Nfl Team Quotes

What kind of city doesn’t have a football team? Explain that to me, Wes.” “They do have one,” I point out. “The Argonauts.” Richard narrows his eyes. “Is it an NFL team?” “Well, no, it’s CFL, but—” “Then they don’t have a team,” he says firmly. I stifle a laugh.

You are never to be alone in a bedroom with a male.” She snorted. “You have no say over who I have in my bedroom. If I want to invite the entire Miami Dolphins team into my bed and have a big orgy while covered in chocolate sauce, you have no say in that whatsoever.” The brief image set fire to his blood, but he kept his temper on simmer, unwilling to let her bait him. Still, he kind of wanted to hunt down every player on the football team and turn them into stains on the Astroturf. “My house,” he gritted out, “my rules. No chocolate NFL orgies in my keep. I think that’s a reasonable request.

When my son speaks of playing sports, I've always told him: playing on the team is great, but aspire to be the guy who owns the team. I've always told my son: most of the guys on the team will end up bankrupt with bum knees, but not the guy who owns that franchise.

Toronto,” he echoes. “What kind of city doesn’t have a football team? Explain that to me, Wes.” “They do have one,” I point out. “The Argonauts.” Richard narrows his eyes. “Is it an NFL team?” “Well, no, it’s CFL, but—” “Then they don’t have a team,” he says firmly. I stifle a laugh. Jamie warned me that his family was football fanatics, but I genuinely thought he was exaggerating.

New Rule: Americans must realize what makes NFL football so great: socialism. That's right, the NFL takes money from the rich teams and gives it to the poorer one...just like President Obama wants to do with his secret army of ACORN volunteers. Green Bay, Wisconsin, has a population of one hundred thousand. Yet this sleepy little town on the banks of the Fuck-if-I-know River has just as much of a chance of making it to the Super Bowl as the New York Jets--who next year need to just shut the hell up and play. Now, me personally, I haven't watched a Super Bowl since 2004, when Janet Jackson's nipple popped out during halftime. and that split-second glimpse of an unrestrained black titty burned by eyes and offended me as a Christian. But I get it--who doesn't love the spectacle of juiced-up millionaires giving one another brain damage on a giant flatscreen TV with a picture so real it feels like Ben Roethlisberger is in your living room, grabbing your sister? It's no surprise that some one hundred million Americans will watch the Super Bowl--that's forty million more than go to church on Christmas--suck on that, Jesus! It's also eighty-five million more than watched the last game of the World Series, and in that is an economic lesson for America. Because football is built on an economic model of fairness and opportunity, and baseball is built on a model where the rich almost always win and the poor usually have no chance. The World Series is like The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. You have to be a rich bitch just to play. The Super Bowl is like Tila Tequila. Anyone can get in. Or to put it another way, football is more like the Democratic philosophy. Democrats don't want to eliminate capitalism or competition, but they'd like it if some kids didn't have to go to a crummy school in a rotten neighborhood while others get to go to a great school and their dad gets them into Harvard. Because when that happens, "achieving the American dream" is easy for some and just a fantasy for others. That's why the NFL literally shares the wealth--TV is their biggest source of revenue, and they put all of it in a big commie pot and split it thirty-two ways. Because they don't want anyone to fall too far behind. That's why the team that wins the Super Bowl picks last in the next draft. Or what the Republicans would call "punishing success." Baseball, on the other hand, is exactly like the Republicans, and I don't just mean it's incredibly boring. I mean their economic theory is every man for himself. The small-market Pittsburgh Steelers go to the Super Bowl more than anybody--but the Pittsburgh Pirates? Levi Johnston has sperm that will not grow and live long enough to see the Pirates in a World Series. Their payroll is $40 million; the Yankees' is $206 million. The Pirates have about as much chance as getting in the playoffs as a poor black teenager from Newark has of becoming the CEO of Halliburton. So you kind of have to laugh--the same angry white males who hate Obama because he's "redistributing wealth" just love football, a sport that succeeds economically because it does just that. To them, the NFL is as American as hot dogs, Chevrolet, apple pie, and a second, giant helping of apple pie.

