**The Cartography of American Exceptionalism: How Week 2 NFL Coverage Maps Explain Everything Wrong with Global Media** While the world grapples with climate refugees, supply chain collapses, and the occasional flirtation with nuclear annihilation, America’s most pressing cartographic concern remains which swath of Indiana gets to watch the Cowboys implode against the Jets. The NFL’s…
**Gridiron Prophecies: How NFL Picks Became the World’s Favorite Guessing Game** While the rest of the planet grapples with climate summits, currency fluctuations, and the occasional coup d’état, a peculiar American ritual has infected the global consciousness like a particularly virulent strain of cultural influenza. NFL picks—those weekly predictions about helmeted gladiators chasing an oblong…
SEOUL—On the eastern rim of the world, where the Han River meets the Yellow Sea and the morning fog tastes faintly of soju and regret, a man named Younghoe Koo boots oblong leather into orbit and accidentally becomes a geopolitical curiosity. To the average American fan, he is the Atlanta Falcons’ reliable foot, a fantasy-football…
The Derek Carr Paradox: How One Quarterback’s Trade Request Quietly Terrified the Global Order By Santiago “Santi” Vargas, Senior Correspondent, Dave’s Locker GENEVA—While the Swiss were busy polishing the Large Hadron Collider and pretending their mountains aren’t full of Nazi gold, Derek Carr—yes, that Derek Carr—ignited a chain reaction more unpredictable than any particle physicist…
Allen Lazard: The Accidental Geopolitician of Touchdowns and Trade Wars by Dave’s Senior Correspondent for Existential Sports Diplomacy PARIS—The last time an American football player made global headlines for something other than a domestic violence plea deal, it was Tom Brady kissing his son a bit too long on the lips. This week, however, the…
Washington D.C. — Somewhere in the global hive-mind that passes for geopolitics these days, the ligaments of a 24-year-old quarterback have been elevated to the level of a minor diplomatic crisis. Jayden Daniels, the rookie whose jersey sales alone could prop up a small island economy, left FedExField on Monday night with a rib cartilage…
From the vantage point of a smoky bar in Tbilisi—where the rugby highlights flicker beneath Cyrillic subtitles and the barman swears Fitzmagic is just Georgian for “cheap wine”—Ryan Fitzpatrick has become an unlikely export. The Harvard-educated quarterback has never hoisted a Lombardi Trophy, yet his passport stamps rival those of most diplomats: Buffalo, Cincinnati, Tennessee,…
NFL Tonight: The Empire’s Colosseum Goes Global, Again By Dave’s Locker Foreign Desk Tonight, as another autumn Monday unfolds beneath floodlights and corporate banners, the National Football League will once again beam its three-hour melodrama into 180 countries. From a tin-roofed bar in Lagos where generators cough like dying camels, to a sleek Tokyo bachelor…
Romeo Doubs and the Global Art of Suspended Disbelief By Special Correspondent, Somewhere over the Pacific In the grand geopolitical telenovela we all pretend is “normal life,” the most consequential act of the past week was not the BRICS summit, the latest crypto-currency implosion, or even the surprise merger of two shipping cartels that will…
Deuce Vaughn, 5-foot-5 on a good hair day, has become the shortest running back in the modern NFL. From a distance it looks like a clerical error: surely the Dallas Cowboys meant to list him as 6-foot-5 and the decimal point just got drunk. Yet here we are, in a world where TikTok decides elections…
Thursday Night Football: The Gladiator Hour When America Clocks Out and the Planet Clocks In From the glass towers of Singapore’s trading desks to the damp bunkers of London’s insomniac financiers, a curious ritual unfolds every autumn Thursday at 1:20 a.m. local time. The Dow has long since snored its closing bell, the Nikkei is…
While the rest of the planet tries to remember whether it’s still Tuesday or already Thursday thanks to the latest geopolitical time-zone shuffle, the Philadelphia Eagles have quietly decided that the fate of the free world can wait—Jalen Carter just inked a four-year, $84 million extension with $63 million guaranteed. Somewhere in Davos, a hedge-fund…
