Fill in the blank: football is a game of _____.
If the cliché-industrial complex has taken over your brain, you went with “inches”. If you’re more bellicose, you might’ve gone with “war” or something similar.
What some of the brightest strategic minds will tell you is that football is actually a game of numbers: how many players I have near the ball versus how many my opponent does. Much of the contemporary game is about trying to win this numbers game.
There are limits, of course; no amount of scheming can reliably make Akron the favorite against Alabama.