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Football is a chance for men to compete in warlike conditions without actually killing each other. And you know what, in one sense it's a rehearsal, a sort of drama played out in public that in some small way reminds us that should a real war actually come we'd better be able to compete. In real war, men strap on their helmets with truly bad intentions. When and if it actually comes, no referee's flag is going to affect the outcome. It's no holds barred, mano a mano, brain versus brain, brawn vs brawn, tech vs tech, every weapon at one's disposal is brought to bear to defeat the enemy, because if you don't the consequences for your country might be too terrible to imagine.
Frankly, sometimes it seems like our politicians and generals are teaching our soldiers to fight wars like we now play football, with one hand tied behind our back. Part of the problem is that any more we rarely get into wars that portend possible unimaginable harm to our country. I'm not saying that's a bad thing; I'm saying that we haven't faced such a war since World War 2. The Cold War was precisely that, never a Hot War. But should a Hot War come, we'll need every Richard Sherman we can get in this country, every Kam Chancellor. And guess what? The feminist voices will be crying out for them, calling on their bad intentions to stand between them and the enemy.
One of the hardest things about the War On Terror is that it's terror has so far only reached a very few people directly. So we begin to pretend everything is business as usual...until it isn't.
Edited to add: I am aware that history shows political considerations have always affected war and constrained it's implementation. Lord knows I've read enough history of various wars from ancient times to the most recent times, biographies of presidents, generals, ambassadors, dictators, etc., etc. And the maxim is absolutely true that war is the extension of diplomacy to violent means. My post is not meant to suggest that this ought not to be. It IS meant to suggest that we have allowed impossible rules of engagement to so hamstring our soldiers that there is as much conflict within them as there is on the battlefield. We literally drive them crazy, because they know we need them to be warriors, and they want to win, and we put them in harm's way, and then we tell them we don't really want them to win. Perhaps the problem is the overall circumstance in which we deploy them. That's above my pay grade, but American's don't do well when you treat them this way. They know how to win if you give 'em half a chance.