“
Football: A sport that bears the same relation to education that bullfighting does to agriculture.
”
”
Elbert Hubbard
“
If anything goes bad, I did it. If anything goes semi-good, we did it. If anything goes really good, then you did it. That's all it takes to get people to win football games for you.
”
”
Paul W. Bryant (Bear Bryant on Winning Football)
“
When did my house turn into a hangout for every grossly overpaid, terminally pampered professional football player in northern Illinois?"
"We like it here," Jason said. "It reminds us of home."
"Plus, no women around." Leandro Collins, the Bears' first-string tight end emerged from the office munching on a bag of chips. "There's times when you need a rest from the ladies."
Annabelle shot out her arm and smacked him in the side of the head. "Don't forget who you're talking to."
Leandro had a short fuse, and he'd been known to take out a ref here and there when he didn't like a call, but the tight end merely rubbed the side of his head and grimaced. "Just like my mama."
"Mine, too," Tremaine said with happy nod.
Annabelle spun on Heath. "Their mother! I'm thirty-one years old, and I remind them of their mothers."
"You act like my mother," Sean pointed out, unwisely as it transpired, because he got a swat in the head next.
”
”
Susan Elizabeth Phillips (Match Me If You Can (Chicago Stars, #6))
“
Tell me what you expect from me.
Winning team members need to know five things:
1. Tell me what you expect from me.
2. Give me an opportunity to perform.
3. Let me know how I'm getting along.
4. Give me guidance where I need it.
5. Reward me according to my contribution.
”
”
Paul W. Bryant (Bear Bryant on Winning Football)
“
She feels like the first drags of fresh cigaretter but last crunches of cherry suckers.
She feels like final coats of nail polish.
She feels like lines of coke.
She feels like knuckles you crack after a long day.
She feels like Miami rain.
She feels like empty football fields.
She feels like full stadiums.
She feels like absinthe.
She feels like dangling from a helicopter.
She feels like classical music.
She feels like standing on a motorcycle.
She feels like train tracks.
She feels like frozen yogurt.
She feels like destroying a piano.
She feels like rooftops.
She feels like fleeing from cops.
She feels like stitches.
She feels like strobe lights.
She feels like blue carnival bears.
She feels like curbs at 2 am.
She feels like Cupid's Chokehold.
She feels like running through Chicago.
She feels like 1.2 million dollars.
She feels like floors.
She feels like everything he's ever wanted in life.
[…] “I love you more than I planned.
”
”
Julez (Duplicity)
“
The Stadium
Have you ever entered an empty stadium? Try it. Stand in the middle of the field and listen. There is nothing less empty than an empty stadium. There is nothing less mute than stands bereft of spectators.
At Wembley, shouts from the 1966 World Cup, which England won, still resound, and if you listen very closely you can hear groans from 1953 when England fell to the Hungarians. Montevideo’s Centenario Stadium sighs with nostalgia for the glory days of Uruguayan soccer. Maracanã is still crying over Brazil’s 1950 World Cup defeat. At Bombonera in Buenos Aires, drums boom from half a century ago. From the depths of Azteca Stadium, you can hear the ceremonial chants of the ancient Mexican ball game. The concrete terraces of Camp Nou in Barcelona speak Catalan, and the stands of San Mamés in Bilbao talk in Basque. In Milan, the ghosts of Giuseppe Meazza scores goals that shake the stadium bearing his name. The final match of the 1974 World Cup, won by Germany, is played day after day and night after night at Munich’s Olympic Stadium. King Fahd Stadium in Saudi Arabia has marble and gold boxes and carpeted stands, but it has no memory or much of anything to say.
”
”
Eduardo Galeano (Soccer in Sun and Shadow)
“
Billy tries to imagine the vast systems that support these athletes. They are among the best-cared for creatures in the history of the planet, beneficiaries of the best nutrition, the latest technologies, the finest medical care, they live at the very pinnacle of American innovation and abundance, which inspires an extraordinary thought - send them to fight the war! Send them just as they are this moment, well rested, suited up, psyched for brutal combat, send the entire NFL! Attack with all our bears and raiders, our ferocious redskins, our jets, eagles, falcons, chiefs, patriots, cowboys - how could a bunch of skinny hajjis in man-skits and sandals stand a chance against these all-Americans? Resistance is futile, oh Arab foes. Surrender now and save yourself a world of hurt, for our mighty football players cannot be stopped, they are so huge, so strong, so fearsomely ripped that mere bombs and bullets bounce off their bones of steel. Submit, lest our awesome NFL show you straight to the flaming gates of hell!
”
”
Ben Fountain (Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk)
“
She feels like the first drags of fresh cigarettes but last crunches of cherry suckers.
She feels like final coats of nail polish.
She feels like lines of coke.
She feels like knuckles you crack after a long day.
She feels like Miami rain.
She feels like empty football fields.
She feels like full stadiums.
She feels like absinthe.
She feels like dangling from a helicopter.
She feels like classical music.
She feels like standing on a motorcycle.
She feels like train tracks.
She feels like frozen yogurt.
She feels like destroying a piano.
She feels like rooftops.
She feels like fleeing from cops.
She feels like stitches.
She feels like strobe lights.
She feels like blue carnival bears.
She feels like curbs at 2 am.
She feels like Cupid's Chokehold.
She feels like running through Chicago.
She feels like 1.2 million dollars.
She feels like floors.
She feels like everything he's ever wanted in life.
[…] “I love you more than I planned.
”
”
Julez (Duplicity)
“
Well. Um. The thing is…” I inhale, then continue with rapid-fire speed. “Imnotahockeyfan.”
A wrinkle appears in his forehead. “What?”
I repeat myself, slowly this time, with actual pauses between each word. “I’m not a hockey fan.”
Then I hold my breath and await his reaction.
He blinks. Blinks again. And again. His expression is a mixture of shock and horror. “You don’t like hockey?”
I regretfully shake my head.
“Not even a little bit?”
Now I shrug. “I don’t mind it as background noise—”
“Background noise?”
“—but I won’t pay attention to it if it’s on.” I bite my lip. I’m already in this deep—might as well deliver the final blow. “I come from a football family.”
“Football,” he says dully.
“Yeah, my dad and I are huge Pats fans. And my grandfather was an offensive lineman for the Bears back in the day.”
“Football.” He grabs his water and takes a deep swig, as if he needs to rehydrate after that bombshell.
I smother a laugh. “I think it’s awesome that you’re so good at it, though. And congrats on the Frozen Four win.”
Logan stares at me. “You couldn’t have told me this before I asked you out? What are we even doing here, Grace? I can never marry you now—it would be blasphemous.”
His twitching lips make it clear that he’s joking, and the laughter I’ve been fighting spills over. “Hey, don’t go canceling the wedding just yet. The success rate for inter-sport marriages is a lot higher than you think. We could be a Pats-Bruins family.” I pause. “But no Celtics. I hate basketball.”
“Well, at least we have that in common.” He shuffles closer and presses a kiss to my cheek. “It’s all right. We’ll work through this, gorgeous. Might need couples counseling at some point, but once I teach you to love hockey, it’ll be smooth sailing for us.”
“You won’t succeed,” I warn him. “Ramona spent years trying to force me to like it. Didn’t work.”
“She gave up too easily then. I, on the other hand, never give up
”
”
Elle Kennedy (The Mistake (Off-Campus, #2))
“
According to David Maraniss, the author of When Pride Still Mattered, Lombardi’s last words, spoken in a delirium on his deathbed, were: “Joe Namath! You’re not bigger than football! Remember that!
”
”
Rich Cohen (Monsters: The 1985 Chicago Bears and the Wild Heart of Football)
“
I’d kill to get into Stanford.” A you’ve-got-to-be-kidding laugh snorted across one of the dining tables at the headmaster’s house. “Start playing football,” whispered another voice. “Then they’ll kill to get you.
