I think that it does apply to sports, it's a common trope that athletes (especially in contact sports) are domestic abusers. Business tycoons are often stereotyped as sociopaths.
Plus there's doping in athletics. People love to criticise Lance Armstrong for doping (among his other flaws), but there's no way, even with doping, that the average person would be able to compete in pro cycling, all the steroids, clenbuterol, EPO, and other PEDs in the world couldn't dope you up enough to be competitive at that level.
People love to justify their mediocre existence (not that there's anything at all wrong with mediocrity). They could be a businessman if they were more sociopathic, they could be an athlete if they used steroids, they could be an artist if they took drugs or were more eccentric.
Then again, there are people who dropped out of sport, because they thought they would have to take doping or were pressured to. There are people I know personally who refused jobs that required them do something they found unethical - despite higher pay and benefits. It is profoundly unfair to label them as mediocre just because they have moral or ethical lines they don't cross. Doing that is nothing but rationalization of bad acts.
Maybe the average mediocre person is not just justifying their mediocre existence.
Maybe you are rationalizing bad acts bad on idea that being socially celebrated matters more then ethics and moral.
Being socially celebrated gets you all the things people teach you mean success as you're growing up: Money, probably a beautiful wife, the admiration of your peers. I agree with you that doesn't have to matter but I don't think you should underestimate how much that flies in the face of what most people have been taught matters most.
Which is why I am objecting against knee jerk labeling of people who resisted the temptation as "mediocre" and knee jerk celebration of those who did not resisted as "the others are mediocre anyway". It is tempting even without that.
The beautiful wife will get old as any other women, unless you exchange her ever few years. Being wife merely as a social status trophy is not the kind of relationship I would find attractive at all. I know that some girls are raised to believe that is what they are supposed to be, but that is another category of things I would rather avoid.
Plus there's doping in athletics. People love to criticise Lance Armstrong for doping (among his other flaws), but there's no way, even with doping, that the average person would be able to compete in pro cycling, all the steroids, clenbuterol, EPO, and other PEDs in the world couldn't dope you up enough to be competitive at that level.
People love to justify their mediocre existence (not that there's anything at all wrong with mediocrity). They could be a businessman if they were more sociopathic, they could be an athlete if they used steroids, they could be an artist if they took drugs or were more eccentric.