San José vs San Diego FC: A Microscopic Clash in a Macroscopic Mess Bylines are for optimists; datelines are for people who still believe in passports. If you squint from 35,000 feet somewhere over the Pacific, the latest MLS tilt between San José Earthquakes and San Diego FC looks less like a sporting event and…
La Tech vs UTEP: Two Rust-Belt Campuses Duke It Out While the Planet Burns By Dmitri Volkov, Senior Correspondent (currently self-medicating with airport espresso) Ruston, Louisiana – A place whose name already sounds like the past tense of “rust.” The Bulldogs of Louisiana Tech—mascot: a perpetually worried canine—hosted the UTEP Miners here last Saturday, an…
When Justin Bieber finally lands in a city—any city, really—governments issue the sort of travel advisories normally reserved for coup attempts or cholera outbreaks. Jakarta’s traffic police pre-print contraflow maps; Buenos Aires hotels jack up the price of bottled water like it’s liquid palladium; Lagos radio hosts debate whether the ensuing stampede counts toward daily…
Dante Moore: The Quarterback Who Became a Global Parable of Hope, Hype, and the Human Condition By: Our Correspondent Somewhere Between Detroit and Dubai Somewhere over the Atlantic, a 19-year-old kid from Detroit—whose arm allegedly contains more torque than a European Central Bank interest-rate hike—has become the newest unit of international currency. Dante Moore, UCLA’s…
By the time the final whistle blew on Estadio BBVA last night, the only thing louder than the 50,000-odd fans was the collective groan from global sports-betting syndicates. Monterrey 2–1 Santos Laguna: an ordinary Liga MX scoreline that nonetheless managed to send seismic tremors through three continents, two shadow economies, and at least one hedge…
From the banks of the Mississippi to the smog-kissed skyline of Los Angeles, a modest MLS fixture has quietly become a geopolitical mood ring. LAFC versus St. Louis City SC is not, on paper, the stuff of UN Security Council briefings. Yet when two expansion-era clubs—one the shiny toy of Hollywood financiers, the other the…
The Washington Nationals: Baseball’s Diplomatic Curveball in a World That Doesn’t Believe in Innings By the time you read this, the Washington Nationals have probably lost another reliever to a pulled oblique, a strained conscience, or a sudden urge to finish that PhD in comparative literature—because nothing says “late-stage empire” like a bullpen that collapses…
Tampa Bay Lightning: The World Watches a Sun-Drenched Hockey Dynasty and Pretends to Care By “Global” Gerry Van der Zalm, filing from the last functioning airport bar with Wi-Fi The Tampa Bay Lightning have now won so many Stanley Cups that the trophy’s handlers keep a spare crate of sunscreen in the cargo hold—an oddly…
PORTLAND, Oregon—Somewhere between the ninth replay of a 19-year-old wide receiver hurdling a safety and the inevitable cutaway to Nike founder Phil Knight checking his pulse, the planet tilts ever so slightly on its axis. Oregon football, that neon-green fever dream spun out of a Eugene apparel empire, has become a rare American export that…
Mo Bamba: The Global Earworm that Dunked on Diplomacy By Correspondent-at-Large, Dave’s Locker Somewhere between the collapse of the Doha trade talks and the slow-motion implosion of the COP climate accords, humanity found a higher calling: chanting “Mo Bamba” in falsetto at complete strangers. The 2017 SoundCloud single by Sheck Wes—named, incidentally, after a 6’11”…
Andrew Coltart, the man who once described himself as “the best golfer you’ve never heard of unless you’ve heard of me,” has spent the last three decades proving that modest celebrity is the most cosmopolitan currency on Earth. Born in Dumfries, Scotland—a town whose chief export is drizzle and whose airport runway doubles as a…
The Ryder Cup MC: When a Golf Tournament Becomes a Metaphor for Civilizational Collapse By Our Man in the Rough, filing from Marco Simone Golf & Country Club, Rome ROME—In the shadow of a 16th-century aqueduct and the ghost of Berlusconi’s bunga-bunga era, the Ryder Cup’s master of ceremonies took the first tee box microphone…