”
”
Diane Mott Davidson (The Cereal Murders)
“
Manchester City striker Mario Balotelli sets his own house on fire, apparently after letting off fireworks in his bathroom. Two days later City beat United 6–1, and after scoring the first goal Balotelli revealed a T-shirt bearing the question ‘Why always me?’ This was presumably intended to be rhetorical, but Cheshire Fire and Rescue service, who were at Balotelli’s house until 2.45 a.m., could presumably have provided an answer.
”
”
Nick Hornby (Pray: Notes on the 2011/2012 Football Season)
“
What’s football?” he asked. “It’s chess. Tackle chess. And what’s the quarterback? He’s the king. Take him out, you win the game. So that was our philosophy. We’re going to hit that quarterback ten times. We do that, he’s gone. I hit him late? Fine. Penalize me. But it’s like in those courtroom movies, when the lawyer says the wrong thing and the judge tells the jury to disregard it, but you can’t unhear and the quarterback can’t be unhit.
”
”
Rich Cohen (Monsters: The 1985 Chicago Bears and the Wild Heart of Football)
“
Football is an angry game, played with punishing violence," he writes. "People get destroyed on the field, lives end. It makes sense that its first star was someone who'd already lost everything, a ruined man, ill-treated, stripped to his essential qualities: speed, strength, power. Jim Thorpe is the spirit of the game. Every NFL hit still carries the fury of the disgraced Indian, prowling the field, seeking justice.
”
”
Rich Cohen (Monsters: The 1985 Chicago Bears and the Wild Heart of Football)
“
I’m in love with an angel. And not the kind with wings and a halo. A human with a heart bigger than a football field. An angel with talent that knows no bounds, who doesn’t conform to societal norms, because those are for suckers. Who believes in aliens and cryptids… Conspiracy theories? My angel knows them all, and will tell you just how misguided your truths are. I’m in love with an angel who is gorgeous and sexy, and has a body that’ll make you weep… And funnily enough, it’s made up almost entirely of sugar. I’m in love with an angel who uses Twizzlers as straws and gives gummy bears names. Oh, hello, Bob. Nice to eat you today. I’m in love with an angel who never stopped believing in me… Even after every bad thing I ever did to him. An angel I used to say hurtful things to, but who still spoke words of encouragement to me when I needed it… Who was there for me when no one else was. An angel who told me it’s not over until it’s over. Because it’s not. I promise, it’s not. My angel was the last person I thought I could love… But I came back to him, over and over, because my heart wanted him when I didn’t understand why. And now I do understand it. It’s as clear as the crystalline grayish blue in his eyes. My angel saved me. He rescued me from hiding. He held me when I needed him, and he loved me when I didn’t. He’s selfless, real… just a brilliant, beautiful fucking weirdo. I’m in love with an angel… And his name is Avi.
”
”
Nyla K. (For the Fans)
“
A study of thousands of juvenile court decisions found that when the local football team loses a game on the weekend, the judges make harsher decisions on the Monday (and, to a lesser extent, for the rest of the week). Black defendants disproportionately bear the brunt of that increased harshness. A different study looked at 1.5 million judicial decisions over three decades and similarly found that judges are more severe on days that follow a loss by the local city’s football team than they are on days that follow a win.
”
”
Daniel Kahneman (Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment)
“
And later that year he would say *to* his father what for years he had been saying *about* him. He would smoke a bushel of pot, watch his knee bend the wrong way during a stupid touch-football game, be inexplicably moved to tears in a foreign city by a painting of a woman and her baby, touch a hibernating brown bear and an endangered pangolin, spend a week waiting for a test result, pray silently for his wife's life as she screamed as new life came out of her body -- many moments when life felt big, precious. But they made up such an utterly small portion of his time on earth. Five minutes a year? What did it sum to? A day? At most? A day of feeling alive in four decades of life?
”
”
Jonathan Safran Foer (Here I Am)
“
That promotion is satisfactory. Yes, Liverpool Football Club are back in the First Division. Back in the Big League. But that is only where Liverpool Football Club belong. Only where they should have been all along. In the First Division, in the Big League. So the next time you come bearing gifts, bringing presents, it will be because we've won the Big League. Because Liverpool Football Club have won the First Division. And the FA Cup. And the European Cup. And every cup there is to win. Because only that will be satisfactory, gentlemen. When Liverpool Football Club have won everything there is to win, when Liverpool Football Club have conquered the world. Only that will be enough.
”
”
David Peace (Red or Dead)
“
It is the question of "common world". The meaning of this world is not solipsism world, the world of "ego", but the world which can be actualize by my consciousness -according to relation of “ego” and caring for another in everyday life. To care for another means one lets go of self-consciousness and self-awareness and relates. We should consider human is constructed directly in term of their own consciousness and not by contrasting that consciousness with a reality independent of them, on the other hand it is constructed separate of his consciousness. So, we should surely consider the relation of human and the world. It seems that what can link these levels is “life-world” which means the idea of releasing human from worldlessness. Life-world as general sphere of individual experience in the world around (including other persons, objects and events) is a real and concrete phenomenon which has root in everyday life for obtaining its living practical purposes and objectively, considered as the basis of knowledge, interests, benefits and common links between humans. In the realm of life-world, transcendence and consciousness link to individual and group relationship and everyday life. For Heidegger consciousness proceeds from understanding, and this understanding is predicated upon our dealings in the world. Consciousness does not belong to the world, but has a practical relationship with it. What is within consciousness is the exact meaning of the word nothing. Consciousness is nothing but an opening to what they are and can only be talked about in this sense. Consciousness is the relationship we experience in praxis. As for a footballer, bodybuilding and fitness is nothing but the relationship he experiences in act, the day of the race and the subsequent races. Therefore, in this meaning, world without consciousness, intersubjectivity relationships -Alfred Schutz calls this quality as we- pure relation- and everyday life is not imaginable. Because of this matter we can't talk about the world without considering the roles of above items. "As Husserl articulated the life-world can be said to include the world of science and action can’t be without world."
We should consider that thought itself arises out of incidents of living experience and must remain bound to them as the only guideposts by which to take its bearings. The artist who continually experiment the possibility of thinking and experience The new, respond to what addressed itself to him, because the new cannot be preconceived. On the other hand The new emerges through process as a shudder that presents itself to us. Even Architecture is not separate from these issues as the communicative.
A part of Professor Pezhman Mosleh speech, “Music, Anti-war, a way to Discourse
”
”
Professor Pezhman Mosleh
“
I'm not really a flowers-and-proper-dates girl," I said, fully aware of his thigh muscles
tightening under my hand. "I'm more of a burgers-and-football girl, to be honest. Baseball or hockey since we're in the off-season. Basketball too. Burgers, sports, nothing proper. I'm not proper."
Cal rested his forehead on my shoulder with a quiet groan. That sound, it was more intimate than a kiss. It belonged to private spaces where no one else could listen in. But we'd already forgotten about the rest of the world. We were alone here, me and Cal, and I wasn't smitten. I wasn't lovestruck. "Marry me, Stella. Marry me and bear my children."
His hand skated up my arm and over my shoulder to cup my face, and just like that, I was kissing a man I'd met an hour ago.
”
”
Kate Canterbary (Before Girl (Vital Signs, #1))
“
The South Col is a vast, rocky area, maybe the size of four football pitches, strewn with the remnants of old expeditions.
It was here in 1996, in the fury of the storm, that men and women had struggled for their lives to find their tents. Few had managed it. Their bodies still lay here, as cold as marble, many now partially buried beneath snow and ice.
It was a somber place: a grave that their families could never visit.
There was an eeriness to it all--a place of utter isolation; a place unvisited by all but those strong enough to reach it. Helicopters can barely land at base camp, let alone up here.
No amount of money can put a man up here. Only a man’s spirit can do that.
I liked that.
The wind now blew in strong gusts over the lip of the col and ruffled the torn material of the wrecked tents.
It felt as if the mountain were daring me to proceed.
