Wealth & Money Quote by Gregory Nunn

Nunn’s line lands like a shrug that’s also a dare: everyone knows the playing field isn’t level, but sports culture keeps selling the fantasy that it is. By saying “harder” instead of “impossible,” he avoids the trap of sounding defeated. He’s not denying merit; he’s pointing to the extra miles certain people have to run before the race even starts.

The intent is bluntly corrective. In athletic mythology, success is supposed to be a pure output of grit, discipline, and talent. Nunn punctures that by naming the hidden inputs: access to training, safe places to practice, nutrition, time, recovery, medical care, exposure to scouts, and the ability to take unpaid risks. A rich athlete can afford mistakes and detours; a poor athlete often has to be perfect while juggling work, unstable housing, or family responsibilities. “Successful” here isn’t just winning games, but surviving the pipeline long enough to be noticed.

The subtext is also about how we judge people. When a rich kid breaks through, we call it “potential realized.” When a poor kid doesn’t, we call it “not hungry enough.” Nunn is pushing back on that moral accounting: struggle isn’t proof of character, and ease isn’t proof of excellence.

Context matters: coming from an athlete, this isn’t a policy paper. It’s locker-room realism made public, a reminder that the romance of the underdog works partly because the odds are, in fact, stacked.