The coaches let me prove myself, they gave me a chance to show how my difference could be a strength. That understanding, that diversity of strength, was critical to the team and made it possible for me to be judged on my athletic merits alone.

The main reason I don’t like it is that the commodification of Memorial Day and events like NFL’s Salute to Service month . . . capitalizes on a new strain of ‘patriotism,’” Doolittle said. “In America today, we display patriotism through the lens of militarism and war and pass it off as support for the troops. It can smell a lot like nationalism. We’ll buy a hat with a camo logo of our favorite team and wear it proudly, a way to show support for our team and our armed forces. There’s more to patriotism than standing for the anthem and wearing red, white, and blue or camo-themed garb, but this new kind of American patriotism gets exploited in the name of capitalism, and days like Memorial Day lose some of their meaning.

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.

Bloom found exactly the opposite to be the case. The teams with the greatest levels of pay inequality performed worse than those with less inequality. Similar effects were found in an NFL study: Football teams with greater inequality won fewer games. This research also revealed an interesting wrinkle: Higher pay inequality was associated with higher team revenues. The most likely explanation for this finding is that spending huge amounts of money to attract superstars increases fans’ willingness to pay for tickets and media to watch these celebrity players, even if their expensive contracts undermined the team’s overall performance.

It gives the whole game away that college football is so popular in the SEC, where the legacy of Jim Crow and segregation is so powerful, and now they worship Black football players who make no money and are out there providing entertainment. The university people and the networks intentionally create this fake feel—they use the football field to miseducate people with a fictional portrayal of life off the field. The fiction is that because all these white student fans are cheering majority-Black teams, the dynamic is somehow postracial. It creates an illusion for both the fan and the player—the student and the student-athlete—so they don’t have to face how messed-up this country is. You’re not Black on the field. You’re a representative of your school. There’s no New Jim Crow when you’re on the field. There’s no Donald Trump. There’s no Trayvon Martin.

complaining means you have a reference point for something better that you would prefer but that you are unwilling to take the risk of creating. Either accept that you are making the choice to stay where you are, take responsibility for your choice, and stop complaining . . . or . . . take the risk of doing something new and different to create your life exactly the way you want it. If you want to get from where you are to where you want to be, of course you’re going to have to take that risk. So make the decision to stop complaining, to stop spending time with complainers, and get on with creating the life of your dreams. Pete Carroll, the coach of the NFL Seattle Seahawks football team, which won the 2014 Super Bowl, has three rules for his team: (1) ALWAYS protect the team; (2) no whining, no complaining, and no excuses; and (3) be early. These are the rules of a Super Bowl championship team. They are worth adapting.

As Parcells developed as a head coach, he came to understand that creative tension produced better results. He preyed upon the insecurity of players. If his team was cruising along winning week after week, he manufactured a crisis to keep the players on edge. If they were losing, he had plenty of material at his disposal. Parcells knew Simms could take it, so he often used him for target practice. By picking on Simms, one of the faces of the franchise, the other players knew they would be held accountable.

Steelers radio broadcaster Myron Cope of station WTAE came up with the idea a few days before the Colts game of having fans wave a gold or black towel, much in the same tradition of Miami’s handkerchief wavers. Thousands of fans complied with Cope’s request, and a new tradition was born. The Steelers, according to legend, received special powers with the towel fluttering throughout the stands. Cope claimed that the towel also “inflicted unexpected problems to the opposing teams.” The “Terrible Towels,” as they were called, were quickly mass-produced in Pittsburgh.

Soon enough, MobilityWOD had morphed into our present company, The Ready State, and we were working on movement and mobility with all branches of the military; NFL, NBA, MLB, and NHL players and coaches; Olympic athletes; university sports teams; Fortune 500 companies; individual CEO types; and thousands of others.

