The phrase “SEC permanent opponents” sounds like a Pentagon euphemism for countries Washington never plans to invite to the cookout. In fact, it is a scheduling innovation cooked up by the Southeastern Conference—American college football’s most profitable circus—to guarantee that certain teams play each other every year even after the league swelled to 16 members…
From the banks of the Euphrates to the neon canyons of Tokyo, the name Jaxson Dart is now muttered with the same hushed reverence once reserved for popes, pop stars, and that guy who figured out how to deep-fry Coca-Cola. Yes, the Ole Miss quarterback—product of Utah prep fields, USC transfer portal purgatory, and a…
Cameron Skattebo and the Curious Economics of American Muscle in a Fractured World By L. M. Valdez, Senior Correspondent, Dave’s Locker SÃO PAULO—While COP negotiators in Dubai were still arguing over commas in the final climate text, 5’9″, 215-pound Cameron Skattebo was 7,400 miles away, lowering his shoulder into a UCLA linebacker as if the…
The Curious Case of Luther Burden III: How a 19-Year-Old from East St. Louis Accidentally Became a Geopolitical Pawn By the time Luther Burden III stiff-armed his way into the end zone against Kansas State last November, grain futures in Kyiv ticked upward 0.3 percent. Not because the sophomore wide receiver has any known sway…
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…
