Blake Cashman and the Geopolitics of a Tackle By our man in the cheap seats, watching empires collapse between downs Houston—While diplomats in Vienna argue over the exact placement of commas in a nuclear treaty, 6’1″, 235-pound Blake Cashman was busy rerouting the AFC South hierarchy with nothing more than a helmet and the sort…
Kirk Cousins Has Entered the Transfer Portal to the Rest of the Planet By our man in the cheap seats, somewhere over the Atlantic MINNEAPOLIS—While the planet busies itself with minor trifles—Ukrainian power grids being redecorated by Iranian drones, the Arctic Circle auditioning for a role as the next Mediterranean, and Sri Lanka experimenting with…
In the grand, increasingly surreal tapestry of 21st-century geopolitics, where billionaires launch phallic rockets to nowhere and entire nations debate whether water is a human right, the name “Kyle Monangai” has begun to flicker on diplomatic radar screens from Tokyo to Timbuktu. Who, you ask, is this Monangai fellow? A Bond villain with a climate-altering…
In the grand carnival of American football—where helmets are shinier than most national GDPs and the stakes are measured in torn ligaments and television contracts—Christian Darrisaw plays left tackle for the Minnesota Vikings. A position, for the uninitiated, that exists primarily so 320-pound men don’t accidentally sit on quarterbacks who make more per Instagram post…
Steven Lenhart: The Man Who Turned MLS Fouls Into Performance Art and Accidentally Forecasted the End of the American Century By A Correspondent Who Once Watched a Friendly in Pyongyang and Still Has the Whistle Marks PARIS—Somewhere between the croissants and the existential dread, the name Steven Lenhart still surfaces in bars along the Boulevard…
S&P 500: The Planet’s Favourite Barometer of American Optimism—And Other Fairy Tales By the time the opening bell rings at 9:30 a.m. in New York, half the world has already gone to sleep clenching its jaw about what the S&P 500 might do. Tokyo fund managers are sipping canned coffee at 11:30 p.m. local time…
TALLAHASSEE, Wednesday—Across the globe, diplomats in Geneva fret over carbon thresholds, container ships idle in the Red Sea dodging drones, and the yen wobbles like a freshman kicker after three espresso shots. Yet for one humid Saturday in the Florida panhandle, the planet’s attention pivots to a patch of grass where young men in garnet…
**The Global Village Idiot: How Joe Rogan Became the World’s Most Influential American Export (Sorry, Democracy)** In an era where American soft power traditionally meant Hollywood blockbusters, jazz music, or the occasional aircraft carrier, humanity has collectively decided that our most significant cultural export is… a former Fear Factor host who looks like he could…
Minnesota Golden Gophers Football: How a Prairie College Team Quietly Became a Geopolitical Rorschach Test By the time the Golden Gophers trot onto Huntington Bank Stadium this autumn, most of the planet will be busy pretending to care about something else: the Bundesliga, the Rugby Championship, the latest coup d’état, or that mesmerizing TikTok of…
ROME ODUNZE AND THE GLOBAL RELIGION OF VERTICAL LEAP Somewhere between the radioactive neon of Las Vegas and the more genteel smog of Seattle, a 6-foot-3 American human-torpedo named Rome Odunze has become the latest high priest in the worldwide cult of “game-breaking wideout.” To most of the planet—where football still means Lionel Messi and…
PARIS—Somewhere between the fifth croissant and the third existential crisis of the morning, the world’s sporting press decided that Pierce Clarkson is the new yardstick for planetary hope. That’s a heavy load for a 17-year-old quarterback whose most pressing daily decision used to be whether to top his Chipotle bowl with guac or mild salsa….
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…
