In his essay, Frank Shelton compares two plays, including Jason Miller's That Championship Season, written a decade apart to show how America's ideas regarding competition and success has changed within that time.

"We are the country, boys, never forget that, never," asserts the Coach to his returning players in Jason Miller's play, That Championship Season. A horrifying thought, yet characteristic of a number of American plays of the 1970's, which attempt to portray through a limited number of characters the corruption of America and the American dream. That Championship Season, a multiple award-winning drama, seemed to revive the realistic wellmade play as a viable vehicle for such purposes, and a comparison with Death of a Salesman, of a generation earlier but with similar thematic and structural elements, will illustrate how our view of ourselves has changed under the influence of the Cold War and the Nixon years...