Cam Skattebo and the Glorious Global Farce of the 2024 College Football Season By Étienne Noir, International Correspondent, somewhere between a press box and existential dread The name “Cam Skattebo” sounds like a Scandinavian indie band that breaks up after one EP, but it actually belongs to an Arizona State running back who has improbably…
Baker Mayfield and the Global Theater of Quarterbacking Dave’s Locker International Desk | June 2024 From the upper deck of Raymond James Stadium you can spot cruise ships gliding toward the Gulf of Mexico, their passengers clutching watered-down margaritas and pretending Florida is still exotic. Down on the field, Baker Reagan Mayfield—6-foot-1, 215 pounds, and…
The Bronx Meets the Six: A Proxy War for the Post-American Century By “Our Man in the Cheap Seats” – Foreign Correspondent, Dave’s Locker TORONTO—On paper, last night’s tilt between the New York Yankees and the Toronto Blue Jays was merely the 2,047th regular-season meeting of two AL East neighbors who pretend to despise each…
**SEC Football: America’s Gladiatorial Spectacle and the World’s Quiet Horror** While the rest of the planet grapples with climate change, economic instability, and the occasional attempted coup d’état, the southeastern United States has identified its own existential crisis: whether Alabama can cover the spread against LSU. This, dear international readers, is SEC football—a religious movement…
The Perilous Privilege of Feeling the World Crack Beneath Your Feet By Dave’s Locker Foreign Correspondent (currently standing in yesterday’s kitchen, now a geological pop-up exhibit) When the floor began to samba at 3:17 a.m., my first coherent thought was not “Will the building hold?” but “Great, now I’ll be on every group chat from…
From the banks of the River Seine to the neon canyons of Seoul, the autumn ritual is the same: a hush falls, smartphones glow, and millions of otherwise rational adults rearrange their circadian rhythms around a patch of grass in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. The Crimson Tide’s 2024 schedule—released last week like a papal bull—has already ricocheted…
The ground shook this morning—again—somewhere between Tashkent and Tehran, and within minutes the entire planet began its familiar pantomime of panic, solidarity, and opportunistic brand tweets. A 6.8 magnitude quake rattled the steppe at 04:17 UTC, the sort of hour when seismologists are already awake (they never really sleep) and the rest of us pretend…
From the air-conditioned war rooms of Davos to the piss-scented back alleys of Manila, the phrase “mateer qb” is being whispered as though it were a new strain of flu that only infects balance sheets. Nobody can quite define it, yet every consultant with a LinkedIn Premium account is billing by the hour to pretend…
Deion Burks and the Geopolitics of a 40-Yard Dash By Dave’s Locker Global Desk If you’ve never heard of Deion Burks, congratulations—you have successfully avoided every American football highlight reel, every NIL money tracker, and every algorithmic rabbit hole that begins with “Top WR sleepers 2024.” For the rest of us, the name now carries…
LOS ANGELES – In the same week that the International Monetary Fund politely warned the planet may be circling the drain, 22 millionaires in neon footwear kicked a ball around a converted baseball diamond and called it progress. The occasion: LA Galaxy versus Houston Dynamo, a fixture that, on paper, promises nothing more than three…
Bryce Underwood, the 16-year-old quarterback who has just committed to the University of Michigan for 2025, is already being hailed as the LeBron James of American football—a comparison that, like most things American, is half hyperbole and half prophecy. While the rest of the planet sorts out minor inconveniences like climate refugees and supply-chain famines,…
The Boilermakers Abroad: How Purdue Football Became the World’s Most Improbable Soft-Power Asset By the time the Purdue “All-American” Marching Band struck up its halftime rendition of “The William Tell Overture” in Dublin last August, half the spectators were wondering why the corn-fed brass section had smuggled a sousaphone onto sacred Irish soil, and the…
