[nickcarraway]

[Pearls Before Swine]

Didn’t the Mayans play some form of soccer with severed heads? Or was it another Central American group?

One could see the basketball as the modern equivalent.

[mewzilla]

Neat link....

The Mesoamerican Ballgame

[Prov1322]

Cool...genius marketer and savvy businessman LaVar Whatever can have his sons dominate the Mayan league and sell his junk there!

[facedown]

At least nowadays they don’t execute the losing team.....as far as we know.

[ReaganGeneration2]

For the losers, the Christian world's version will work out better than the last one did:

[piasa]

Mayan ball game :

https://youtu.be/JCzhtTjzWvU

[Lurkinanloomin]

They had a similar game that they played with human heads before Europeans showed up.

[SkyDancer]

In the ancient version the losers lost their heads. Literary.

[Varda]

Have family that goes there and can confirm that this is true. Pick up basketball is a standard activity. Some also like to watch ice hockey.

[GreenLanternCorps]

After the war, a Peace Corps volunteer named Ted Stryker introduced them to the game...

[piasa]

Fits:

Kiss de girl [from The Little Mermaid]
https://youtu.be/tXmLRHnoSAs

[golux]

The winners in this game advance northwards to get free stuff and reproduce. Losers condemn themselves to exile: they travel across the border to the US, receive what benefits they can, and start families. Scholarship programs and preferential treatment at the nation’s finest schools mitigate difficulties. It is thought that such early competition combined with proud genetic heritage nourishes the will of both parties to succeed in proudly getting others to pay for every aspect of their lives, for generations.