The first week of the NFL is very dangerous. Teams change dramatically from year to year. There is no situational advantage because every team is playing their first game. It is very difficult to handicap these games.

If you work in a complex organization or a dynamic environment, you know that challenges are unavoidable. Still, many of us do our best to avoid them. But what happens when we try to sidestep these problems? Former NFL wide receiver Eric Boles recounted a moment of weakness in his rookie year with the New York Giants. As a wide receiver, his role was to run, catch passes, and keep running. So his mentality as a player was to avoid getting hit. But in addition to playing wide receiver, he played on special teams as a flyer. During the kickoff, his job was to sprint down the field toward the opposing players and break up their offensive formation called “the wedge”—a human wall of massive blockers who run in front of their kickoff returner to prevent the receiver from being tackled. In one of his first season games, as he came face-to-face with this enormous obstacle intent on destroying anything in its way, his instinct to avoid getting hit kicked into effect. Instead of hitting the wedge head-on, he cut to the left and ran around it. He then successfully made the tackle from behind, but on the 45-yard line rather than the 20. That 25-yard advancement ultimately cost the Giants the game and a

I take a few steps, closing the small space between us, and kick him in the fucking face like I’m a kicker for an NFL team and this game depends on me.

In some major cities today, having a pro football team is a higher priority than providing basic services. The city of Oakland and Alameda County, for example, shell out over $30 million each year to support the Raiders; by 2012, Oakland, with one of the worst crime rates in the nation, had cut 200 police officers to save money. The

Last year, six of the seven teams with the lowest AGL won at least 10 games (the Jets were the exception).

In 1968, the Bears defeated the Green Bay Packers on a “fair-catch kick”—a rare play that’s still in the NFL rulebook. When a team makes a fair catch of a kick, it has the option of attempting a field goal from that very spot, with defenders kept 10 yards away. The Bears defeated the Packers 13-10 on Nov. 3, 1968, when Mac Percival booted a 43-yard field goal in the last minute. The next morning’s Tribune described the fair-catch kick as a “very rare stratagem.

Lombardi exulted. He hadn’t been this excited all season. Did you see that?!! Huh?! They never saw it coming! What a brilliant call, Lombardi thought—absolutely a knockout punch. Lombardi was starting to view Starr differently. The quiet southerner could be tough and bold after all. Lombardi had underestimated him.

Joe Gordon, the team’s longtime public relations director, said he would be right over. The Rooneys had hired Gordon in 1969, the same year they had hired Chuck Noll, in an effort to upgrade the previously dismal franchise. Gordon was a Pittsburgh native who had played varsity baseball at Pitt and whose hard-knuckle attitude fit perfectly with the brawling team. In the days preceding the 1976 AFC Championship Game against the hated Raiders, Gordon decked an Oakland TV reporter. Asked the next day if his team was ready, Noll said, “I don’t know, but Joe Gordon is.

There’s no recipe for really complicated, dynamic situations. There’s no recipe for building a high-tech company; there’s no recipe for leading a group of people out of trouble; there’s no recipe for making a series of hit songs; there’s no recipe for playing NFL quarterback; there’s no recipe for running for president; and there’s no recipe for motivating teams when your business has turned to crap.

Did you know that there are NFL team colors available in paint? I am intrigued by this. I like the Dallas Cowboys, but I don’t think that I would want their colors on the garage.

We were the fans’ friends,” Artie says now, and Berry agrees: “It really was a unique relationship that was built between the team and the city.

