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…
San Francisco 49ers Dispatch from the Edge of the World By our man in the cheap seats, somewhere between the 38th parallel and the 49th roster cut Word out of Santa Clara is that the 49ers have decided what every global empire eventually decides: let’s get younger, cheaper, and hope nobody notices the drop-off in…
**The Curious Case of Deshon Elliott: How One Safety’s Journey Reflects Our Global Obsession with Gladiators in Spandex** From the bustling streets of Mumbai to the quiet pubs of Yorkshire, humanity has always harbored a peculiar fascination with watching exceptionally large men chase an oddly-shaped ball for astronomical sums of money. Enter Deshon Elliott—the latest…
The planet did not stop spinning when the Chicago Bears announced that wide receiver DJ Moore had sustained a lower-body injury during a routine practice in Lake Forest, Illinois. Stock markets from Lagos to London stayed open, container ships continued stacking themselves like oversized Lego in the Suez Canal, and the International Monetary Fund still…
Blake Cashman and the Geopolitics of a Tackle By our man in the cheap seats, watching empires collapse between downs Houston—While diplomats in Vienna argue over the exact placement of commas in a nuclear treaty, 6’1″, 235-pound Blake Cashman was busy rerouting the AFC South hierarchy with nothing more than a helmet and the sort…
