**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…
In the grand carnival of American football—where helmets are shinier than most national GDPs and the stakes are measured in torn ligaments and television contracts—Christian Darrisaw plays left tackle for the Minnesota Vikings. A position, for the uninitiated, that exists primarily so 320-pound men don’t accidentally sit on quarterbacks who make more per Instagram post…
ROME ODUNZE AND THE GLOBAL RELIGION OF VERTICAL LEAP Somewhere between the radioactive neon of Las Vegas and the more genteel smog of Seattle, a 6-foot-3 American human-torpedo named Rome Odunze has become the latest high priest in the worldwide cult of “game-breaking wideout.” To most of the planet—where football still means Lionel Messi and…
The Fastball That Flew Past Borders: How Aroldis Chapman Became the World’s Most Expensive Metaphor By Dave’s Locker International Desk If you ever wanted a single anecdote that explains why late-stage capitalism looks suspiciously like a 105-mph heater aimed directly at the strike zone of human dignity, look no further than Aroldis Chapman. The Cuban…
**The Numbers That Launch a Thousand Visa Applications** The cricket score, that innocent-looking sequence of digits flashed across stadium screens from Mumbai to Manchester, has evolved into something far more consequential than a mere accounting of runs and wickets. In our gloriously interconnected world of 24-hour news cycles and instant gratification, these humble numbers now…
Mike Evans and the Mirror He Holds Up to a World That Can’t Catch By the time Mike Evans’ latest one-handed, gravity-defying grab hits the highlight reels from Lagos to Lisbon, three things are already certain: (1) the Earth will keep turning, (2) Tom Brady will still be playing somewhere, and (3) at least one…
HONOLULU—While European ultras were torching stadium toilets and Qatari sheikhs were gold-plating their private boxes, the University of Hawaii Rainbow Warriors spent Saturday night doing something far more subversive: playing earnest, mid-tier American football on the outer rim of civilization, 2,400 miles from the nearest conference rival and precisely one ocean away from anyone who…
Jackson Holliday and the Global Glut of Prodigies By Our Man in the Cheap Seats, International Desk The name Jackson Holliday currently ricochets around sports bars from Baltimore to Brisbane like a wayward Wiffle ball, and for once the hype is not about another crypto-currency or a TikTok sea-shanty. Holliday, the 20-year-old shortstop who still…
The North Carolina A&T Aggies versus the UCF Knights is, on paper, a football game so geographically modest that a European could sneeze and miss it. Yet this September collision in Orlando—part of UCF’s annual “Let’s Try to Look P5 While Still in the AAC” showcase—offers a perfect micro-dose of the global malaise we all…
The Palmetto Putsch: How One Tiny U.S. College Rivalry Quietly Explains the End of the World As We Know It By Correspondent-at-Large, Dave’s Locker Global Desk Columbia, South Carolina—population 136,632, humidity 200 percent, general bewilderment immeasurable—was briefly mistaken for a geopolitical flashpoint last Saturday when South Carolina State and the University of South Carolina met…
Arthur Ashe Stadium, Flushing Meadows, New York—where the world’s best tennis players come to grunt in eight languages while a global television audience pretends to understand line-call replays. From the upper deck, you can see LaGuardia’s planes descending like anxious pigeons, reminding everyone that even aircraft want a closer look at a facility named for…
CARLOS ALCARAZ: THE 20-YEAR-OLD WHO MADE THE WORLD REMEMBER TENNIS STILL EXISTS By our International Desk—where the coffee’s bitter and the optimism is imported duty-free Madrid, Riyadh, Melbourne, New York—pick your time zone and you’ll still find Carlos Alcaraz’s backhand ricocheting off every screen like a geopolitical ping-pong ball. In an era when the planet’s…
