The Raw Football Drama Not Enough Of Us Are Talking About

…Just ask former D1 football player Devon Levesque, the entrepreneur and mastermind behind Sweet Honey Farm, a New Jersey-based wellness complex that’s also a farm that’s also co-working community. Wanna sign up? Get in line, there’s only 14,000 people ahead of you. Oh, and the final interview takes place in the sauna, apparently. Make of that what you will. 

It’s that time of year when F1 teams unveil the look and feel of their cars (and drivers) ahead of the upcoming season. Ferrari was the first to unveil its brand new race suits for Lewis Hamilton (Sir Lewis, to you) and Charles Leclerc. If you ask me, they look mighty similar to last season’s race suits, but no one asked me, so forget I said anything. 

Did you get an invite to Balenciaga’s NBA London game afterparty on Sunday? Nor did we, sadly. But we’re happy for the likes of Romeo Beckham and Joakim Noah, who clearly did make the cut at the exclusive event in Mayfair. Read all about it.

The upcoming 2026 Olympics will be the most spread-out winter Games in history, with venues spanning an area covering 8,495 square miles between Milan and Cortina, and athletes getting up to no good across six Olympic villages. Here’s your go-to guide for what’s happening where.

After making a splash with at last year’s Super Bowl with its empowering “So Win” campaign, Nike confirmed it won’t be returning this February with a new spot. Considering a 30-second ad costs upwards of $7 million, it’s no surprise brands like the Swoosh are getting creative about how and where they show up during the Super Bowl, without having to break the bank. 

Hi friends, it’s Dan here, the usual editor of this newsletter, turned (temp) writer of the newsletter. As is tradition on Tuesdays, I’ve penned my own version of “Go Off,” our weekly op-ed format, which we’ve come to know and love. 

On Sunday, while NFL Twitter had this, and this, and this! on an endless loop, the final of the African Cup of Nations (AFCON) reminded many of us what sport is all about. For those who may have missed it, it was an actual movie. For Morocco fans, the genre was horror. For Senegal fans, the genre was somewhere between a psychological thriller and a coming-of-age story. 

I urge everyone to go watch highlights of the drama (or, if you’re patient, you can wait for the Netlfix doc). There was a disallowed goal; iShowSpeed on the sidelines—a surprise mascot for the event as part of his Speed Does Africa tour—telling the players to “lock in”; controversial refereeing; a team protest with Senegal headed to the locker rooms before their star player, Sadio Mané, called them all back to the field; fans invading the pitch and clashing with security; journalists trading actual blows in the press box while local ball boys tussled with Senegal players behind the goal; a missed Panenka penalty when play finally resumed, and finally a stunning extra time winner to clinch it all for Senegal. 

The chaos of the game reminded me of what watching professional sports used to feel like, seemingly all the time. There was passion, there was chaos, and emotions would boil over. The AFCON Final was sports in its purest and most unadulterated form, two teams doing whatever it took to bring home glory for their fans.

On the way into a Lower East Side bar last night to celebrate my friend Jaye’s birthday, I got into a 20-minute conversation with a Senegalese member of staff, recounting the madness we had both witnessed hours earlier. I hardly remember the last time sports had that effect on me. It was raw, it was ugly, it was unpolished, but it was captivating.

As someone from the UK who now lives in the States, I have the pleasure of gaining insight and perspective on the various discourses surrounding sports fandom on both sides of the Atlantic. 

Over the past couple years, it’s become increasingly common on soccer-related social media to see people commenting or declaring—in relation to the Premier League and other top soccer competitions—that “the game’s gone,” a tongue-in-cheek reference to the old school talking heads who truly believe that things aren’t like how they used to be in the good old days. Please enjoy this compilation.

But while it’s mostly satire, there is a growing element to the discourse that suggests that people actually do fear the beautiful game may, in some ways, be slipping away from us. Why? Reasons include: a hyperfixation on tactics and data that stifle attacking play and stamp out individual creativity; private equity money pouring in, creating huge wealth gaps between the haves and the have-nots; over-commercialization that sees top players risk serious injury with little downtime between pre-season tours, postseason tours, the packed season itself, and international duties.  

There have been well-publicized parallel discussions in recent seasons regarding the state of the NBA. No one is disputing that it’s still one of the more compelling professional sports leagues in the world, with star power and global appeal to match, but fans—and some players themselves—have increasingly begun to voice similar frustrations as to the oversanitized playing style, players lacking the same personality as the old days after being media trained to the eyeballs, a shift away from dunking to perimeter shooting—the list goes on. It’s why we cherish the likes of Anthony Edwards so much, the charismatic, trash-talking, posterizing, swaggering phenom whose personality and playing style hark back to the days of old. It’s why in soccer, we get excited to see wonderkids like Lamine Yamal bursting onto the global stage full of flair, skill and individual brilliance.

I’m not saying I have the solution to fix what’s happening across sports right now. I’m also not saying that all the money and attention pouring into sports—and its adjacent cultural spheres—is exclusively a bad thing. All I’m saying is that we’d do well to cherish the moments, events, athletes, and tournaments that still remind us of why we all fell in love with sports in the first place.

Adidas has always considered itself the go-to football brand (you know, the football with the round ball). But more recently, as part of its push to grow its brand in North America (which has also seen it take big strides in basketball—looking at you, Ant), the Three Stripes has been laying the groundwork for a big push into the other football (the American one) for some years now. 

If last night was anything to go by, the fruits of the German sportswear giant’s labor are beginning to pay off. It was the first time in college football history that the Natty had been contested by two Adidas-sponsored teams. Not a Swoosh in sight. 

It meant that regardless of the result, Adidas was ending Monday night with its first champion in the sport since Tee Martin’s Tennessee team in 1998. That’s some wait. 

For brands like Adidas, moments like these are marketing gold dust. And boy did they make the most of it. 

The brand cooked up some serious heat, dropping the “Natty Pack”, a special edition on-field footwear capsule designed to catch the eye on the night. 

Both teams were also blessed with gifting suites full of player-specific, exclusive products in their hotel rooms over the weekend. 

Adi was estimated to rake around $13 million in equivalent brand value (ask your favorite marketing guru what that means) from the exposure of its logos on-field and on-screen during the game.

It meant that before even a minute had been played, the Three Stripes had already won.