What I find interesting about American Football is that the QBs are considered rivals, despite never being on the pitch at the same time. Messi and Ronaldo actually appear on many images contesting the same ball, Peyton and Brady you'd struggle to find pictures other than the post-match handshake.

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.

Yeah I came to make the same comment. But Messi and Ronaldo didnt play each other that many times in the grand scheme of their careers. A big part of the comparison is statistical. Trophies, records and so on. Tennis might be a better comparison because to win a grand slam, Sampras really had to beat Agassi.

I don’t disagree with your general point, but Messi and Ronaldo absolutely have played directly against each other a decent number of times — a quick google suggests 30 head-to-heads in the “clasico”, supposed to be one of football’s biggest rivalries.

The rivalry is whether one QB is better than the other in taking their team to the promised land, as they both have the most overall contribution to team success. Really all it is.

It basically comes down to the face that the quarterback position has an outsized importance in the game and those players become the face of their franchises. They are often credited with wins and losses despite those being a team stat.

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.

It's about stats, not head-to-head play against the rival. Each week the teams are not playing against each other, but the rivalry still exists. Also, these come into play with fantasy leagues. You want your player to have a good week while the others have bad weeks. That Ronaldo v Messi you used as an example also doesn't happen on a weekly basis. Maybe a couple of times a year at best, yet they are still rivals. I'm also confused on when you would have sen Ronaldo track back to be competing for the same ball that Messi would have been playing.

In football, the QB generally decides the outcome of the game and their performance is directly comparable.

I admit there's some weirdness that they don't face off directly, but that's why.

Wow. That's such an interesting observation. Two major uniquely American sports have this pattern: QBs in football and pitchers in baseball. I wonder if it is just a coincidence of history. I guess cricket has the same pattern as well?

If you think that's interesting, did you ever consider that baseball is the only sport where the defense has the ball?

Cricket?

But the goal is to use your defense (bat) to prevent the offense throwing the missile at you, and blowing up your home(plate).

Ah, politics. It's all perspective.

Goalies in hockey, and whoever the best player is on the team in basketball. ;-)

You have a similar thing in golf even though the rivals almost never play their rounds in the same group.

We compare QBs because QBs are comparable. It's really difficult to build a narrative around the number of passes one person completes vs the number of tackles a different person dishes out to different people on different teams, but very easy and meaningful to compare completion percentages for two quarterbacks. It's also because QB is considered a leadership and decision-making role moreso than any other position on the field, and so the overall performance of the offense tends to be attributed to the team as a whole but the QBs are compared on the decisions they make on the field and the rest of the offensive units are compared on their ability to execute those decisions.

Have you watched much, or any, American Football?

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.

Its not really dissimilar to sports like golf, gymnastics, track and field (the high jump), etc. I certainly believe there can be rivals in those sports, so I don't see why we'd exclude football QBs from this conversation.

That said, American football is altogether inferior to the real football.

Nah, soccer is real boring, would take American Football anyday.

It's just that they take turns. The top rivals in darts, or pool, or any other turn-taking game is the same way. They have to react to what their rival left them.

> there are people on both teams who really are tackling those guys.

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.

Quarterbacks start with the ball ~at the start of almost every play and one of the two quarterbacks is in possession of the football for the majority of the game. They are BY FAR the most important individuals in the game. Receivers, tight ends, and running backs get some attention too because they are also individually fairly involved, but plays are split between ~5 of them.

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.

You find it interesting that people that play the exact same role on both teams can be rivals?

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.

> there are people on both teams who really are tackling those guys.

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.

A rival isn't the same thing as an enemy. Rivals are equals that compete for the same goal (e.g a championship). They do not have to compete head-to-head.

For example, academic rivals compete in the classroom to have a better GPA, business rivals compete to win more customers and sales, etc.

This sort of competition drives every goal I have. Identify a rival to benchmark myself against and to hold myself accountable.

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.

If you get the job I was applying for, you'll be my bitter enemy until then end of days. Did you start receiving Hair Club For Men emails? bwhahahaha. Did your github repos start getting massively wasetful PRs? hmmmm...

Highly recommend the movie "Rush" about the F1 rivalry between Niki Lauda and James Hunt. The movie is highly dramatized but this is one of the themes.

incredible movie. supposedly does james hunt dirty though

That's why capitalism is in trouble. No rival.

