My pal Jon-Eric has brought me along to several NY/NJ Giants football games in the last few seasons, on occasions when his brother can’t use their season ticket. The seats are great: lower tier, 47-yard line, just below the overhang of the mezzanine. It’s a great view, protected from bad weather, and we always have fun tailgate get-togethers in the parking lot beforehand.

And when the Giants invariably cough up a lead, fumble during a big drive, and subsequently call three consecutive runs for a two-yard loss, we are graced with his dad’s signature comment: “They can’t handle prosperity, Jon-Eric!”

It’s such a regular occurrence that we started betting $5 on the over/under on what point in the game his dad will utter those words.

The question is: who can handle prosperity? One of the aspects of business that fascinates me is the question of how a market-leading company stays ahead of the game, particularly when it’s established an overwhelming position in its field.

I recently pondered this issue of “taking your eye off the ball” when trying to understand how Starbucks had mired itself in an expansion plan that rendered it vulnerable to an attack from McDonald’s. Given the “premium vs. budget” perception of the two companies, I was struck by how it mirrored the “branded vs. generic” conflict in our industry.

I promised myself that I wouldn’t write avoid specific pharma-negativity in this column: no Medicaid fraud settlements, no Vytorin trial results, no Heparin supply chain woes, no mis-sent Zyprexa e-mails, no Chantix psychoses, and no Heath Ledger. Instead, you get the view of one of the most amazing sights I’ve ever seen: The Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland’s County Antrim.

Something I’ve noticed is that leading companies — with rare exceptions — never stay on top: unforeseen competitors show up and eat their lunch, the game changes and their field is rendered useless, or they en-gage in dubious business practices that land them in serious regulatory trouble. Or “d) all of the above, and more.”

In the pharma industry, of course, all these competitive factors come into play, with patent expirations added in to goose the market along and help make sure that nobody stays ahead of the competition forever.

And since even the biggest drug companies don’t command too large a share of the market, the competition is much fiercer — or, at least, the stakes are higher — among major drug companies than it is for a Starbucks.

No one needs me to point out the problems that drug companies face. Sure, we may be seeing an end to a golden age of blockbusters (I call dibs on The Statin Age for an industry history book), but when we look back, maybe we’ll see that prosperity wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

The biggest companies in our industry played out a variety of strategies to stay on top when business was at its best, but virtually all of them are now struggling to find their correct size and scale.

In the NFL playoffs this year, we learned that the Giants may not be able to handle prosperity, but they can sure do a great job with adversity. The team pulled off three increasingly impressive road wins and then capped off their run by defeating the prematurely anointed Greatest Team in Football History, the otherwise undefeated New England Patriots.

Gil Roth has been the editor of Contract Pharma since its inception in 1999