Sports define American culture. We are awash in football analogies, baseball analogies. Home runs, strike outs, punting, fumbles, quarterbacks; you can’t chuck a ball of paper at a dustbin without invoking Kobe.
And yet you may rest assured, sports in America are not sports anywhere else. I’m not speaking of the divide in chosen sports, rather that American sports are overwhelmingly winner-take-all, honed on a singular goal and little regard to those who don’t take first prize. Do you recall the 18-1 Patriot season? Was it a success or a failure, as they failed to capture a Super Bowl?