I'm a European who follows American sports and I think it's very US-centric to say modern sport is geared towards big stars. Around the rest of the world football, ruby and just about everything else is now more about depth of squad than ever before. In the highly-professionalised aged stars are a likely as anyone else to miss a long run on matches with injuries. Success is based less on a team's best player than how it preforms without them.
Maybe more US-sports teams need to take this perspective?