Ms Lu not yet having published a book, the Amazon link above actually goes to the The Year's Best Sports Writing 2022 collection, which this essay does not appear in. It should. More than that, it should appear in the Best Essays collection for that year. For what she achieves here is not just a profound piece on Anglospheric sport in particular but on the liberalism of the English-Speaking world generally:

[W]e Anglos should take pride in our sports. They represent a tremendous cultural achievement, giving embodied form to many of our society’s most admirable characteristics. It cannot be an accident that the Anglosphere has invented at least ten globally beloved team sports, while the Confucian East has invented none.

In the English-speaking world, we value rule of law. Within the realm of law, personal excellence and innovation become more possible, because people trust that their labors will be worthwhile. This observation is commonplace in the realm of political theory, and in economics, but it is equally relevant to sport. Team sports involve a delicate balance between cooperation and competition, which can only be achieved with the help of complex rules, authoritative referees, and players who respect the game itself. Without that shared respect, team sports will never reach high levels of excellence. Why would anyone spend years cultivating the idiosyncratic skill set needed to be (say) an elite right tackle, unless he trusted that the game would be played properly? Those efforts can only pay off in a game with clear rules, reliable referees, and a general understanding that all will uphold the integrity of the game.

When team sports are played well, they have their own kind of dynamism, which mirrors the fruitfulness we see in free markets, and free cultures. The broader dynamics are similar. A successful team must harness the talents of individual players, but those individuals must also cooperate, understanding themselves to be part of a larger whole. As in every other area of life, it can be quite difficult to find the correct balance between fostering individual excellence and encouraging group cohesion. That’s why it is so difficult to invent a good team sport. There’s a reason so many cultures have fallen back on the obvious: just seeing who can run the fastest.

Foot races don’t draw us together in the way team sports do, though. A team sport creates a “little platoon” of players, who can then fight for the honor of the communities they represent. This, too, is a defining feature of the Anglo tradition. In more Confucian cultures, greater emphasis is placed on harmony, cooperation, and pious submission to authority. That doesn’t facilitate fruitful competition among regions. Creative excellence in sport is always motivated by a desire to win, but ideally rivals should be close and accessible, so that they can compete regularly, and sharpen one another’s skills. None of this will seem appropriate or natural in societies that are relentlessly focused on unity.

If the Chinese learned the right lessons from their struggle to keep up with us (literally and figuratively) at the Olympic Games, they might end up with a very different sort of society.

Rules, refs, and integrity are key elements here. Our faith that we can all know the rules, participate in their creation and expect that they will be applied universally describes republican liberty. Once we have this structure in place you are willing to be bound, because you know that I will be, and vice versa, and we both know the next guy will be and so on ad infinitum. We are become a cohesive community. Within this community we are then happy to compete freely, assured that differing levels of success will be earned, not a function of power imbalances and favoritism. It is this culture that allows us to tolerate inequality of results, so long as their is equality of opportunity. It, likewise, makes us fanatical opponents of corruption. We elevate fairness to perhaps our greatest social good. And, so long as we maintain this fairness, we generally a achieve a good society. You'd have to go some to find a more insightful essay in any year.

(Reviewed:24-Sep-24)

Grade: (A+) Orrin C. Judd

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    -ESSAY: The Sporting Genius of the English-Speaking Peoples: The British Empire is no more, but all across the planet, people play English sports, because they are exciting, fun, and community-building. (Rachel Lu, 2/18/22, Law & Liberty)
    -ESSAY: College Football's Death March: Amateurism was the ingredient that made it worth watching, and that element is rapidly being extinguished. (Rachel Lu, 1/08/24, Law & Liberty)
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    -ESSAY: America's historical problem with romance: The French had their troubadours and the English their Arthurian legends. Here in America we have… Puritans! (Rachel Lu, 14 February 2019, The Week)
    -ESSAY: Is nationalism really the future of conservatism?: Conservatives once honored those who vanquished genocidal tyrants. Our children won't revere us in that same way for raging against unarmed migrants. (Rachel Lu, 28 November 2018, The Week)
    -ESSAY: Return of the nativists: The nativism unleashed by President Trump is ugly. America must transcend it. (Rachel Lu, 6 November 2018, The Week)
    -ESSAY: Americans are giving up on America. Can John Courtney Murray remind us what’s still to love about our country? (Rachel Lu, June 27, 2024, America)
    -ESSAY: The Wisdom of the Neocons (Rachel Lu, September 14, 2017, Public Discourse)
    -ESSAY: Jonah Goldberg vs. Patrick Deneen: Is Liberalism a Blessing or a Curse?: Jonah Goldberg’s new book is a poignant reminder that we should never allow discouragement to swamp our sense of gratitude. As Americans, liberalism is our patrimony. Even recognizing the drawbacks, we should maintain a proper respect for that heritage. (Rachel Lu, 6/07/18, Public Discourse)
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    -REVIEW: of To Overthrow the World by Sean McMeekin (Rachel Lu, Law & Liberty)
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    -ESSAY: The End of Feminism (Rachel Lu, 1/10/24, Public Discourse)
    -ESSAY: The End of Feminism: A Response to Rachel Lu: Writer Rachel Lu recently penned an essay in these pages that engages my book as an example of what she calls “anti-feminist” work. Lu draws some surprising conclusions about my book that, I think, are not representative of my work. She makes four overarching points to which I would like to respond. (Carrie Gress, 1/29/24, Public Discourse)
    -ESSAY: Exorcising the Conservative Media: Former talk radio host Charlie Sykes fell out with Trump. Now he's diagnosing what ails the (Rachel Lu, Oct 18, 2017, American Conservative)
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    -PROFILE: Rachel Lu on the future of the family (Jon D. Schaff, October 5, 2023, The Current)
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