”
”
Bear Grylls (Mud, Sweat and Tears)
“
Doing things the right way, giving guys accolades for that. It’s important. In Burger King we used to call it taking a walk. Taking a walk means you get out of your office and walk around the restaurant. You walk outside and look for trash. Is the dining room clean? Are your employees dressed properly? Are they smiling? Are the lights on? We all need to take a walk more often. Just look around and say, ‘Is everything right? Is everything the way it should be? Are we giving ourselves the best chance to have success?’ And if we are, then what’s wrong with going up to that person that has that area cleaned up, and is focused, with a smile on their face, and saying, ‘Hey, I want you to know I appreciate it.’ If there’s one thing I learned as an owner, it’s that the players, people that work for you, they’re the ones that are going to make you successful.” Plank bought
”
”
Rich Cohen (Monsters: The 1985 Chicago Bears and the Wild Heart of Football)
“
I remember being amazed that death could so easily rise up from the nothing of a boyish afternoon, billow up like fog. I knew that West Baltimore, where I lived; that the north side of Philadelphia, where my cousins lived; that the South Side of Chicago, where friends of my father lived, comprised a world apart. Somewhere out there beyond the firmament, past the asteroid belt, there were other worlds where children did not regularly fear for their bodies. I knew this because there was a large television resting in my living room. In the evenings I would sit before this television bearing witness to the dispatches from this other world. There were little white boys with complete collections of football cards, and their only want was a popular girlfriend and their only worry was poison oak. That other world was suburban and endless, organized around pot roasts, blueberry pies,
”
”
Ta-Nehisi Coates (Between the World and Me (One World Essentials))
“
Did dinosaurs sing? Was there a teeming, singing wilderness with all the species thumping around, tuning up for the next millennia? Of course, dinosaurs sang, I thought. They are the ancestors of the singing birds and cousins to the roaring crocodiles…turns out, no. Turns out the syrinx, the organ that produces birdsong and the larynx, the organ that produces operatic arias, didn’t evolve until after the dinosaur extinction event…Some dinosaurs blew air into their closed mouths and through nasal cavities into resonance chambers, which we see in fossils as bony crests. They made the forest echo with clear, ominous tones, eerily like a cello. I have heard it in recordings scientists made of the sound they produced when they blew air through crests constructed to mimic lambeosaurus’s. Some dinosaurs cooed to their mates like doves…turns out that even if dinosaurs didn’t sing, they danced. There is evidence in vigorous scrape marks found in 100-million year old Colorado sandstone. From the courting behavior of ostriches and grouse, scientists envision the dinosaur males coming together on courting grounds, bobbing and scratching, flaring their brilliant feathers and cooing. Imagine: huge animals, each weighing more than a dozen football teams, shaking the Earth for a chance at love.
What the story of the dinosaurs tells me is that if the earth didn’t have music, it would waste no time inventing it. In birds, tantalizing evidence of birdsong is found in 67-million-year old fossils, marking the first know appearance of the syrinx. Now the whole Earth can chime, from deep in the sea to high in the atmosphere with the sounds of snapping shrimp, singing mice, roaring whales, moaning bears, clattering dragonflies, and a fish calling like a foghorn. Who could catalog the astonishing oeuvre of the Earth? And more songs are being created every year.
”
”
Kathleen Dean Moore (Earth's Wild Music: Celebrating and Defending the Songs of the Natural World)
“
More often, I’d meet people like Brett Favre. Not literally like Brett Favre, in the sense that they were forty-year-old football players, but that they were people who loved Wisconsin but couldn’t find a way to make it work there, took off for NewYork, crashed and burned, and then found a home for themselves here in the City of Lakes. Minneapolis is where the drama queens and burnouts and weirdos and misfits of the rural and suburban Upper Midwest wind up. It’s a city full of people who, though they’d never say it, secretly suspect they don’t belong here, that they’re not Minneapolis enough, because they didn’t go to a city high school, or because they didn’t hang out at First Avenue when they were teenagers, or because they came from the suburbs, or from outstate.They came from the Iron Range or Fargo–Moorhead or Bloomington or White Bear Lake or Collegeville, or from Chicago or California or the Pacific Northwest or Mexico or Somalia. Wherever they came from, Minneapolis is their home now, and it belongs to them. It belongs to us.
”
”
Andy Sturdevant (Potluck Supper with Meeting to Follow: Essays)
“
The Bears would play in Wrigley Field from 1921 to 1970. In their first home game, they beat the Rochester Jeffersons. Wrigley Field was particularly ill suited for football. The end zones, which are normally ten yards deep, were foreshortened by a dugout on one side, an outfield wall on the other. A wide receiver might make a catch, then fall into the dugout. On one occasion, Bronko Nagurski, the great power runner of the 1930s, took the ball, put his head down, bulled through every defender—and straight into a brick wall. He got up slowly. When he made it to the bench, Halas was concerned: “You okay, Bronk?” Nagurski said he was fine, but added, “That last guy gave me a pretty good lick, coach.” In the early years, most NFL teams played in baseball stadiums, and many took the name of the host team. Hence the Pittsburgh Pirates, who played in Forbes Field, and the New York Football Giants, who played in the Polo Grounds. Halas considered naming his team the Cubs, but in the end, believing that football players were much tougher than baseball players, he called them the Bears.
”
”
Rich Cohen (Monsters: The 1985 Chicago Bears and the Wild Heart of Football)
“
I remember being amazed that death could so easily rise up from the nothing of a boyish afternoon, billow up like fog. I knew that West Baltimore, where I lived; that the north side of Philadelphia, where my cousins lived; that the South Side of Chicago, where friends of my father lived, comprised a world apart. Somewhere out there beyond the firmament, past the asteroid belt, there were other worlds where children did not regularly fear for their bodies. I knew this because there was a large television resting in my living room. In the evenings I would sit before this television bearing witness to the dispatches from this other world. There were little white boys with complete collections of football cards, and their only want was a popular girlfriend and their only worry was poison oak. That other world was suburban and endless, organized around pot roasts, blueberry pies, fireworks, ice cream sundaes, immaculate bathrooms, and small toy trucks that were loosed in wooded backyards with streams and glens. Comparing these dispatches with the facts of my native world, I came to understand that my country was a galaxy, and this galaxy stretched from the pandemonium of West Baltimore to the happy hunting grounds of 'Mr. Belvedere.' I obsessed over the distance between that other sector of space and my own. I knew that my portion of the American galaxy, where bodies were enslaved by a tenacious gravity, was black and that the other, liberated portion was not. I knew that some inscrutable energy preserved the breach. I felt, but did not yet understand, the relation between that other world and me. And I felt in this a cosmic injustice, a profound cruelty, which infused an abiding, irrepressible desire to unshackle my body and achieve the velocity of escape.
”
”
Ta-Nehisi Coates (Between the World and Me)
“
Ian rested his hands behind his head. “I’m already picturing myself in the Sterling luxury suite at Soldier Field, right above the fifty-yard line.”
Both the lawyer and pragmatic woman in Brooke felt the need to manage her CEO’s expectations. “You’re getting way ahead of yourself here, Ian. In fact, I think you just lapped yourself.”
“A man can dream, Brooke.”
She chuckled. “Who are you kidding? You barely use our suites at Wrigley Field and the United Center.”
He waved this off. “Yeah, but football’s different. If we get this deal with the Bears, you better believe my butt will be at Soldier Field for every home game.” He saw her fighting back a grin. “What?”
“I just wonder what it is about men and football,” Brooke said. Sure, because of her job she could hold her own when it came to talking sports, but—wow—had her eyes been opened when she’d been down in Dallas, negotiating the Cowboys deal. Those men didn’t just love football, they lived football. “Is it a warrior-metaphor kind of thing? The idea that the strongest, toughest men of the region strap on their armor and step onto the battlefield to face off against the strongest, toughest opponents?”
“As a matter of fact, that’s exactly what it is.”
“I see. And remind me: in what century did it become customary for one’s army to be attended at the battle ground by hot girls with spanky pants and pom-poms? Was that a tradition Napoleon started?” Brooke pretended to muse. “Or maybe it was Genghis Khan.”
