— Matt Egan, CNN business reporter on a White House plan to reduce gasoline prices (January 18, 2022)
The metaphorical bandaid is an easy, short-term fix. A game changer is a player or a new strategy that forces other players to rethink old ideas about how to win.
In baseball, for example, traditionalists used to see players as either big or fast. They had home-run power or they had speed. The lumbering left-fielder was an archetype of the unavoidable trade-off: he drove in three runs at the plate but allowed two by not catching up to reachable fly balls. Then steroids came along, producing a generation of players who were both big and fast. Game changer.
The term “game changer” appeared in the 1980s (per search of Google Books) and made its way into business jargon. Business often borrows sports vocabulary, based on a conscious comparison of business to a “game,” in which fielding a successful team, gaining a competitive advantage, and winning are the G-O-O-O-O-O-A-L !!!
In 2002 and 2003, the “moneyball” Oakland Athletics returned the compliment by using business analytics to reach the playoffs with the highest-performing team at the lowest total-salary cost.
Metaphor Awareness Month 