Making it to the NFL

I was reading an article in Sports Illustrated awhile ago about Jim Harbaugh (the head football coach at Stanford) and his brother who coaches in the NFL.  This was my favorite quote from the entire article:


Once in a while, Jim Harbaugh asks his Stanford players to name the one thing you have to do to make an NFL team. The answers come quickly: You have to be talented. You have to work hard. Nope, Jim says. A lot of guys are talented and work hard and never make it. "The one thing you have to do to make an NFL team," he says, "is take another man's job away from him. And those men really like those jobs."

I think this principle applies in a number of other careers and situations that are competitive by their nature.