Nike Football Quotes

It was the Michael Jordan/Nike phenomenon that really let people see that athletes were OK, and black athletes were OK. Defying a previous wisdom - not only that black athletes wouldn't sell in white America, but that the NBA as a predominantly black sport could not sell in white America.

Americans are acutely unaware of the past and the future. Also, the present. History is infinitely malleable for them. So is reality. Are they just undereducated, indoctrinated, chronically indifferent, hypnotised, or too damn busy makin’ a buck? Consumed by consumerism, they wallow in army fatigues and self-regard, coveting the next dynamite Apple doodad or an AK-47, plasma screen and some Nikes. They have worried everybody and ruined the earth, all so that they can prance around, effect insouciance, drink beer, watch football, guzzle Sloppy Joes and Oreos, wear pro-Auschwitz sweatshirts, make pipe bombs, absorb incessant rock music, object to positive discrimination and the public display of female nipples, wonder whether the mailman has shut the mailbox properly, and choose a new euphemism for excretion yearly.

When Phil Knight was building Nike, he hired other distance runners to work with him because he knew that whatever they lacked in terms of business knowledge, they made up for in stamina. They would never give up. They would take the pain and make it to the end of the race despite the difficulties. When you start a company, you are usually happy to find anyone of quality willing to go on the journey with you. But as you grow, you realize that some people are like wide receivers in football with hands of stone. You throw to them, and the ball just bounces off them. Others have hands like glue. As a decent person you think your role is to coax the bad ones along, to find workarounds. As employees, these are 6s and 7s out of 10. If you keep them, you will end up with a dysfunctional company, where you do all the work, staying up all night with the few people who can make it happen. You have two options: either run a middling company going nowhere or clear out the mediocrity you created so you can grow. If you are ambitious, you have to fill your company with 9s and 10s, and give them the difficult tasks to do. Finally, to succeed as an entrepreneur, you have to be paranoid. You always have to believe your company, regardless of size, is a little company. The moment you start to become big and successful, challengers will appear and do their best to take your customers and defeat your business. You are never more vulnerable than at the moment you think you have succeeded.

But I also thought of all the games I’d seen through the years—football, basketball, baseball—when one team had a big lead in the final seconds, or innings, and relaxed. Or tightened. And therefore lost. I told myself to stop looking back, keep my gaze forward.