A Man of Two Halves

LA Times profiles Ricky Ellison, a NZ-born NFL linebacker turned US defence advisor. “His [49er] team-mates called him ‘Fruit Loops,’ but this was also a guy who read the Foreign Affairs journal at lunch and spent his off-seasons working as a consultant for Lockheed.” After an unsuccessful attempt to launch an American football league in NZ (the Haka Bowl), Ellison returned to the US and, in 2001, founded the Missile Defence Advocacy Alliance, a non-profit organization promoting missile defence and measuring public opinion.