Dungy sees something that no one else does. He sees proof that his plan is starting to work. Tony Dungy had waited an eternity for this job. For seventeen years, he prowled the sidelines as an assistant coach, first at the University of Minnesota, then with the Pittsburgh Steelers, then the Kansas City Chiefs, and then back to Minnesota with the Vikings. Four times in the past decade, he had been invited to interview for head coaching positions with NFL teams. All four times, the interviews hadn’t gone well. Part of the problem was Dungy’s coaching philosophy. In his job interviews, he would patiently explain his belief that the key to winning was changing players’ habits. He wanted to get players to stop making so many decisions during a game, he said. He wanted them to react automatically, habitually. If he could instill the right habits, his team would win. Period. “Champions don’t do extraordinary things,” Dungy would explain. “They do ordinary things, but they do them without thinking, too fast for the other team to react. They follow the habits they’ve learned.” How, the owners would ask, are you going to create those new habits? Oh, no, he wasn’t going to create new habits, Dungy would answer. Players spent their lives building the habits that got them to the NFL. No athlete is going to abandon those patterns simply because some new coach says to. So rather than creating new habits, Dungy was going to change players’ old ones. And the secret to changing old habits was using what was already inside players’ heads. Habits are a three-step loop—the cue, the routine, and the reward—but Dungy only wanted to attack the middle step, the routine. He knew from experience that it was easier to convince someone to adopt a new behavior if there was something familiar at the beginning and end.3.5 His coaching strategy embodied an axiom, a Golden Rule of habit change that study after study has shown is among the most powerful tools for creating change. Dungy recognized that you can never truly extinguish bad habits. Rather, to change a habit, you must keep the old cue, and deliver the old reward, but insert a new routine. That’s the rule: If you use the same cue, and provide the same reward, you can shift the routine and change the habit. Almost any behavior can be transformed if the cue and reward stay the same.

Ten months after Jamie’s death, the 2006 football season began. The Colts played peerless football, winning their first nine games, and finishing the year 12–4. They won their first play-off game, and then beat the Baltimore Ravens for the divisional title. At that point, they were one step away from the Super Bowl, playing for the conference championship—the game that Dungy had lost eight times before. The matchup occurred on January 21, 2007, against the New England Patriots, the same team that had snuffed out the Colts’ Super Bowl aspirations twice. The Colts started the game strong, but before the first half ended, they began falling apart. Players were afraid of making mistakes or so eager to get past the final Super Bowl hurdle that they lost track of where they were supposed to be focusing. They stopped relying on their habits and started thinking too much. Sloppy tackling led to turnovers. One of Peyton Manning’s passes was intercepted and returned for a touchdown. Their opponents, the Patriots, pulled ahead 21 to 3. No team in the history of the NFL had ever overcome so big a deficit in a conference championship. Dungy’s team, once again, was going to lose.3.36 At halftime, the team filed into the locker room, and Dungy asked everyone to gather around. The noise from the stadium filtered through the closed doors, but inside everyone was quiet. Dungy looked at his players. They had to believe, he said. “We faced this same situation—against this same team—in 2003,” Dungy told them. In that game, they had come within one yard of winning. One yard. “Get your sword ready because this time we’re going to win. This is our game. It’s our time.”3.37 The Colts came out in the second half and started playing as they had in every preceding game. They stayed focused on their cues and habits. They carefully executed the plays they had spent the past five years practicing until they had become automatic. Their offense, on the opening drive, ground out seventy-six yards over fourteen plays and scored a touchdown. Then, three minutes after taking the next possession, they scored again. As the fourth quarter wound down, the teams traded points. Dungy’s Colts tied the game, but never managed to pull ahead. With 3:49 left in the game, the Patriots scored, putting Dungy’s players at a three-point disadvantage, 34 to 31. The Colts got the ball and began driving down the field. They moved seventy yards in nineteen seconds, and crossed into the end zone. For the first time, the Colts had the lead, 38 to 34. There were now sixty seconds left on the clock. If Dungy’s team could stop the Patriots from scoring a touchdown, the Colts would win. Sixty seconds is an eternity in football.

