federal Reserve tantrum. From Lagos to Lisbon, smartphones pinged with push alerts like a synchronized fire drill, proving once again that nothing unites humanity quite like televised cardiac arrest….
**The World Watches America Wrestle Itself: Super Bowl LIX as Global Spectacle and Warning** While glaciers melt and supply chains crumble, approximately one-third of humanity will pause this Sunday to watch grown millionaires in colored spandex attempt territorial conquest over an oblong leather ball. Super Bowl LIX—America’s annual tribute to excess, consumerism, and ritualized violence—will…
Peyton Manning’s Kids and the Quiet Globalization of the American Quarterback Gene Pool By Our Correspondent, Somewhere Between a Munich Beer Hall and the Delhi Duty-Free In the pandemic’s bleary aftermath, the planet’s attention-starved continents have found one low-stakes consensus: staring at other people’s children. Enter Marshall, Mosley, and the inexplicably vowel-deprived “B” (short for…
Matt Prater: The Man Who Kicks Civilization’s Existential Dread Through Uprights By the time most Europeans are debating whether 4 p.m. is too early for a second espresso, Matt Prater has already launched a football—oval, not spherical, the shape of America’s neuroses—far enough to make GPS satellites recalibrate. 64 yards, a record, give or take…
Marshall Manning – the very name sounds like a Pentagon program that was quietly cancelled once the invoices hit eight figures. Yet in the past 72 hours this previously un-Googleable American teenager has become the planet’s most unlikely Rorschach test. From Lagos trading floors to Seoul crypto cafés, everyone is projecting something onto the kid…
