There's also something called "first mover advantage", which kind of contradicts your "football effect". There have been a ton of altcoins created, none of which have crushed Bitcoin. Bitcoin is still holding on to the football quite handily.

Also, the first person to jump on the football does get possession of the ball for the team, so there's that.

I'm personally skeptical that incumbency is a significant advantage, particularly given that Bitcoin now is impractical to use directly for most transactions. If your transactions are being done off the blockchain and it's trivial to switch to denominating them in a non-Bitcoin currency, and there's no particularly strong reason for people to accept Bitcoin as payment over a different currency, what's the barrier to entry for a new crypto-currency?

The barrier to entry is low. The barrier to mass adoption is high. Bitcoin is winning that war handily compared to any other cryptocurrency. There are definitely flaws with Bitcoin that will need to be ironed out, but the world's most elegant cryptocurrency is useless if no one has heard of it or uses it. First mover and marketing often trumps technological advantage. A non-techie doesn't care about Ethereum or Monero, but they do care about Bitcoin when the news is talking about how valuable it is everyday. Bitcoin is changing the mindset of what money is to the masses, this can't be said for other cryptocurrencies.

Perhaps Bitcoin will fail at some point in the distant future, but for the time being it is absolutely the most influential cryptocurrency, this can easily be seen by all altcoins' value being pegged to their BTC conversion rate.

Their are a few examples where the first impomentaion adapts and wins. However, email needed to change over time and adapt, but Bitcoin is very resistant to change which is going to kill it.