Brother John and I had our ears glued to the radio. It was a Sunday afternoon in early December 1941, and our football Giants were getting pounded by the Brooklyn Dodgers, an NFL team that played from 1930 to 1943 in Ebbets Field, a faraway ballpark I’d never seen. So far as I was concerned, Brooklyn was on the other side of the moon. The Polo

I listen to the announcers and read the papers. The media narratives are sensational and simplistic, and when compared to what I know about the team, sound like drivel.

It’s my agent, Ryan Tollner. —Hello? —Hi, Nate. Have you heard anything from the Broncos? —No. —They’re releasing you today. No one called you? —No. —Wow. All right, we’re going to find you another team.

Because of my many connections to the team, the fact that the 49ers didn’t draft any receivers (the Ravens drafted three), and the team’s proximity to my family, Ryan and I agree that the Niners are my best bet. I call them back, while Ryan delivers Baltimore the bad news, and not a minute later I’m out the door, making my short way to the facility again. I walk upstairs to sign my new NFL contract, complete with a $5,000 signing bonus. Look, Ma, I’m a 49er!

Halfway through practice I stand on my own with my helmet in my hand, trying to catch my breath after a series of scout team plays. A voice startles me. —You’ll get used to it. It’ll take a few weeks but you’ll get used to it. No one realizes how bad the altitude change is until they get here.

Anoai played football for three years at Pensacola Catholic High School and one year at Escambia High School. In his senior year, he was named Defensive Player of the Year by the Pensacola News Journal. He then attended Georgia Institute of Technology, where he was a member of the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets football team along with Calvin Johnson, who later became a wide receiver in the National Football League (NFL). Anoai was a three-year

starter beginning in his sophomore year and was also one of the team captains as a senior. Anoai was named to the first-team All-Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) after recording twenty-nine tackles for loss and twelve sacks in 2006. After going undrafted in the 2007 NFL Draft, Anoai was signed by the Minnesota Vikings in May 2007, but was released later that month. The Jacksonville Jaguars signed him in August 2007, only to release Anoa'i less than a week later before the start of the 2007 NFL season. In 2008, Anoai was signed by the Edmonton Eskimos of the Canadian Football

Coach will probably flip out when he finds out I’m responsible for another unplanned pregnancy. I groan, feeling conflicted. I love Charlotte. With all my fucking heart. Seeing my ex only solidified how I feel about my cupcake. She’s amazing. So positive and loving. So sweet and thoughtful. Literally everything I want in a girlfriend. Definitely everything I want in a wife. But we’re not there yet. Got to get her to talk to me first. Have to convince her I’ll be there for her if she decides to have this baby. A baby with Charlotte. I close my eyes, and I can see it. My sweet woman cradling a little bundle. She’ll be a fantastic mother. Me conmueve. It chokes me up a little. Because I want that life. And in this moment, all of my anxiety fades away. So what if this baby pisses off Coach? So what if NFL teams think I’m a jackass? All that matters is getting Charlotte to understand I love her to the moon and back and I’ll be by her side come hell or high water.

There’s no recipe for building a high-tech company; there’s no recipe for leading a group of people out of trouble; there’s no recipe for making a series of hit songs; there’s no recipe for playing NFL quarterback; there’s no recipe for running for president; and there’s no recipe for motivating teams when your business has turned to crap. That’s the hard thing about hard things—there is no formula for dealing with them.

At the start of each NFL season, before games have begun and injuries have occurred and expectations fail to meet reality, optimism is an organizational requirement. As the mindless blather goes, 'Every team is 0-0' and 'With a few breaks...' and 'If everyone lives up to their potential...' It makes no difference whether your franchise is plagued by a roster of talentless dopes, whether your coach is an alcoholic and your GM a heroin addict, whether you haven't won since Washington crossed the Delaware. This, at long last, will be the year!

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.

