Posted by John Vrooman on Monday, January 12, 2015 in National Football League.

Interview with Pacific Standard.

Without sport, it seems, America would be a much different place. What would America look like without organized and professional sport?

In a hypothetical America without organized sports we would probably no longer exist.

As derived from our societal DNA, organized sport reflects  the basic duality of western man and the yin and yang of eastern philosophy. There exists an optimal mix of individual competition blended with team cooperation that becomes magnified in the reflective mirror of organized sport.

The games themselves require a dialectical balance in that competition must be tempered at some point, because even the greatest club or individual player is only as strong as his/her weakest opponent.  

This is what I call the Yankee paradox (predator-prey) and why linear dominance and competitive imbalance are self-defeating.

The strength and beauty of our games lies in their dynamic balance of symbiotic competition and cooperation. At either competitive or cooperative extreme we will no longer exist as a cohesive society.

Concerning the survival of the NFL as the world’s most powerful sports league:

We (NFL owners) are a bunch of fat cat Republicans who vote socialist on football.

–Art Modell, former owner of the Cleveland Browns/Baltimore Ravens

Concerning the NFL antitrust liability as a natural cartel because of its zero sum interdependence among teams:

Asserting that a single team could produce a game is like a Zen riddle: Who wins when a football team plays itself?

–American Needle, Inc. v. NFL, et al. 538 F.3d 736 (7th Cir.2009).