Quinshon Judkins and the Geopolitics of a 40-Time By the time Quinshon Judkins, Mississippi-bred running back with thighs that could embargo a small shipping lane, announced his transfer to Ohio State, the tremor was felt from Lagos to Luxembourg. Not because anyone in Lagos can immediately locate Starkville on a map (they can’t; most Americans…
Top 25 College Football: A Global Satire in Shoulder Pads By Dave’s Locker Foreign Correspondent, still jet-lagged from covering a Bolivian llama race The American ritual known as the AP Top-25 college football poll dropped this week, and—like a drone strike on good taste—it instantly colonized timelines from Lagos to Lahore. Why, you ask, should…
The Curious Case of Bhayshul Tuten: How a College Running Back Became a Global Metaphor for Everything Wrong (and Right) with 2024 By Our Correspondent, Somewhere Between the 50-yard Line and the End of Civilization If you haven’t heard of Bhayshul Tuten yet, congratulations—you still possess the blissful ignorance normally reserved for hedge-fund managers before…
An American Football Program, a Mongolian Coal Mine, and the Fate of the Free World How the Virginia Tech Hokies Became an Unlikely Geopolitical Thermometer Blacksburg, Virginia—population 44,000, elevation 2,080 feet, average emotional altitude somewhere between manic hope and existential dread—is hardly the place you’d look for a barometer of planetary health. Yet every autumn,…
The World According to a 25-Team Poll: How a Curated List of American Teenagers Became a Geopolitical Weather Vane By the time the latest AP College Football Top 25 was ceremoniously slid into our inboxes like a ransom note written in crimson and cream, the planet had other pressing concerns. Beijing was re-calculating supply-chain routes…
While the rest of the planet worried about collapsing ice shelves, drone attacks on grain silos, and the curious habit of central banks to print money the way college freshmen print term papers at 3 a.m., the United States devoted yesterday’s dwindling daylight hours to a far more urgent matter: determining the precise sequence of…
Miami, Florida — While the rest of the planet frets over melting ice caps and which septuagenarian will next inherit the nuclear codes, the city’s tropical Versailles has decided the most pressing geopolitical story is a 6-foot-2, 245-pound freshman named Rueben Bain. Yes, the Hurricanes’ latest defensive end has been decreed a “generational talent,” a…
Sam Leavitt, Quarterback-in-Transit, and the Quiet Collapse of Borders By our man in the departure lounge, nursing a flat espresso and a passport full of regrets Geneva—Ask any seasoned observer of geopolitics what keeps them awake at night and you’ll get the usual litany: supply-chain chokepoints, microchip embargoes, TikTok. Yet the name currently ricocheting between…
MI State vs USC: A Gladiatorial Spectacle for a Planet Too Tired to Care By our man in the cheap seats, somewhere between Detroit and Doha—where the Wi-Fi still costs more than dignity. Across time zones stretching from Vladivostok to Valparaíso, the phrase “MI State vs USC” pinged on screens like a low-grade geopolitical tremor….
In the grand, slightly mildewed tapestry of global affairs—where wars, coups, and TikTok dances vie for headline space—one particular thread has emerged from the American heartland with all the subtlety of a brass band at a funeral: Luke Altmyer, the 21-year-old quarterback who has improbably become an exportable commodity. To the uninitiated, Altmyer is merely…
Southern Miss vs Louisiana Tech: A Microcosm of Global Decline, Played on Astroturf in Hattiesburg By Dave’s Locker Foreign Correspondent-at-Large There are, at any given moment, roughly 7.9 billion people who do not care that the University of Southern Mississippi is scheduled to collide with Louisiana Tech on a mild Saturday in Conference-USA’s death rattle….
Georgia State vs Vanderbilt: When a Commodore Meets a Panther, the Rest of the World Checks Its Watch By Our Man in Exile, currently somewhere over the Atlantic In the grand tapestry of human endeavor, there are events that tilt continents and others that merely rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic. Somewhere between those…