Exhibit a ferocious and intelligently applied work ethic directed at continual improvement. Demonstrate respect for each person in the organization. Be deeply committed to learning and teaching. Be fair. Demonstrate character. Honor the direct connection between details and improvement; relentlessly seek the latter. Show self-control, especially under pressure. Demonstrate and prize loyalty. Use positive language and have a positive attitude. Take pride in my effort as an entity separate from the result of that effort. Be willing to go the extra distance for the organization. Deal appropriately with victory and defeat, adulation and humiliation. Promote internal communication that is both open and substantive. Seek poise in myself and those I lead. Put the team’s welfare and priorities ahead of my own. Maintain an ongoing level of concentration and focus that is abnormally high. Make sacrifice and commitment the organization’s trademark.

American WOMEN are the best football players in the world. The need to declare our independence and our dominance resonated with the entire team.

The need to declare our independence and our dominance resonated with the entire team.

The “domestic violence” label was attention-grabbing fodder for the media, though. Columnists rushed to compare Solo with Ray Rice and Greg Hardy—two male NFL players who had recently been accused of horrific assaults on their female significant others—and demanded that Solo be kicked off the national team. Once the details of the arrest started to make the rounds, Solo posted a message online apologizing for “an unfortunate incident” but vowing she would be cleared of the charges, even if she couldn’t share her side of the story:

No, I’m not. Always a good sign when a man assumes any woman who works in a building is a secretary.” “Always a good sign when the new owner of an NFL team doesn’t even recognize the quarterback.

On January 14, 1973, the Dolphins arrived at Super Bowl VII with a perfect record. During the 1972 regular season, the Dolphins won every game. They won all their playoff games. They were undefeated. Their 1972 season record was 16–0–0. Sixteen wins, zero losses, zero ties. If they took the Super Bowl, too, they would become the first NFL team to win all their games. Their record would be 17–0–0. Sports history! The Dolphins were playing the Washington Redskins in Super Bowl VII. The game was played in Los Angeles, California. It was the hottest day in Super Bowl history: 84 degrees. The Dolphins scored two touchdowns during the first half. Garo Yepremian added two points with his extra-point kicks. The Dolphins left the field at halftime leading 14–0. They returned for the second half feeling fine. With a little more than two and a half minutes left in the game, the Redskins still had not scored. The Miami defense was overwhelming. Even Shula was sure the Dolphins were going to win. Fans were hoping

Over the years, my brain trust of more than twenty-five people has included a guy who was number one in his class at Caltech, a department chair of economics at a major U.S. university, mathematical savants, computer wizards, PhDs, and quantitative and database handicappers who live and breathe algorithms and theoretical angles not found in your average textbook. Our team members act like hedge fund analysts, assigning a numerical value to every conceivable factor or variable capable of affecting sporting events to within a tenth of a point. In the NFL alone, I have several teams of experts working independently. They have never met each other, even though most have worked with me for more than thirty years, funneling their information to one common denominator: me.

Regarding the importance of injuries and their effect on overall team performance, here’s a great example from the NFL: Tampa Bay’s offensive tackle Tristan Wirfs usually wouldn’t be considered a high-impact player. But when Tampa Bay met the Los Angeles Rams in the 2022 playoffs, Wirfs was injured and, because of the unique set of circumstances involving that game, his absence had a major impact. The Rams, led by all-world defensive tackle Aaron Donald, had a ferocious pass rush, and Tom Brady was not the most mobile of quarterbacks. Wirfs, who we normally graded at 1.3 points or so in the regular season, suddenly became a lot more valuable because of his injury—maybe worth as many as 6 points. Here’s why. With Wirfs out, his backup (normally worth 0.3 points) was also injured, but playing. Therefore, with an injury, he was worth no points. We knew the cumulative totals of that injury, along with Wirfs’s absence, were going to have a significant impact on the Bucs’ performance and the outcome of the game. Add the disappearance of wide receiver Antonio Brown, who had left the team weeks earlier, the loss of wide receiver Chris Godwin, and, therefore, the need for tight end Rob Gronkowski to stay inside to help block the pass rush, and I knew the Bucs were in trouble. I wagered accordingly and won the bet, largely because I knew that an injured offensive line was going to change the dynamics of this game. I would have acted differently in the same scenario if the team had a more mobile quarterback or a stronger running attack. Again, these are the special situations in which you have to understand the value of each player, the quality of the opponent, and the overall impact on the score of the game.