“You scoff at America’s sport. I have fired people for less.”
Brooke threw Ian a get-real look. “No, you haven’t. You don’t fire anyone without trotting down to my office and asking me first whether you’ll get sued. And then I’m always the one that has to fire them, anyway.”
“Because you do it with such charm,” Ian said with a grin
”
”
Julie James (Love Irresistibly (FBI/US Attorney, #4))
“
If a man jumped as high as a louse (lice), he would jump over a football field. In Ancient Egypt, the average life expectancy was 19 years, but for those who survived childhood, the average life expectancy was 30 years for women and 34 years for men. The volume of the moon is equivalent to the volume of the water in the Pacific Ocean. After the 9/11 incident, the Queen of England authorized the guards to break their vow and sing America’s national anthem for Americans living in London. In 1985, lifeguards of New Orleans threw a pool party to celebrate zero drownings, however, a man drowned in that party. Men and women have different dreams. 70 percent of characters in men’s dreams are other men, whereas in women its 50 percent men and 50 percent women. Men also act more aggressively in dreams than women. A polar bear has a black skin. 2.84 percent of deaths are caused by intentional injuries (suicides, violence, war) while 3.15 percent are caused by diarrhea. On average people are more afraid of spiders than they are afraid of death. A bumblebee has hairs on its eyes, helping it collect the pollen. Mickey Mouse’s creator, Walt Disney feared mice. Citarum river in Indonesia is the dirtiest and most polluted river in the world. When George R R Martin saw Breaking Bad’s episode called “Ozymandias”, he called Walter White and said that he’d write up a character more monstrous than him. Maria Sharapova’s grunt is the loudest in the Tennis game and is often criticized for being a distraction. In Mandarin Chinese, the word for “kangaroo” translates literally to “bag rat”. The first product to have a barcode was a chewing gum Wrigley. Chambarakat dam in Iraq is considered the most dangerous dam in the world as it is built upon uneven base of gypsum that can cause more than 500,000 casualties, if broken. Matt Urban was an American Lieutenant Colonel who was nicknamed “The Ghost” by Germans because he always used to come back from wounds that would kill normal people.
”
”
Nazar Shevchenko (Random Facts: 1869 Facts To Make You Want To Learn More)
“
He found that when the Montreal Canadiens ice hockey team—once described as the national team of French Canada—got knocked out of the playoffs early between 1951 and 1992, Quebecois males aged fifteen to thirty-four became more likely to kill themselves. Robert Fernquist, a sociologist at the University of Central Missouri, went further. He studied thirty American metropolitan areas with professional sports teams from 1971 to 1990 and showed that fewer suicides occurred in cities whose teams made the playoffs more often. Routinely reaching the playoffs could reduce suicides by about twenty each year in a metropolitan area the size of Boston or Atlanta, said Fernquist. These saved lives were the converse of the mythical Brazilians throwing themselves off apartment blocks. Later, Fernquist investigated another link between sports and suicide: he looked at the suicide rate in American cities after a local sports team moved to another town. It turned out that some of the fans abandoned by their team killed themselves. This happened in New York in 1957 when the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants baseball teams left, in Cleveland in 1995–1996 when the Browns football team moved to Baltimore, and in Houston in 1997–1998 when the Oilers football team departed. In each case the suicide rate was 10 percent to 14 percent higher in the two months around the team’s departure than in the same months of the previous year. Each move probably helped prompt a handful of suicides. Fernquist wrote, “The sudden change brought about due to the geographic relocations of pro sports teams does appear to, at least for a short time, make highly identified fans drastically change the way they view the normative order in society.” Clearly none of these people killed themselves just because they lost their team. Rather, they were very troubled individuals for whom this sporting disappointment was too much to bear. Perhaps the most famous recent case of a man who found he could not live without sports was the Gonzo author Hunter S. Thompson. He shot himself in February 2005, four days after writing a note in black marker with the title, “Football Season Is Over”:
”
”
Simon Kuper (Soccernomics: Why England Loses, Why Germany and Brazil Win, and Why the U.S., Japan, Australia, Turkey--and Even Iraq--Are Destined to Become the Kings of the World's Most Popular Sport)
“
Prisons are racism incarnate. As Michelle Alexander points out, they constitute the new Jim Crow. But also much more, as the lynchpins of the prison-industrial complex, they represent the increasing profitability of punishment. They represent the increasingly global strategy of dealing with populations of people of color and immigrant populations from the countries of the Global South as surplus populations, as disposable populations. Put them all in a vast garbage bin, add some sophisticated electronic technology to control them, and let them languish there. And in the meantime, create the ideological illusion that the surrounding society is safer and more free because the dangerous Black people and Latinos, and the Native Americans, and the dangerous Asians and the dangerous White people, and of course the dangerous Muslims, are locked up! And in the meantime, corporations profit and poor communities suffer! Public education suffers! Public education suffers because it is not profitable according to corporate measures. Public health care suffers. If punishment can be profitable, then certainly health care should be profitable, too. This is absolutely outrageous! It is outrageous. It is also outrageous that the state of Israel uses the carceral technologies developed in relation to US prisons not only to control the more than eight thousand Palestinian political prisoners in Israel but also to control the broader Palestinian population. These carceral technologies, for example, the separation wall, which reminds us of the US-Mexico border wall, and other carceral technologies are the material constructs of Israeli apartheid. G4S, the organization, the corporation G4S, which profits from the incarceration and the torturing of Palestinian prisoners, has a subsidiary called G4S Secure Solutions, which was formerly known as Wackenhut. And just recently a subsidiary of that just have one more page of notes corporation, GEO Group, which is a private prison company, attempted to claim naming rights at Florida Atlantic University by donating something like $6 million, right? And, the students rose up. They said that our football stadium will not bear the name of a private prison corporation! And the students won. The students won; the name came down from the marquee.
”
”
Angela Y. Davis (Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement)
“
Here, for example, is a hypothetical: A football team is going to an away game when one of their vans breaks down. So they ask the mother of one of the players if they can borrow her van to transport them. Sure, she says, but I’m not going to drive. And so she asks the assistant coach to drive the team for her. But then, as they’re driving along, something horrible happens: the van skids off the road and flips over; everyone inside dies.
There is no criminal case here. The road was slippery, the driver wasn’t intoxicated. It was an accident. But then the parents of the team, the mothers and fathers of the dead players, sue the owner of the van. It was her van, they argue, but more important, it was she who appointed the driver of her van. He was only her agent, and therefore, it is she who bears the responsibility. So: What happens? Should the plaintiffs win their suit?
Students don’t like this case. I don’t teach it that often—its extremity makes it more flashy than it is instructive, I believe—but whenever I did, I would always hear a voice in the auditorium say, “But it’s not fair!” And as annoying as that word is—fair—it is important that students never forget the concept. “Fair” is never an answer, I would tell them. But it is always a consideration.
He never mentioned whether something was fair, however. Fairness itself seemed to hold little interest for him, which I found fascinating, as people, especially young people, are very interested in what’s fair. Fairness is a concept taught to nice children: it is the governing principle of kindergartens and summer camps and playgrounds and soccer fields. Jacob, back when he was able to go to school and learn things and think and speak, knew what fairness was and that it was important, something to be valued. Fairness is for happy people, for people who have been lucky enough to have lived a life defined more by certainties than by ambiguities.
Right and wrong, however, are for—well, not unhappy people, maybe, but scarred people; scared people.
Or am I just thinking this now?
“So were the plaintiffs successful?” I asked. That year, his first year, I had in fact taught that case.
“Yes,” he said, and he explained why: he knew instinctively why they would have been. And then, right on cue, I heard the tiny “But it’s not fair!” from the back of the room, and before I could begin my first lecture of the season—“fair” is never an answer, etc., etc.—he said, quietly, “But it’s right.
”
”
Hanya Yanagihara (A Little Life)
“
I awake with a start, shaking the cobwebs of sleep from my mind. It’s pitch-dark out, the wind howling. It takes a couple seconds to get my bearings, to realize I’m in my parents’ bed, Ryder beside me, on his side, facing me. Our hands are still joined, though our fingers are slack now.
