United Kingdom
Bruce Arians, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers head coach, has a saying: "No risk it, no biscuit." Materially, there was obviously little for Tom Brady to lose when lured south by Arians - there is not much downside to being paid £30 million for a year in the Florida sunshine.
Law lectures at Nottingham University helped Ayo Oyelola decide what career he wanted to pursue, but it was not the complexities of his tort module that intrigued him. The student's attention was instead focused on Saquon Barkley, the New York Giants running back, and the YouTube highlights reels that he would surreptitiously watch set him on a new path.
Jon Dorenbos was not destined to win the Super Bowl. After 11 seasons of service, the Philadelphia Eagles traded him to the New Orleans Saints last August on the eve of their title-winning year.
Without his mother's intervention, Victor Muhammad might never have been an American football player. If she had not hidden from her son the offers of trials from English football clubs, he might well now be looking back on a long and successful career with Queens Park Rangers or Fulham.
Stories of electoral fraud - proven in Florida, alleged in St Louis - dominated the front page. But a small footnote on the front of that day's New York Tribune suggested the birth of another American tradition; one that is also still going strong.
At this time of year in Green Bay, Wisconsin, temperatures rarely get above 24 degrees - Fahrenheit, that is. Often they can dip far below that. On December 31, 1967, for example, the temperature was minus 24C (-11F), the coldest New Year's Eve in the town's history.
Cast your mind back to February 2018, when the Philadelphia Eagles won the Super Bowl. It may have been less than three years ago, but just as the Eagles were reaching the pinnacle of their sport, one of their big hopes for this season had barely even begun playing it.