Playing to win looks at video games as training tools, and, as an aside, looks at (American) football as a training tool for war:
Other sports, especially baseball, offer a greater wealth of data. However, no other sport seems to match the set of psychological and physical skills needed on a battlefield so well. Vince Lombardi, probably the most famous coach in American football’s history, enjoyed comparing the football field to a battlefield. But the more important comparison is the converse — that a battlefield can seem like a football field, according to Lieutenant-Colonel James Riley, chief of tactics at the Army Infantry School in Fort Benning, Georgia. Indeed, Colonel Riley says his commanding general makes this very analogy constantly. In football, as in infantry combat, a player must be aware of both the wider situation on the field, and the area immediately surrounding him. The situation changes rapidly and the enemy is always adapting his tactics. Physical injuries abound in both places. Football is as close to fighting a war as one can come without guns and explosives.
Football is as close to fighting a war as one can come without guns and explosives. I love the smell of pigskin in the morning!