NFL Divisions: How Eight Petty Fiefdoms in Shoulder Pads Became a Global Rorschach Test By the time the sun rises in London, the citizens of the United Kingdom have already placed their accumulator bets on whether the Miami Dolphins will remember what a defense is. By lunchtime in Lagos, WhatsApp groups light up with hot…
The Ballad of Brian Robinson Jr.: A Parable for the Age of Globalized Violence and Marketing By the time the medics reached Brian Robinson Jr. on that humid August evening in Washington, D.C., the bullets had already logged more international air-miles than most diplomats. One slug, ballistics later suggested, began its brief résumé in a…
Florian Wirtz: Germany’s Quiet Rebellion Against the Age of Noise by Dave’s International Desk They say the world has never been louder—an endless carousel of hot takes, geopolitical tantrums, and influencers explaining crypto while brushing their teeth. Yet in Leverkusen, a 21-year-old in neon-green boots is conducting a counter-insurgency against the racket, one velvet touch…
Tyler Lockett and the Quiet Art of Being Too Good for This Timeline By Dave’s Locker Global Affairs Desk (Seattle Bureau, Sub-Basement 3) The planet keeps finding new ways to disappoint us—crypto winters, methane tsunamis, election cycles that feel like recurring dreams of dental surgery—yet every Sunday at roughly 1:05 p.m. Pacific (21:05 UTC for…
Brock Purdy and the Strange Miracle of American Excess By Elias Delgado, Senior Correspondent, Dave’s Locker Global Desk In the grand bazaar of geopolitical crises—where grain ships dodge Russian missiles in the Black Sea and lithium wars simmer beneath Bolivian salt flats—it is comforting, in a perverse sort of way, to know that the United…
Chip Kelly and the Global Gospel of Hurry-Up Capitalism By Dave’s Locker International Desk PARIS — Somewhere between the 15th arrondissement’s stubborn cigarette haze and the fluorescent glow of a Buffalo Wild Wings streaming Pac-12 After Dark, Chip Kelly keeps sprinting. Not literally—his knees filed an injunction years ago—but philosophically. While the rest of the…
Al Davis, the late czar of the Oakland Raiders, never held elected office, never commanded armies, and—astonishingly—never learned how to use e-mail. Yet his silhouette still looms across the planet like a stubborn smog cloud, proof that the most durable empires are sometimes stitched from shoulder pads and bad attitude. From the dockyards of Naples…
Brock Bowers’ Knee Becomes an Unwilling Diplomat By the time the news had ping-ponged from Athens, Georgia, to Athens, Greece, the anterior cruciate ligament of one 20-year-old American football prodigy had already achieved what most career diplomats only fantasize about: uniting the planet in a single, synchronized wince. From a smoky sports bar in Buenos…
Cameron Heyward: The Last Man Standing in a League Bent on Self-Immolation By our man in the cheap seats, Brussels Bureau Let us begin with the obvious: Cameron Heyward is a very large human paid to run into other very large humans on behalf of a city whose river once caught fire. This is, on…
From Manila to Madrid, the arena lights dim to a conspiratorial hush just before the three-point line becomes a geopolitical fault line. Enter Wardell Stephen Curry II, a 6’2″ Californian with the diplomatic passport of a rock star and the jump shot of an intercontinental ballistic missile. While lesser mortals debate tariffs and troop deployments,…
Eugenio Suárez and the Curious Elasticity of National Heroes Dave’s Locker – International Desk | 8 June 2024 If you squint at a map of the Americas, you might notice that Venezuela—birthplace of Eugenio Suárez, third-baseman turned planetary metaphor—has roughly the same shape as a broken baseball bat. Coincidence? Perhaps. But it’s the kind of…
Connor Heyward: The Accidental Geopolitical Metaphor Running Through a Tackle PARIS — Somewhere on a practice field in Pittsburgh, a 6-foot, 230-pound fullback—listed, charmingly, as “tight end” on official rosters—named Connor Heyward just pancaked a linebacker and, in so doing, unwittingly illustrated the entire 21st-century world order. Allow me to explain before your eyes glaze…