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.

Wow, interesting point. Not sure I totally agree -- but it made me have the amusing thought:

"Maybe we need metacapitalism."

I would argue the social-democracies of Europe are exactly what that is. The idea the free market can address so many things better than any other economic model, but maybe ruthless profits shouldn't drive health care.

Agreed. The market needs to be well regulated in order for it to be tuned for human well-being rather than just greed. It's clear that ruthless profits can't be your optimizing function when it comes health care, housing, education, and environment.

So, when did communism go away?

>That's why capitalism is in trouble. No rival.

Isn't this an oxymoron? Isn't regulated free market competition a foundational principal of capitalism?

The point I'm making here was well understood in the post-WWII era. Here's the cartoon version: "Meet King Joe".[1] The more serious version, "Despotism".[2] The hard sell version, "How to lose what we have."[3] All of these were produced for industrial companies.

It's worth understanding how this was viewed by the generation that won WWII.

[1] https://archive.org/details/MeetKing1949

[2] https://archive.org/details/Despotis1946

[3] https://archive.org/details/InOurHan1950_3

wow!! thank you for bringing up these videos.

seems also then the american elite lost the way -- engaging in financial engineering rather than actual production.

Nope. Private capital allocation decisions are the foundation. It is a mistake to mix this with wishful thinking. Anticompetitive incentives and behavior are a natural emergent property on top of the 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.

capitalists have rivals, but capitalism does not

When the rest of the industrial world is destroyed, it turns out to be a pretty good time for your workers.

thesis: every champion needs a rival to draw out the best in them

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.

actual point: if I'm the best at what I do, and nobody is pushing to become better than me, I will stagnate because nobody else has exposed a better possible pinnacle.

Iron sharpens iron.

This doesn't preclude that though. Maybe it's because I'm a weightlifter and while we compete with one another we really don't, but my own numbers can be my rival. In fact, they're a much more effective rival than anyone else at the gym because they can never be permanently beaten, they can never retire, they will always demand more. If I wake up tomorrow and through some miracle I'm the best weightlifter on earth and can bench a 1000 pounds, 1005 pounds exists whether someone else can lift that much or not. If you're Tom Brady you don't need Peyton Manning in order to throw more touchdowns and fewer interceptions, you need to throw more touchdowns and fewer interceptions. If your rival has a career-ending injury does that define your pinnacle? Not if you're actually in competition with yourself it doesn't.

This is very simply refuted: you're not one of the 5 strongest people in the world. Brady, Manning, were the best at what they do, top 5 in the world at the time they played and to this day.

When you're not competing with yourself, it's an entire world of difference.

edit: typo

what about everyone who uses Brady's system and also isn't the best? Does that refute Brady's system? Why choose the arbitrary cutoff point of top 5? Why focus on being the best when you'll definitely fail instead of focusing on being your best? If Brady could've been better if only he'd had a better rival does that indict this system?

My entire point is, fuck Bradys system. Someone will find a better one. Being pidenholed into weightlifting where there is only “one true way” is your blind spot.

the greatest i know of are interesting characters because they can invent rivals and adversity where none exists. this comes across oddly and makes for great stories about their mania for competition

The greatest I know of are actual paradigm-shift athletes. We must not watch the same games.

If you're interested in some (light) science behind rivalry and/or the Michigan/OSU rivalry, I highly recommend the documentary "Rivals: Ohio State vs. Michigan". It's a fun look into why a rivalry drives better performance.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt22937658/

2 tom brady posts on the front page in one day?

and zero peyton manning posts, interesting

That's not where Peyton Manning is competing!

Counterpoint: Federer and Nadal had a long friendship throughout their rivalry.

Rivalry and competition does not mean enemy.

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.

Did you read Tom’s post all the way through?

Seems like he's following a ridgid structure in his blog posts (reflection, learning, application). Is this a common framework? I've seen similar things but not this specific one before.

He's not a writer. He may have reasoned that he has lessons to share but lacks writing skills, so he relies on a framework. In art history, some of the greatest painters were people who were witnesses at the right time and place - we love their work today not for their craftsmanship but for their perspective.

Competition leads to great outcomes - in society, in business, in sports.

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!

There has never been a rivalry in any sport better than that between Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal.

i think this speaks to the power of competition but not “every” one works this way