From the Ruhr to the Rust Belt: How T.J. Watt Accidentally Became the World’s Most Effective Diplomat By the time most Europeans finish their third espresso of the morning, T.J. Watt has already sacked somebody before the coffee foam has settled. To a continent fretting about energy prices, Russian pipelines and the eternal question of…
Jamie Erdahl: How a Sideline Reporter Accidentally Became the Voice of Post-Imperial Melancholy By Dave’s Locker Foreign Desk, still jet-lagged in three time zones If you were sipping ouzo in an Athens taverna last September and heard the table next to you dissecting the Dallas Cowboys’ red-zone efficiency, you can blame Jamie Erdahl. The 36-year-old…
Two Rust-Belt Relics Walk into a Bar: Browns vs Lions and the Global Art of Eternal Disappointment By R. H. Marlowe, International Correspondent Detroit, Michigan—From the moment the cargo cranes in Rotterdam paused their Sisyphean choreography to glance at the scoreboard, the world understood that this was no ordinary American football game. When the Cleveland…
From the Fog of Puget Sound to the Frontlines of Global Geopolitics: Reading the Seahawks Standings Like a State-Secret Briefing By Our Man in the Pacific Northwest, Still Wearing Gloves Because the Espresso Machine is Broken Again SEATTLE—Every Tuesday, long after the Monday-night fireworks have fizzled and the last influencer has posted a slow-motion video…
The Cardinals’ Defensive Coordinator: A Post-Imperial Job Posting in a World That Forgot How to Tackle By the time you finish reading this sentence, another Asian port city will have sunk two centimeters thanks to climate change, a European finance minister will have blamed migrants for bond yields, and somewhere in Glendale, Arizona, the Arizona…
**The Devon Witherspoon Doctrine: How a Cornerback from Florida Became an Unlikely Metaphor for Global Power Shifts** In the grand theater of international relations, where nuclear powers play chicken over shipping lanes and cryptocurrency barons purchase democracy like souvenir snow globes, it takes a peculiar sort of genius to find geopolitical significance in a 22-year-old…
Cardinals vs Seahawks: A Global Metaphor Played Out in Arizona From the vantage point of a bar-stool in Reykjavík that doubles as a NATO listening post, I watched the Cardinals and Seahawks trade body blows on a pixelated feed piped in from Glendale. The locals were too busy debating geothermal subsidies to notice, but for…
Klint Kubiak: The Accidental Geopolitical Football By the time the rest of the planet learned how to pronounce “Kubiak” (it’s “KYOO-bee-ak,” not the sneeze-like “kuh-BYE-ack”), the 37-year-old offensive coordinator had already become a Rorschach test for whatever ailment your hemisphere happens to nurse. In Brussels he is evidence that the American meritocracy is terminal; in…
The Diplomatic Incident You Can Wear: NFL Rivalry Jerseys as Soft-Power Sabotage By Our Man in the Cheap Seats, somewhere over the Atlantic LONDON—Somewhere between the duty-free Toblerone and the tannoy announcing yet another delay to the 15:35 to Frankfurt, a man in a Dallas Cowboys jersey strode past me at Heathrow Terminal 3. Nothing…
Russell Wilson Retires, World Pretends to Care By L. Marlowe, Chief Correspondent, Dave’s Locker DENVER—Somewhere above the 39th parallel, a man who owns more Super Bowl rings than most countries have functioning airlines has decided to stop throwing an inflated leather object for money. The news ricocheted from Denver’s thin air to the thin patience…
**The Glorious Ascension of Jaylen Warren: How a Backup Running Back Became the World’s Most Overanalyzed Athlete** In a world where nuclear powers exchange passive-aggressive diplomatic notes and cryptocurrency millionaires evaporate overnight, humanity has found its true north: dissecting the career trajectory of Jaylen Warren, the Pittsburgh Steelers’ backup running back who has somehow become…
Joe Mixon and the Universal Art of Getting Away With It By Our Correspondent in the Cheap Seats of Human Morality From the air-conditioned press boxes of Dallas to the sweat-soaked living rooms of Lagos, the Joe Mixon story is less about a 5-foot-10 running back than about the planet’s favorite blood sport: watching someone…
