It's more likely that the winning team was sacrificed. Human sacrifice was a way to appease the gods with the best of our own world - thus many in the Aztec culture viewed it as an honor to be sacrificed. So the winners (most fit warriors) were likely to be offered to the gods.

How about the experience we now have in getting stuff into space and keeping it there! This is not easy!!! Just think of how many mistakes and subsequent successes had to take place to get the ISS up there and running. Now think that all these mistakes and successes will be directly used when we go forward in exploring beyond our orbit with bigger stations and spacecraft carrying humans towards Mars and beyond. The ISS is anything but useful. You must first crawl before you run? And so on.