In the grand, often farcical opera of American football, even the most diligent foreign correspondent risks missing the aria when it’s sung by a second-year cornerback out of Georgia. Yet Brian Branch—yes, that Brian Branch, the one whose name sounds like an underperforming hedge fund—has quietly become a geopolitical footnote. How? By reminding the planet…
The Curious Case of the Ravens Kicker, or How One Right Foot Might Tilt the Planet By the time you read this, Justin Tucker—the Baltimore Ravens’ resident leg-slinger and accidental geopolitical actor—has probably already broken another record, shattered another set of eardrums in M&T Bank Stadium, and, in some small but measurable way, nudged the…
The Chlorinated Oracle: How Michael Phelps Became the World’s Wettest Exports Policy By the time Michael Phelps hung up his goggles for good, the planet had quietly agreed on one metric of global power: the number of gold medals a nation could attach to a single human sternum. Eight in Beijing, four more in London,…
Eli Manning Walks Off the World Stage, Leaving the Rest of Us to Blitz Ourselves By Our Correspondent in the Cheap Seats NEW YORK—While the planet busied itself with minor pastimes—ballistic missile tests in Pyongyang, runaway inflation in Ankara, and the slow-motion TikTok lobotomy of global adolescence—an unassuming man in a cable-knit sweater announced he…
Terrion Arnold and the Geopolitics of a 40-Time Dave’s Locker Global Desk – 14 April 2024 Somewhere between the radioactive fog of TikTok drills and the last functioning fax machine in a Moldovan scouting department, Terrion Arnold is being measured for a suit of geopolitical armor. The Alabama cornerback—nicknamed “T-Rex” for reasons that presumably involve…
In a week when global food prices ticked up again and the Red Sea resembled a floating parking lot for rocket-propelled insurance claims, the planet’s most-watched gridiron league decided the real crisis worth solving was whether a man could kick a leather bladder 66 yards between two yellow posts. On Sunday, Baltimore’s Justin Tucker—who looks…
The Ravens vs Lions Showdown: A Global Metaphor for Our Collective Descent Dakar, Senegal – As the Baltimore Ravens prepare to face the Detroit Lions in a contest that will be beamed into 197 countries this Sunday, the world watches with the peculiar intensity usually reserved for nuclear negotiations or celebrity divorces. Here in West…
The Red and the Orange: A Global Reckoning in St. Louis (Dave’s Locker, International Desk – somewhere between purgatory and a press-box buffet) By the time the first pitch left Miles Mikolas’s hand Monday night, the planet had already endured another rotation of existential dread. In Kyiv, air-raid sirens competed with Champions League highlights; in…
Brewers vs. Padres: A Minor Skirmish in Baseball’s Forever War for Planetary Attention By Matteo “Mirthless” Morgenstern, International Desk, Dave’s Locker MILWAUKEE—Somewhere between the Baltic’s latest gas-pipeline panic and the Pacific’s newest island-building scheme, two American ball clubs squared off last night in a contest whose ramifications, we are assured by regional television executives, are…
Baltimore—In a world where wars are live-tweeted and central bankers apologize for inflation in emoji form, the Baltimore Ravens have decided the most rational response is to throw $100 million at a man whose job is to collide with other large men until one of them stops moving. Roquan Smith, linebacker and newly minted centi-millionaire,…
Green Bay, Wisconsin—population 104,777, median household income $52,214, and, until recently, the last place on earth you’d expect to host a geopolitical flashpoint. Yet there stands Jaire Zakar Alexander, cornerback, human eclipse, and—depending on which global capital is doing the tweeting—either a swaggering symbol of American exceptionalism or a walking indictment of it. While the…
Baltimore, Maryland — Somewhere between the Tigris and the Thames, between a Singaporean hawker stall and a São Paulo favela, people are arguing about fourth-down analytics and the metaphysical value of a timeout. The reason is John Harbaugh, the Ravens coach who has quietly become the NFL’s most reliable exporter of existential dread to anyone…