Bears owner George Halas had come up with this tactic as he reviewed his old playbooks from the 1930s, essentially turning Bill George into a middle guard and creating a blitz package that this shotgun team couldn’t stop. With a few exceptions, the San Francisco shotgun died on October 22, 1961. Hickey used it a few times after that, but he did not develop it further as a schematic concept that could aid his offense. It would take years for the shotgun to return to the NFL and even more time before it was taken seriously.

Pete Carroll isn’t a saint; he’s a coach. After losing his job as an NFL head coach in the 1990s, Carroll stopped imitating what others did and followed his own path. It may sound like he’s an easygoing “player’s coach” who is “soft” on his team, but Carroll is one of only three coaches in history to win both an NCAA championship and a Super Bowl. He also believes in toughness.

The game of football evolved and here was one cause of its evolution, a new kind of athlete doing a new kind of thing. All by himself, Lawrence Taylor altered the environment and forced opposing coaches and players to adapt. After Taylor joined the team, the Giants went from the second worst defense in the NFL to the third best. The year before his debut they gave up 425 points; his first year they gave up 257 points. They had been one of the weakest teams in the NFL and were now, overnight, a contender. Of course, Taylor wasn’t the only change in the New York Giants between 1980 and 1981. There was one other important newcomer, Bill Parcells, hired first to coach the Giants’ defense and then the entire team.

the pornography industry generates $12 billion dollars in annual revenue, which is more money than every NBA, NFL, and MLB team combined, and more money than ABC, NBC, and CBS combined. That money is power—buying votes, grants, and appointments in political, social, and academic systems.

What was this? Putting aside their famous metallic-blue colors for a day, the Cowboys wore dark blue jerseys with white numerals, white pants, and white helmets with dark blue stars on the sides—their uniform from the early sixties, when they were a pitiful expansion team rather than one of the most popular sports franchises on the planet. The Chiefs wore white pants, bright red jerseys, and bright red helmets with the state of Texas outlined on either side—their attire from when they were known as the Dallas Texans of the American Football League.

Myers-Briggs, DISC, StrengthsFinder, Caliper, Johnson-O’Connor, AIMS, Strong-Campbell, Birkman, Predictive Index, Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, MMPI, the Enneagram, Lion/Otter/Beaver/Retriever, True Colors. Many NFL teams use the Wonderlic test to assess the smarts of aspiring quarterbacks. Other

Forest Grove was ideal, cool at night and just warm enough in the afternoon, with Mount Hood’s majestic snowcapped peak visible in the distance and salmon running in nearby rivers. The quiet campus of Pacific, a private school known for its music and optometry schools, was lush with evergreens and white birch. The local residents were so excited to have an NFL team around that they fought to loan their cars to the players for use on the team’s days off.

Like Dallas, Miami had experienced a brief fling with pro ball, one losing season by an AAFC team called the Seahawks in 1946.

The women I knew in those days liked the fact that I had a feminine streak, that I seemed to be sensitive and caring, that I didn’t know the names of any NFL teams, that I could make a nice risotto. A lot of straight women love a female sensibility in a man, an enthusiasm that goes right up to, but unfortunately does not quite include, his being an actual woman.

Landry used the tools of the engineering profession to lead his team to twenty consecutive winning seasons, an NFL record. Landry was the first coach to use a computer.

Almost every Division I college football team predates the oldest NFL teams by three or four decades. Most schools built their current stadiums before most NFL teams built their first—or second, or third. College football is one of those few passions we have in common with our great-grandparents.

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.