“Hey, you,” he says sleepily. “That one was loud, huh?”
“What was?”
“Thunder. Rattled the windows pretty bad.”
“What time is it?”
“Middle of the night, I’d say.”
I could check my phone, but that would require sitting up and letting go of his hand. Right now, I don’t want to do that. I’m too comfortable. “Have you gotten any sleep at all?” I ask him, my mouth dry and cottony.
“I think I drifted off for a little bit. Till…you know…the thunder started up again.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
“It should calm down some when the eye moves through.”
“If there’s still an eye by the time it gets here. The center of circulation usually starts breaking up once it goes inland.” Yeah, all those hours watching the Weather Channel occasionally come in handy.
He gives my hand a gentle squeeze. “Wow, maybe you should consider studying meteorology. You know, if the whole film-school thing doesn’t work out for you.”
“I could double major,” I shoot back.
“I bet you could.”
“What are you going to study?” I ask, curious now. “I mean, besides football. You’ve got to major in something, don’t you?”
He doesn’t answer right away. I wonder what’s going through his head--why he’s hesitating.
“Astrophysics,” he says at last.
“Yeah, right.” I roll my eyes. “Fine, if you don’t want to tell me…”
“I’m serious. Astrophysics for undergrad. And then maybe…astronomy.”
“What, you mean in graduate school?”
He just nods.
“You’re serious? You’re going to major in something that tough? I mean, most football players major in something like phys ed or underwater basket weaving, don’t they?”
“Greg McElroy majored in business marketing,” he says with a shrug, ignoring my jab.
“Yeah, but…astrophysics? What’s the point, if you’re just going to play pro football after you graduate anyway?”
“Who says I want to play pro football?” he asks, releasing my hand.
“Are you kidding me?” I sit up, staring at him in disbelief. He’s the best quarterback in the state of Mississippi. I mean, football is what he does…It’s his life. Why wouldn’t he play pro ball?
He rolls over onto his back, staring at the ceiling, his arms folded behind his head. “Right, I’m just some dumb jock.”
“Oh, please. Everyone knows you’re the smartest kid in our class. You always have been. I’d give anything for it to come as easily to me as it does to you.”
He sits up abruptly, facing me. “You think it’s easy for me? I work my ass off. You have no idea what I’m working toward. Or what I’m up against,” he adds, shaking his head.
“Probably not,” I concede. “Anyway, if anyone can major in astrophysics and play SEC ball at the same time, you can. But you might want to lose the attitude.”
He drops his head into his hands. “I’m sorry, Jem. It’s just…everyone has all these expectations. My parents, the football coach--”
“You think I don’t get that? Trust me. I get it better than just about anyone.”
He lets out a sigh. “I guess our families have pretty much planned out our lives for us, haven’t they?”
“They think they have, that’s for sure,” I say.
”
”
Kristi Cook (Magnolia (Magnolia Branch, #1))
“
Activity pouch on airplanes Buttons and pins Crayons and coloring place mats from restaurants Disposable sample cup from the grocery store Erasers and pencils with eraser tops Fireman hat from a visit to the fire station Goodie bags from county fairs and festivals Hair comb from picture day at school Infant goods from the maternity ward Junior ranger badge from the ranger station and Smokey the Bear Kids’ meal toys Lollipops and candy from various locations, such as the bank Medals and trophies for simply participating in (versus winning) a sporting activity Noisemakers to celebrate New Year’s Eve OTC samples from the doctor’s office Party favors and balloons from birthday parties Queen’s Jubilee freebies (for overseas travelers) Reusable plastic “souvenir” cup and straw from a diner Stickers from the doctor’s office Toothbrushes and floss from the dentist’s office United States flags on national holidays Viewing glasses for a 3-D movie (why not keep one pair and reuse them instead?) Water bottles at sporting events XYZ, etc.: The big foam hand at a football or baseball game or Band-Aids after a vaccination or various newspapers, prospectuses, and booklets from school, museums, national parks . . .
”
”
Bea Johnson (Zero Waste Home: The Ultimate Guide to Simplifying Your Life by Reducing Your Waste (A Simple Guide to Sustainable Living))
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Imagine playing football where there are four quarters, and you have to score in each quarter to win. Imagine placing more importance on scoring in each quarter than winning the game. Now a great trend trader says, “I might score 28 points in any of the four quarters. I might score at any point in the game, but the object, at the end of the game, is to win.” If a trend following trader scores 28 points in the first quarter and no points in the next three quarters, and wins, who cares when he scored?
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Michael W. Covel (Trend Following: How to Make a Fortune in Bull, Bear, and Black Swan Markets (Wiley Trading))
“
A few plays later, Emma ended up with the ball again. There seemed to be some kind of unspoken rule that everybody got a chance to make a play, even if they sucked. She was going to run, but then she saw Stephanie bearing down on her with that killer Kowalski spirt in her eyes and tossed the ball up in the air.
Mitch—who hadn’t touched her since his first misguided tackle—snatched it out of the air and ran it back for a touchdown, much to the vocal dismay of her teammates.
“You play football even worse than you drive,” Sean muttered.
“Clearly, it’s my lack of—”
He yanked her back against his body and wrapped his arms around her so he could whisper in her ear. “Don’t you dare say it.”
She laughed and leaned back against his chest. “Don’t say what?”
“If you mention the magic penis in front of these guys, I’ll never hear the end of it. Never. Hell, fifty years from now when our dicks are shriveled up and useless, they’ll still be cracking magic-penis jokes.”
“What’s it worth to you?”
He tightened his arms around her and nuzzled her hair. “What are you looking to get?”
She turned her head so her lips were almost touching his cheek and dropped her voice down into the sexy bedroom range. “I want…to drive home.”
He snorted. “Figures.”
“Just imagine Mike all old and decrepit and toothless leaning on his walker cackling and shouting, ‘Hey, Sean, how’s the magic penis hanging?’”
“Okay, you win. You can drive.
”
”
Shannon Stacey (Yours to Keep (Kowalski Family, #3))
“
The things she worried about on a daily basis included but were not limited to: Children starving in Africa. Chemicals in her daughter’s food and drinking water. Corruption in Washington, everywhere you looked. The poor, who no one even talked about anymore. Rape in the Congo, which didn’t seem to be going away, despite so much talk. Rape at elite American colleges, which wasn’t going away either. Plastic. Oil in the Gulf. Beer commercials, in which men were always portrayed as dolts who thought exclusively about football, and women as insufferable nags who only cared about shopping. The evils of the Internet. Sweatshops, and, in the same vein, where exactly everything in their life came from—their meat, their clothes, their shoes, their cell phones. The polar bears. The Kardashians. China. The poisonous effects of Howard Stern and Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck and the seemingly limitless pornography online. The gun-control laws that would likely never come, despite the five minutes everyone spent demanding them whenever a child or a politician got shot. The cancer various members of her family would eventually get, from smoking, microwaves, sunlight, deodorant, and all the other vices that made life that much more convenient and/or bearable. Throughout each day, the world’s ills ran through her head, sprinkled in with thoughts about what she should make for dinner, and when she was due for a cleaning at the dentist, and whether they should have another baby sometime soon. She wondered if everyone was like this, or if most people were able to tune it all out, the way her sister seemed to. Even Dan didn’t care all that much about the parts of the world that were invisible to him. But Kate couldn’t forget.
”
”
J. Courtney Sullivan (The Engagements)
“
We might understand each other better if we had more rank conversations between britons and Americans," [Murrow] observed during one BBC broadcast. "You must bear in mind that we are, on the whole, more emotional, vociferous and intolerant than you. We'll go to a baseball game or a football match and shout for the blood of the referee, and on occasion, fling beer bottles at him. Our domestic controversies are conducted in strong language, with much name-calling--in short, we're inclined to say what we think, even when we have not thought very much.
