From the Frozen Tundra to the Thawing World: The Green Bay Packers as Accidental Geopolitical Metaphor By Our Correspondent Somewhere North of Reason If you mention the Green Bay Packers to a pub full of Berliners, the reaction will be roughly the same as if you’d asked them to recite the Wisconsin state fish: polite…
In the grand, ever-unfolding tragicomedy of American football, the Washington Commanders’ depth chart is the latest act to be projected onto the global screen—like a dimly lit PowerPoint slide at a G-20 after-party. From the neon towers of Tokyo to the dusty cafés of Algiers, football obsessives and casual rubber-neckers alike now parse the same…
The Curious Case of Russell Wilson: An American Quarterback as Global Metaphor By Dave’s Locker International Desk Somewhere above the North Atlantic, at 38,000 feet, a cargo Boeing 747 hums eastward carrying 7.4 metric tons of Wilson-branded “Dangerwich” sandwich boxes bound for discount supermarket freezers in Poland. The manifest has no entry for irony, but…
Cricinfo: The Empire That Rebranded Colonial Nostalgia as a 24-Hour Global Soap Opera There are only two kinds of nations left in the world: those that play cricket and those that pretend it doesn’t matter. Cricinfo, now cosmetically renamed ESPNcricinfo after a corporate shotgun wedding, is the digital DMZ where the two tribes meet, argue,…
The Curious Case of the Texan: A Global Parable Wrapped in a Ten-Gallon Hat By our man in the cheap seats, somewhere over the Atlantic From a safe cruising altitude of 37,000 feet, Texas looks like a vast, sun-blistered Rorschach test—equal parts oil patch, launch pad, and open-air theology seminar. Down on the tarmac, however,…
Steelers Game: When America’s Rust-Belt Opera Travels the World By Our Man in the Cheap Seats, somewhere between passport control and a stale pretzel PITTSBURGH—Somewhere beneath the perpetual November drizzle, 65,812 spectators are rehearsing the same primal chant, a vowel sound last uttered by Homo erectus just before discovering fire. The Steelers are hosting the…
NFL Plus: The Empire Streams Back By Dave’s Locker Global Correspondent PARIS—Imagine, if you will, a planet where 330 million Americans huddle around glowing rectangles every Sunday, convinced that the fate of a leather spheroid is the axis on which civilization spins. Now picture the National Football League—an outfit so patriotic it could make a…
Kyler Murray: The 5’10” American Quarterback Teaching the World to Think Smaller From the vantage point of a rain-soaked Zurich café—where the barista just charged me six euros for what is essentially bean water and existential dread—Kyler Murray feels like a geopolitical Rorschach test. To the United States he is either franchise savior or overpaid…
The NFL Does Dallas (and Munich, and São Paulo): A Dispatch from the Empire’s Favorite Circus All eyes are on America today—though, let’s be honest, most of those eyes are behind paywalls, VPNs, or the tinted windows of Beijing sports bars that haven’t paid for a license since 2019. While the United States celebrates Thanksgiving…
The NFL Today: America’s Gladiator Pageant Goes Global (Whether Anyone Asked or Not) By the time London’s pubs are pouring their first pints on a Sunday, the National Football League is already halfway through its weekly three-hour infomercial for concussion science and geopolitical soft power. From Mexico City’s Estadio Azteca to Munich’s Allianz Arena, the…
Jacob Bethell: The 20-Year-Old Who Reminds Us the Empire Still Owes Rent By Our Man in the Cheap Seats, somewhere over the Atlantic Somewhere between Bridgetown and Birmingham, the ghost of Lord Nelson is quietly updating his LinkedIn. The reason? Jacob Bethell—Barbados-born, England-polished, and now Mumbai-hardened—has become the accidental poster child for every post-colonial fever…
Pamela Anderson, the pneumatic patron saint of the 1990s, has lately been spotted on the world stage again—not in slow-motion across a Malibu beach, but in the marble corridors of the French Senate, at a London vegan café, and on Ukrainian Instagram feeds raising funds for animal shelters. The same woman who once floated like…
