The angry game I am talking about is football.

And football is nothing but modern-day Spartans going to war, if you think about it.

The biggest and strongest and fastest are the only ones that play.

And they play for the pleasure of the crowds.

Football is an arena where glory is simple.

All you have to do is win.

Football is an angry game, played with punishing violence. People get destroyed on the field, lives end. It makes sense that its first star was someone who’d already lost everything, a ruined man, ill-treated, stripped to his essential qualities: speed, strength, power. Jim Thorpe is the spirit of the game. Every NFL hit still carries the fury of the disgraced Indian, prowling the field, seeking justice.

-Rich Cohen, Monsters