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Lori Rader-Day
“
DECEMBER 8, 1980. John Lennon shot and killed. Of all the people to bear the news to the nation, it fell to Howard Cosell, while calling a Monday Night Football game on ABC.
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Jann S. Wenner (Like a Rolling Stone: A Memoir)
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Kids are one of natural most perfect learning devices. With just a little knowing, a kid can be activated and kept content. Starting early in your kid's growth can do wonderful factors for their psychological growth in later years, and provides them a large boost over other kids their age. Comprehend youngsters are designed to comprehend. Regular actions, such as offering, diapering, enjoying, executing, going for a generate in the child baby stroller, and getting bears from Grandpa are all "educational". You do not need to do synthetic actions or extremely concentrate on "educational activities" for a kid to succeed. Care for the kid. A kid needs a full belly, a dry diaper, a comfortable atmosphere, and really like for the best possible growth. Discuss to the kid. Provide a "play by play" of what you're doing (making a cup of tea, modifying a diaper, confirming the email box. Take part in kid talk; it's designed to stimulate a kid. Read a book together. Increase and massage. Kids really like to move their systems. Learn kid massage and kid yoga exercise exercises, which help comfortable, revitalize, and stimulate. But simply shifting the kid in a way he or she likes (like clapping arms, wearing coming back and forth, "So Big!") is outstanding work out, and properly rubbing kid down with kid massage oil is outstanding for sensitive growth. Acquire a execute gym or action gym. These are generally a company recommended with children from child up to about 12 months. They mostly come in the form of comfortable, quilted or properly cushioning execute shields, sometimes raised at the edges with a space in the center for kid. They can include detachable, holding locations for small children to try to comprehend. They usually have locations that are crinkle, smooth, scrunchy styles for kid to touch, media and action. Some come with bright dazzling illumination and alarm systems and others make insane seems to be, or musical show show seems to be, and some even do both. Look around. Kids are fascinated by factors grownups take for granted: Automobiles visiting outside the screen, tanks, vegetation provided by the wind, failing outfits in the outfits clothing dryer. Go outside A child baby stroller generate can be very interesting, going to uncommon new locations like the mailing service, bakery, recreation area, and so on.Drive your car, which has best car accessories, and go for a have a eat outside. Perform to the kid. Perform child's room music, TV jingles, your popular.Play with the kid. Conventional activities like "Peek-A-Boo" or cheap baby toys, the hug the kid's belly, shifting a football coming back and forth on are outstanding kid actions. Dance with the kid in your arms.
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”
angeladong
“
Kate was often preoccupied with how to do good in a corrupt world, where just by eating dinner or turning on a laptop each of us was complicit in someone else's suffering. She struggled with how to speak the truth when it put others on the defensive or made her seem like a downer.
The things she worried about on a daily basis included but were not limited to: Children starving in Africa. Chemicals in her daughter's food and drinking water. Corruption in Washington, everywhere you looked. The poor, who no one even talked about anymore. Rape in the Congo, which didn't seem to be going away despite so much talk. Rape at the elite American colleges, which wasn't going away either. Plastic. Oil in the Gulf. Beer commercials, in which men were always portrayed as dolts who thought exclusively about football, and women as insufferable nags who only cared about shopping. The evils of the Internet. Sweatshops, and, in the same vein, where exactly everything in their life came from-their meat, their clothes, their shoes, their cell phones. The polar bears. .. The gun-control laws that would likely never come, despite the five minutes everyone spent demanding them whenever a child or politician got shot. The cancer various members of her family would eventually get, from smoking, microwaves, sunlight, deodorant, and all the other vices that made life that much more convenient and/or bearable.
”
”
J. Courtney Sullivan (The Engagements (Vintage Contemporaries))
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What is Bear’s major? Football? Beer? Mind-blowing Sex?
”
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Kandi Steiner (Palm South University: Season 1, Episode 6 (Palm South University #1.6))
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Question 1: “What are you thinking about?” The proper answer to this is, “I’m sorry if I have been a bit distant, darling. I was just reflecting on what a warm, wonderful, thoughtful, caring, intelligent woman you are and how lucky I am to have you in my life.” This response obviously bears no resemblance to the truth, which most likely is one of the following: • a. “Nothing.” • b. “Football.” • c. “Angelina Jolie naked.” • d. “How fat you are.” • e. “How I would spend the insurance money if you died
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Anonymous
“
Back on the road with all four tires intact, we immediately encountered a herd of young feral pigs. With Henry scrambling after us to film, Steve and I gave chase. Steve called the little piglets “piggy banks,” and as they shoot off in every direction, we had to run like the wind. Steve would dive like a football hero, launching himself through the air to grab a pig. I’d try the same technique and would just look like a sick bear, flopping over on the ground. Luckily, Sui helped round them up.
Steve caught a little black-and-white-spotted piglet and explained to the camera the harm that introduced species can do to the native environment, all the while trying to talk over the squealing pig he held in his arms.
“They’re feral and not native to Australia,” he said. “In some places they are causing all kinds of problems.”
Eventually, after running through the bush until I was exhausted, I finally managed to catch one of the piglets. I felt a great sense of accomplishment, holding the cute little pig and filming with Steve. When we were done, I set my little piglet down.
“What is that smell?” I asked.
Steve stopped and sniffed. “Ah, you won’t believe it,” he said, looking past me at something near the road. “Those pigs have been feeding on that carcass over there.”
I looked up to see the long-dead, putrid body. The piglets had scampered happily back to their mama. Steve and I lived with the smell of death on our hands, arms, shoes, and even our hair--for days afterward.
”
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Terri Irwin (Steve & Me)
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The Vietnam Memorial, which bears 58,000 names, is 8,000 square meters. A similar memorial for the Vietnamese, Laotian, and Cambodian dead would require a 413,793 square meter wall — over 2.5 times the size of the University of Phoenix football stadium where this year’s Superbowl was held.
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Anonymous
“
When a TV network — not to pick on TV — devotes hours and hours to the salacious details of a crime of passion that affects none of our lives, is that advocacy? No. When an online site collects pictures of cute cats, is that advocacy? Hardly. When a newspaper devotes resources to covering football games, is that advocacy? Sorry, but no.
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Jeff Jarvis (Geeks Bearing Gifts: Imagining New Futures for News)
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within that meticulous preparation there co-existed a high degree of expression, always bearing in mind that this is football, that players must think in tenths of a second and that there should be some freedom to show on the pitch, to do things that weren’t planned off it.
”
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Guillem Balagué (Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning: The Biography)
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Could any city import the resources needed to create a startup hub? [Paul] Graham took up the question in 2006 and pondered what would make, say, Buffalo, New York, into a Silicon Valley. To Graham, it was strictly a matter of enticing ten thousand people—“the right ten thousand people.” Perhaps five hundred would be enough, or even thirty, if Graham were to be permitted to pick them. Three years later, he suggested that a municipality offer to invest a million dollars each in one thousand startups. The capital required for such a scheme should not seem daunting: “For the price of a football stadium, any town that was decent to live in could make itself one of the biggest startup hubs in the world,” he said.
Any place that wants to become a startup hub needs to understand, however, that it requires welcoming hackers and their unruliness. Unruliness is also “the essence of Americanness,” Graham maintains. “It is no accident that Silicon Valley is in America, and not France, or Germany, or England, or Japan. In those countries, people color inside the lines.” In America, too, failure in business is accommodated. Graham has consistently argued that few people are well suited for starting a startup but that the only effective way of determining who does excel is by having lots of people try: “As long as you’re at a point in your life when you can bear the risk of failure, the best way to find out if you’re suited to running a startup is to try it.
