The NFL’s German Love Affair

…At least that’s what it looks like on X (née Twitter) since His Holiness has been using a hashtag before the word “Saints,” automatically triggering an emoji of the NFL franchise. Who Dat? 

Amazon is using music to reach football fans, bringing post-game concerts to Thursday Night Football. Next on stage:  J. Balvin, Atlanta rapper Gunna and K-Pop girl group Twice.

Netflix could make a run at UFC, whose current broadcast deal with ESPN is up next year. WWE, which is under the TKO umbrella alongside UFC, is already set to jump to the streamer in January. The pieces are there. If Netflix makes the move, it’d be their biggest move into live sports yet.

Mike Tyson got the NY Mag treatment ahead of his comeback boxing match against Jake Paul. Tyson has been to the brink and back more times than most of us. Does he have one more title in him?

Donovan Mitchell sat down to talk wine, charity and the new NBA season with GQ. Also he says that hitting a back-breaking three was a better feeling than throwing down a poster dunk. What happened to the game we love?

The NFL bids adieu to the 2024 International Series on Sunday in Munich. It’s only the fourth NFL game in Germany, but their passionate fans left a lasting impression on Americans last year with their insane atmosphere.

American football in Germany actually has quite a history. American soldiers played the first football game on German soil in Frankfurt just after World War II in the 1940s, but the Germans weren’t feeling it – they already had soccer and rugby.

The tide would turn in the summer of 1976, when Texas A&M-Kingsville and Henderson State played five games across West Germany and Austria. They played in front of a sold out Berlin Olympic Stadium, which held 86,000 people and turned Germany into football fans. 

Germany became a European hot bed for football with teams (the Frankfurt Lions) and leagues going back to that seminal year. Currently, there’s 25 football leagues across the country with over 60,000 participants involved. Now, the German Football League is considered the strongest in Europe.

While Sunday’s game will feature the Giants and Panthers, it’s safe to say that the Detroit Lions are Germany’s team. That’s due to Amon-Ra St. Brown, who has that German blood in him. His mother is German, and he speaks the language fluently. The Sun God has also gone back to Germany and held football clinics to grow the game, and spends his locker room time quizzing teammates on Bundesliga.

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To him, we say danke.

@hunterwoodhall

Im tryna race speed. Making more on social than the actual sport

This year's most anticipated sneaker drop comes courtesy of Nike and Wu-Tang, who are making the Nike Dunk High ‘Wu-Tang Clan’ widely available for the first time ever. These shoes are beautiful.

For those uninitiated in the world of sneakers, this isn’t just any old retro shoe drop. For OG sneakerheads, the Wu-Tang Dunks are the holiest of grails, whose rarity and unique backstory has added to their mystique over the years. 

When the shoe was initially released in 1999, just 36 pairs were made available to the public. RZA said he had been out on the idea of a re-release for years, but after hearing a pair could go for as much as $100,000 on the resale market, he figured it was time to give the shoe to the people.

@complex_sneakers

Why #RZA decided to bring back the #WuTang #NikDunk 🐝

The news of the re-release came with a little help from Jalen Brunson, Mikal Bridges and Josh Hart of the Knicks, who teamed up with Wu-Tang Clan for a teaser video on the group’s social channels.