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…
Under the shadow of Appalachian foothills, where strip-mall sushi meets Civil War reenactments, the Kennesaw State Owls have decided to migrate. Not to richer feeding grounds—this is still collegiate athletics, not venture capital—but upward into the Football Bowl Subdivision, that glitzy aviary where ESPN cameras preen the plumage and the cadaverous remains of amateurism are…
Arkansas State versus Kennesaw State: A Microscopic Civil War, Televised for the World’s Schadenfreude by Dave’s Locker Global Desk Somewhere between the Ozark foothills and the outer ring-roads of Atlanta—those asphalt moats we once called suburbs before they metastasized—two modest American universities are preparing to bludgeon one another with shoulder pads this weekend. To most…
San José, California—If you want to see American exceptionalism reduced to its purest, most comically earnest form, forget the aircraft carriers or the moon landes; come to CEFCU Stadium on a Saturday when San José State University (SJSU) is playing football. To the outside world, the Spartans are a curiosity: a mid-tier program in a…
UIW vs Northern AZ: How a Thursday Night Football Game in Texas Quietly Explains the Collapse of Civilization San Antonio, Texas — While the rest of the planet argued over whose navy gets to sink whose fishing boats this week, the Incarnate Word Cardinals and the Northern Arizona Lumberjacks did something revolutionary: they played a…
Justice Haynes: The Running Back Who Could Outrun Geopolitics (For About Four Seconds) By the time Justice Haynes, Georgia’s latest five-star running back, hits his third stride Saturday, he will have covered more ground than the average U.N. peacekeeping convoy manages in an afternoon. That, dear reader, is the only reliable metric left in our…
In the grand, ceaseless carnival of American college football—an enterprise that combines the pageantry of medieval jousting with the merchandising genius of Disney—tonight’s modest sideshow features Tulane versus Ole Miss. To the uninitiated, this may appear to be a regional skirmish over bragging rights and a bronze boot called the “Magnolia Bowl,” a trophy whose…
UNC vs UCF: A Microscopic Lens on the Macroscopic Collapse of Western Soft Power By Our Man in the Departure Lounge, Somewhere Over the Atlantic On the surface, Saturday’s gridiron tussle between the University of North Carolina (motto: “Lux libertas,” roughly “Debt and daylight”) and the University of Central Florida (motto: “Reach for the stars—then…
From the banks of the Willamette to the war rooms of Davos, the planet pauses this weekend for a proxy battle that, on paper, is merely a college football game between Oregon State and the University of Oregon. In practice, it is a perfect Petri dish for every neurosis the 21st century has on offer:…
Cade Klubnik, quarterback savior of the Clemson Tigers, woke up last Saturday on a continent that still thinks a “tight end” is an unfortunate consequence of yoga class. Yet by nightfall, his 38-35 overtime escape against Notre Dame had ricocheted through encrypted group chats from Singapore to São Paulo, proving once again that American college…
Minnesota’s Golden Gophers and the Geopolitics of Second-Tier Football By L. V. Voss, Foreign Correspondent on Extended Midwestern Detention In the grand, glittering circus of global sport—where Saudi sovereign-wealth funds buy entire leagues and FIFA’s executives require refrigerated briefcases for their bribes—the University of Minnesota’s football program occupies a peculiar niche. Think of it as…
A Palmetto Punch-Up on the World’s Margins: SC State vs South Florida through the Bleary Eyes of the Planet By L. Vargas, Dave’s Locker Global Affairs Desk Picture, if you will, an over-air-conditioned conference room on the 38th floor of some soulless tower in Dubai. A Lebanese risk consultant, a Ghanaian cocoa broker, and a…