”
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Randall E. Stross (The Launch Pad: Inside Y Combinator, Silicon Valley's Most Exclusive School for Startups)
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million-dollar smile. The earnest, all-American niceness of the guy. Not to mention the pure, high, spiraling arc of the thrown football as it zeros in, laser-like, on the expected position of the wide receiver. Never mind that said receiver is flat-out running for his life, dancing, dodging, leaping and spinning in a million directions just inches ahead of several thundering tons of rival linebackers. And never mind that the architect of that exquisite spiral was himself beset, nanoseconds earlier, with similar masses of murderous muscle bearing down on him as he threw. The ball hammers down precisely into the receiver’s arms as he sails across the line, and the fans go wild. TOUCHDOWN! Who could not love Tom Brady? The accomplishments, honors, and accolades go on and on: youngest quarterback ever to win three Super Bowls. Only quarterback ever to win NFL MVP by unanimous vote. As of 2013 he had been twice Super Bowl MVP, twice NFL MVP, nine times invited to the Pro Bowl, twice on the AP All-Pro First Team, five times an AFC Champion, and twice leader of the NFL in passing yards. He had also been (at least once, and in some cases multiple times) Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year, Sporting News Sportsman of the year, AP Male Athlete of the Year, NFL Offensive Player of the Year, AFC Offensive Player of the Year, AP NFL Comeback Player of the Year, PFWA NFL Comeback Player of the Year, and the New England Patriots’ all-time leader in passing touchdowns, passing yards, pass completion, pass attempts, and career wins. But Tom Brady didn’t get to be Tom Brady overnight. And he didn’t get there alone.
”
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Jordan Lancaster Fliegel (Reaching Another Level: How Private Coaching Transforms the Lives of Professional Athletes, Weekend Warriors, and the Kids Next Door)
“
my glass as I spoke. “I can’t go into details, but Francis Allard is dead.” Monica Toups gasped out loud and almost dropped her glass. “He’s dead? But I just spoke with him last week. It…but what happened?” “Like I said, I can’t get into it, but I do need to ask you about a girl’s graduation ring he might’ve had in his possession.” “Oh, yeah, that was Sarah’s ring. He wouldn’t tell me how he came to have it, but he said it was in Derrick Landry’s possession.” “Did you find that suspicious?” “No, I knew about it.” She excused herself and went inside the house. When she returned, she was holding a boy’s graduation ring. She handed it to me. “This was Derrick’s graduation ring. He had Sarah’s ring and she had his. I didn’t find out about it until after we lost her. I’ve been tempted to approach him and get the ring back, but I don’t trust myself around him. If I wouldn’t hit him, I’d definitely spit in his face, because deep down in my heart, I know he’s responsible for what happened to Sarah.” I mulled over what I had learned. A possibility was starting to emerge. “Do you think she went out on the lake with Derrick?” “That’s what Phil thinks.” She frowned. “I’m just not sure how Derrick’s involved, but I know he is.” “What does Phil think?” “He thinks Derrick picked Sarah up at the front of the street and they went to the lake. He thinks they were in a boating accident and Derrick left Sarah to drown. He believes Derrick’s dad was called and they cleaned up the debris before the police could get to the lake and investigate.” “Why would he make such an effort to cover up an accident?” “Because he would go to jail for statutory rape, that’s why, and it would ruin any chances of him getting a football scholarship.” She grunted. “He used to walk around bragging that he would be the next Cajun Cannon and that he would play for the Saints someday.” “I’m guessing that didn’t happen.” “No, he ended up running his dad’s store. He never did go to college, and I’ve often wondered if the guilt was too much for him to bear.” I still didn’t have any evidence on Derrick Landry, and I knew Monica Toups didn’t have any answers, so I wrapped up my visit with her. “Will you please find out what happened to my daughter?” “I’ll do my best, ma’am,” I said, wondering if I should be making such a promise. After all, Francis Allard made a similar promise, and look what happened to him. CHAPTER 26 While it had started out nice and cool, the day had quickly turned hot. Despite the canopy over the boat, Susan was dripping sweat. She glanced over at Melvin. He was also swimming in his clothes. “I’m seeing shell casings behind every clump of mud,” Melvin mumbled as he turned away from the monitor on the endoscope and rubbed his tired eyes. “I think we’ve found all there is to find.” Susan was thoughtful. They had located a total of twenty-four casings and Clint and Amy had located one, so there were still
”
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B.J. Bourg (But Not Foreknown (Clint Wolf #15))
“
mysteries. Similarly, Bobby Charlton, the third guest on the same show, occupies a special place in our hearts. Not only was he one of the greatest footballers of all time, and certainly assured of his place in any England team of any era, but his gentle, modest way and the dignity of his bearing make him a role model for any sportsman. That many of the modern players choose to ignore his example (although, it’s possible most of them don’t know who he is) is both their loss, and their shame. With the lovely Joanna Lumley I fronted the sixtieth anniversary of BAFTA at the New London Theatre. There was the usual crowd of autograph-hunters outside. Nowadays, they constitute two different categories – those who do it for love and those who do it for money. The latter is the largest category – by far. These
”
”
Michael Parkinson (Parky)
“
They crested the top, and when they looked down, the man’s breath caught in his throat. What he saw was so alien it could only be understood in installments. The strip mine was a crater that had been sunk a quarter mile into the ground. It was like a pit in the middle of the Amazon. Things were crawling all over it the way bees swarm a hive. And it took the man a moment to realize that these were people.
Hundreds of them.
The weather was warm, and the men laboring below had their shirts off. Each was covered head to toe in mud. The only part of them that seemed human were their teeth and the whites of their eyes. Gigantic ladders had been bolted to the walls of the crater, each the size of a football field. At any one time, at least a hundred men were scaling the ladders with sacks of dirt lashed to their backsides. The sacks were so heavy that when the men reached the top, some could no longer bear the weight and collapsed gradually with each step to the ground.
Something deep inside the man wanted to make it stop. And it all came to him in an instant. What he saw was the entire history of the human race. He saw the slave labor camps of the Nazis and the communists. He saw the seas of peasants chained and lashed by great empires—the Romans, the Greeks and all the others that people still spoke of with admiration. He saw the palace eunuchs in the Middle East, free people reengi- neered into model servants by their own biology. He saw the human chattel shipped to the new world, worked for a lifetime, then forced to breed their replacements. And he remembered there was no high-watermark of culture, no height of civilization, that didn’t stand on the back of a mass labor force.
And he thought, My god, this is it. This is all of us.
”
”
Scott Reardon (The Death of a 10-Year-Old Boy)
“
Franklin, back in the legislative chambers where he had announced the indictment of Gardner, could not have got his presentation off to a weirder start. Making perhaps the soberest and most consequential appearance of his career, he wanted to talk about the NFL running back Gale Sayers. “Good afternoon. Before I get to the Gardner matter, I just want to acknowledge the passing of one of the living legends who lived in Omaha. Some of you all know that I’m a huge Chicago Bears fan, and Gale Sayers is one of my all-time favorite football players and the running back who I personally consider to be the greatest running back in the history of the National Football League. My father would argue with me all day about the fact that he thought that it should have been Jim Brown. But his passing is meaningful to me and I just felt like I needed to acknowledge that.” There was an awkward silence.
”
”
Joe Sexton (The Lost Sons of Omaha: Two Young Men in an American Tragedy)
“
but I did hear some things about his speech that I think bear repeating: 1. He is a strong believer that people who talk too much seem to have bad luck. 2. People who do not return phone calls promptly do not seem to make the grade at a highly profitable firm. 3. People who object to end runs will never make it in football, or with successful investment banking firms. Certain groups do need to observe a “chain of command” atmosphere, but highly motivated, intelligent people do not need this handcuff. 4. A firm that has enthusiastic receptionists and telephone operators starts off with a tremendous advantage over the dummies of the world. Keep in mind that the first impression people receive from Bear Stearns is with those associates. 5. If a business person has to ask his accounting department if he is making a profit, he will not be in business very long.
”
”
Alan C. Greenberg (Memos from the Chairman)
“
He was always at football practice, or working out, or patrolling some bridge with threatening riddles
”
”
Nash Summers (Golden Boy and the Two Bears (Happily Ever Asher, #2))
“
It was Plank who gave the defense its name: the 46. Many fans assume it came from the on-field alignment of players, as with the 3-4 defense and the Cover 2. In fact, 46 means nothing more than we're coming hard, in the way of the man who wears that number, Doug Plank.
