Is sports overrated as a metaphor for business, and life? A friend of mine, an American expatriate living in Holland, believes that it is:
“I often share your insights with my colleagues over here in The Netherlands. One of your strengths is that you often find appropriate metaphors for your pieces. However, I think the sports metaphors aren't your strongest effort, if you are thinking about the international market, which I think you should seriously consider. Frequent usage of sport (especially US sport) confirms the suspicion that US business is testosterone-dominated. While I hold no illusions to the contrary, a bit more subtle/universal examples may expand your readership.”
Most Americans would have little issue with the notion of their favorite sports being testosterone-driven. Yet Bill Walsh, the great 49er coach who died last week, seemed to have reservations about the emotional makeup of many of his players, even as they were winning three Superbowls. Walsh is quoted in The Bases Were Loaded (and So Was I): Up Close and Personal with the Greatest Names in Sports, by Tom Callahan (page 62): "Some play football well because they are incredibly cruel people. Part of it may be steroids and their insidious effects.... But a lot of it is just simple brutishness.... I went into a hotel parking lot once where one of our players was under a car being beaten up by two drug dealers. One of our leaders. He was trying to buy cocaine for a team party.”
President Theodore Roosevelt had a balanced perspective on this matter, a century ago:
"I am delighted to have you play football. I believe in rough, manly sports. But I do not believe in them if they degenerate into the sole end of any one's existence. I don't want you to sacrifice standing well in your studies to any over-athleticism; and I need not tell you that character counts for a great deal more than either intellect or body in winning success in life. Athletic proficiency is a mighty good servant, and like so many other good servants, a mighty bad master." – (Theodore Roosevelt’s Letters to His Children)
