I don't really see how that analogy applies at all. Sitting in the bleachers while your team loses implies you aren't even playing the game. Losing in Dwarf Fortress feels more like you're playing the sport while your team loses and you're having fun because you're making your opponents pay and work hard for their win.
You aren't, and that's my point. OK, so maybe coach is a better analogy, but even then, you're only in charge of training. All you really do is point the dwarves at the enemy, and wait to see what limps back. Worse, every fight generally tends to wind up the same. I just don't find it interesting.
If I'm building some elaborate mega-construction, however, it's as entertaining as I can make it.
Hence, I tend to have more fun making a hyper-spiker hall, and tricking goblins or FBs into running down it to just letting the standard military do it. To go further, there's a bit of a thrill to "flying without a net", and not having a backup military at all. (I've had a few scares where I had to abandon fortress sections. I prefer not to use central staircases so that I can enact intra-fortress lockdown to abandon sections of fortress if I mess up and blind cave ogres hit one of the living pods until it can be purified by magma.)