”
”
Rich Cohen (Monsters: The 1985 Chicago Bears and the Wild Heart of Football)
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For the prediction of football matches, it is possible to use Bet9ja vip, that is, to provide a data analysis program with as much information as possible and variables that allow a prediction to be made that is closest to the actual result.
They are bookmakers, sports television channels, sports newspapers, sections of this area of printed and digital newspapers, and the same soccer teams, who make predictions of football matches and tournaments using Bet9ja vip and analytical programs, through the use of a predictive mathematics that is based on a very extensive menu of data that is processed once obtained.
The data used are the variables that combine to define possible outcomes: team history, evaluation and soccer background of each player, statistics of wins and losses, results of teams as visitors and locals, technical, mental and emotional evaluation of each player, figures of results with teams that a team will face, strategies and tactics with which it has won and lost, climatic variables of the places where it is played, characteristics of each stadium including the behaviour of the people, political and economic variables of the countries where a team will play (in case of international games), among others.
The combination of these variables makes it possible to predict football matches and tournaments, in particular of a football world cup where 32 teams face each other and where it is possible to apply the stated variables with a margin of error of approximately 20%; that is to say, that the use of Bet9ja vip to predict a Football Tournament has between 70% and 80% probability of hitting.
All in all, the variables of a match and an international soccer tournament, the most important on the planet, that is, a World Cup, are so wide and diverse that we are only in conditions -from Bet9ja vip, analysis programs and even Machine Learning- to partially predict them.
So to the question: is it possible to predict who will be the World Cup champion? we can answer that not absolutely and safely, and yes in a tendential and approximate manner; that is, if we use the Bet9ja vip correctly to predict each of the matches of the Tournament and predict who will be the champion of the same, we have between 70% and 80% margin to avoid mistakes.
Therefore, when placing your bets, even when you rely on Bet9ja vip to perform them, bear in mind that there are variables that cannot be predicted, so there is no science that predicts with complete certainty their behaviour; finally human actions, in particular a game like soccer, are full of surprises and contingencies that we cannot control or predict yet.
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bet9ja vip soccer predictions
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For a moment I feel the weight of every one of those eyes that constantly bear down on Drew. And it's crushing. My fingers tighten around the phone. "Are you afraid to lose?"
At first I think he won't answer, but he does and his voice carries a strange, almost secretive tone. "You want to know what winning really is?"
"Tell me."
"It isn't about talent. Not at the top level. That's almost equal. And it's not even about who wants it more. It's about who believes with the most conviction they can take it. Fear, doubt, hesitation, that's what kills you."
"So are you afraid?"
"In the dark, late at night? Yeah. Sometimes. On the field? No. Hell no. It's just in me. Knowing I can do it.
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Kristen Callihan (The Hook Up (Game On, #1))
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On the other hand, there is no doctrine more hated by worldlings, no truth of which they have made such a football, as the great, stupendous, but yet most certain doctrine of the sovereignty of the infinite Jehovah. Men will allow God to be everywhere except on His throne. They will allow Him to be in His workshop to fashion worlds and make stars. They will allow Him to be in His almonry to dispense His alms and bestow His bounties. They will allow Him to sustain the earth and bear up the pillars thereof, or light the lamps of heaven, or rule the waves of the ever-moving ocean; but when God ascends His throne, His creatures then gnash their teeth. And we proclaim an enthroned God, and His right to do as He wills with His own, to dispose of His creatures as He thinks well, without consulting them in the matter; then it is that we are hissed and execrated, and then it is that men turn a deaf ear to us, for God on His throne is not the God they love. But it is God upon the throne that we love to preach. It is God upon His throne whom we trust.
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Arthur W. Pink (The Attributes of God - with study questions)
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Thanks also to the Chicago Bears, the Chicago White Sox, the Washington Capitals, the Tulane Green Wave, and, above all, Everton Football Club, for providing me with sporting narratives that accompany my existence like a joyous bass line. For all of them, glory is a precious, rare emotion. I appreciate that as a reflection of life itself. Never take a second for granted. Make memories while you still can.
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Roger Bennett (Reborn in the USA: An Englishman's Love Letter to His Chosen Home)
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OMG Danita, it’s hopeless out here,” I moaned while we sat watching her son’s football game. I did not want to laugh, but he looked so cute struggling to run up the field bearing his weight in equipment. As he worked on his Heisman’s highlight reel, the
cheerleaders, including his sister Nia, shook their pom-poms as if casting
out demons.
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La Toya Hankins (SBF Seeking)
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So she was still single. She wondered sometimes if Blake was being deprived of male companionship solely because of her attitudes. It bothered her, but she didn’t want to change. “Snow is awesome,” he sighed, using a word that he used to denote only the best things in his life. Cherry pie was awesome. So was baseball, if the Atlanta Braves were playing, and football if the Dallas Cowboys were. She smiled at his dark head, so like her own. He had her slender build, too, but he had his father’s green eyes. Bob had been a handsome man. Handsome and far too brave for his own good. Dead at twenty-seven, she sighed, and for what? She folded her arms across her chest, cozy in the oversize red flannel shirt that she wore over well-broken-in jeans. “It’s freezing, that’s what it is,” she informed her offspring. “And it isn’t awesome; it’s irritating. Apparently, the electric generator goes out every other day, and the only man who can fix it stays drunk.” “That cowboy seems to know how,” Blake said hesitantly. Maggie agreed reluctantly. “I know. Things were running great until our foreman asked for time off to spend Christmas with his wife’s family in Pennsylvania. That leaves me in charge, and what do I know about running a ranch?” she moaned. “I grew up on a small farm, but I don’t know beans about how to manage this kind of place, and the men realize it. I suppose they don’t have any confidence in working for a secretary, even just temporarily.” “Well, there’s always Mr. Hollister,” Blake said with pursed lips and a wicked grin. She glared at him. “Mr. Hollister hates me. He hates you, too, in fact, but you don’t seem to let that stand in the way of your admiration for the man.” She threw up her hands, off on her favorite subject again. “For heaven’s sake, he’s a cross between a bear and a moose! He never comes off his mountain except when he wants to cuss somebody out or raise hell!” “He’s lonely,” Blake pointed out. “He lives all by himself. It’s hard going, I’ll bet, and he has to eat his own cooking.” He sat up enthusiastically, his thick hair over his brow. “Grandpa said he once knew a man who quit working for Mr. Hollister just because the cook got sick and Mr. Hollister had to feed the men.” Maggie glanced at her son with a wicked gleam in her eyes. “He probably fed them some of his
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Diana Palmer (The Humbug Man)
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Since Parcells joined the NFL in 1980, his off-season workload has multiplied. Downtime eventually almost disappeared thanks to the Senior Bowl, the combine, free agency, the draft, minicamps, and training camp. Coaches also needed to factor in time to deal with unpredictable developments, or as Donald Rumsfeld, the former secretary of defense, might call them, known unknowns.
Before the twilight of his NFL career, Parcells has especially relished his off-season football activities. But now at sixty-five, he had little appetite to prepare another team, especially given the chance of ultimately being undermined by a player flubbing a routine task in a game's pivotal moment. 'That was what got me,' he says, 'because now it's another year; we've got to go through a whole new cycle, when we were right there. We had a chance to win it and go to Chicago and beat the Bears. They weren't that good.
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Bill Parcells;Nunyo Demasio (Parcells: A Football Life)
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Holmer loved that damn football team. He would sometimes sneak us into Bears games by hiding one of the little ones under his coat or have a few of us whiz past the usher while he pretended to be fumbling for the tickets. But the team disappointed him more often than not. A season ticket holder, he once threatened to sue them for a breach of fiduciary duty, claiming they were only “masquerading as a professional football team” to bilk fans like him out of their hard-earned cash.
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Meg Kissinger (While You Were Out: An Intimate Family Portrait of Mental Illness in an Era of Silence)