Every champion needs a rival
tombrady.com
tombrady.com
Why isn't the rivalry considered to be between the QB and someone on the defense? There's actually two matchups in an NFL game (plus specials but whatever), the two offense versus defense pairings. It's odd to make the rivalry about two guys who aren't directly tackling each other, when there are people on both teams who really are tackling those guys.
Ah, politics. It's all perspective.
Some of the players do find this fan/media obsession strange. They may be asked about playing against QB X and reply that they're actually playing against the opposing defense.
There are rivalries between players who are on the field at the same time, but they're less prominent. Those between a wide receiver and cornerback are probably the most common. Throughout the game they are racing, pushing and deceiving each other and fighting over the ball and it can become heated.
However, it's also possible to have a competitive rivalry without directly facing each other on the field. In individual sports like golf this is the only way. But in other sports players can also compete with each other on some individual aspect. In baseball, the 1998 HR chase and Dimaggio brothers are some prominent examples. In Brady's case he had a strong desire to be number one. The threat of Peyton winning MVPs over him, having better statistics than him or Peyton's team winning over his was a strong motivator for Brady to protect his status.
I considered typing out a novella, but it wouldn't mean much if you're as unfamiliar with the sport as you seem to be.
I admit there's some weirdness that they don't face off directly, but that's why.
That said, American football is altogether inferior to the real football.
This is the critical distinction.
Peyton isn't deciding the defense when Brady is on offense. Brady isn't reacting to whatever Peyton left on the pool table or the dart board.
I think much of the same is true of pitchers in baseball as of quarterbacks in football, except pitchers only play something like 1 in 6 games, and these days it's very rare for them to pitch a complete game.
By your logic golfers could never be rivals, because they're never interacting or defending against one another -- they're just playing against the course.
This is the critical distinction.
Why is the commentator talking about Brady vs Peyton, when actually Peyton is doing nothing to stop Brady getting touchdowns?
Why don't they focus on whoever is making the decisions on the defensive side? That would seem to matter more as a struggle between combatants. It's not like each defense is some nameless, generic unit that simply reveals who is the better QB.
There might be some depth to the attack vs defense strategy that is worth highlighting, above the QB v QB.
For example, academic rivals compete in the classroom to have a better GPA, business rivals compete to win more customers and sales, etc.
I am surprised to see that he turns it into a "true enemy" relationship where the other party is "taking" something for you. I think that is perfect for sport rivalries, this sort of thinking probably wouldn't be the best for most readers of this.
Can you imagine what life would be like for either Federer or Nadal if the other didn't exist? It might be quite boring to play knowing you're always going to stomp every competitor.
Use your competition to make you better, not just prove how good you are.
This is the attitude we see in great competitors who get beyond their ego.
[Edit] - what I originally commented wasn't a great example, so I re-wrote it.
Having communism around kept capitalism honest. Without competition, it turned into "Greed is good, greed works". The best years for American workers were the post WWII years, when communism looked like a real threat.
"Maybe we need metacapitalism."
Isn't this an oxymoron? Isn't regulated free market competition a foundational principal of capitalism?
It's worth understanding how this was viewed by the generation that won WWII.
[1] https://archive.org/details/MeetKing1949
seems also then the american elite lost the way -- engaging in financial engineering rather than actual production.
Anticompetitive incentives and behavior are a natural emergent property on top of the private ownership foundation: network effects, platform effects, last mile dynamics, dumping, hell even economies of scale are intrinsically anticompetitive at the same time as they are intrinsically beneficial. Regulation to restore competition amid these natural anticompetitive tendencies can keep them in check and most people would agree this is generally a good idea -- but most people don't make the capital allocation decisions and most people don't learn about the world except through media controlled by people who do, so not only are the regulations 3 stories above the foundational principle, they are doubly insulated from effectively checking the dark forest on the second story by the very nature of the foundation itself.
You have probably heard about how misalignment emerges in socialism, because that is a story the jedi would tell you: capital allocation decisions made without skin-in-the-game accountability tend to cause malinvestment because as far as elected representatives are concerned the job is the product. Of course, a socialist government is aware of this tendency and tries to control it, just like a capitalist government is aware of anticompetitive tendencies in its own economy and tries to control them. The degree of success varies.
When there is nothing to compare against, propaganda can hide almost any mismanagement, so I am glad that we seem to be entering a second period of genuine competition. I'm less glad that this brings with it a second period of genuine "hopefully we don't kill each other / ourselves," but so it goes.
In sports the rules are the same for all, and opportunities are made reasonably equal because that tends to lead to the best entertainment.
The same is not true in business where unfair advantages are celebrated. Unfortunately this doesn't always lead to rivalry and often leads to monopolies which impede progress.
If business was treated more like sport, we might have a very different society!
antithesis: there is nothing about the existence of any other person that changes what my best is or whether I deliver it
potential synthesis: I am my own perfect rival. I am right at my skill level, my career is a perfect parallel to my own, I don't need to look outside myself for a reason to improve and I can always do a little better than I did last time.
Iron sharpens iron.
When you're not competing with yourself, it's an entire world of difference.
edit: typo