At the same time, the N.F.L. carefully tapped into the American fascination with organizational genius, lionizing the figure of the coach. From Vince Lombardi instructing his Green Bay Packers for hours on the beautiful simplicity of the power sweep to Tom Landry masterminding the Dallas Cowboys’ flex defense to Bill Walsh remaking the passing game in San Francisco, N.F.L. coaches came to be seen as not just motivational masters, but also as brilliant engineers, moving players around like chess pieces.

The ultimate exemplar is the New England Patriots’ coach, Bill Belichick, whose success seems to confirm the idea that system ultimately trumps talent, and that players — with the important exception of the quarterback — are effectively interchangeable parts.

The fetishization of management has only been amplified in recent years. The league and its many media partners increasingly cater to the inner nerd in many football fans by offering elaborate dissections of teams’ offensive and defensive schemes and analyzing specific plays with a level of detail once reserved for team film rooms. The N.F.L. draft and even the scouting combine have become major media events, and fantasy football has allowed tens of millions of fans to think of themselves as general managers. Decades ago, the social critic Noam Chomsky remarked on how much more energy and attention people invested in sports than they did in politics, and how surprisingly knowledgeable and sophisticated they were about the sports they loved. Nowadays, that is more true of pro football than any other game.