Steelers Win Quotes

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.

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.

I forgive you,” she whispered. “But I’m never staying home again. That was the single most agonizing experience of my life.” “I told you I would win. And then I’d come here. And here I am,” I said, nuzzling her hair. “Will you marry us, Tag?” Henry asked intently, inserting himself back in the conversation. “What?” I wasn’t sure I had heard him right. “Will you marry Millie and be my brother?” he repeated, his expression completely serious. He wasn’t messing around. “We want to be part of Tag Team...” I guess I’d always thought I would marry someday. When I was eighty. Yet Henry was proposing, and it didn’t alarm me in the slightest. In fact, the thought of marrying Millie made my pulse quicken. It made my palms tingle. It made my heart smile so big I could feel the edges of the grin poking me in the ribs. That, or I was starting to feel the hurt from the Santos fight. “Because they both lost so many players to WWII military service, the Pittsburgh Steelers and Philadelphia Eagles combined to become the Steagles during the 1943 season,” Henry recited. “What? The Steagles?” My eyes were on Henry, but I needed to chase Millie down. Henry nodded, straight-faced. “We could do that. We could combine. We could be the Taggersons.” “That’s a very interesting idea, Henry.” I nodded, biting my lip so I wouldn’t laugh. “But I need to convince Millie. I’m not sure she wants to be a Taggerson just yet.” “Andert?” Henry offered another combination, wrinkling his nose, and then shaking his head, as if it didn’t have the same ring. “Give me a minute to see what Millie thinks. Okay?” Henry gave me a solemn thumbs up and sat down on the bottom stair to wait for the verdict

Such success had been impossible to envision in 1960, but the Cowboys had become more competitive. They had opened the season with their first-ever win, beating the Steelers in Dallas, 27–24, on a last-second field goal by their new kicker, Allen Green, before a crowd of 23,500.

also made it abundantly clear that no one was indispensable. We knew that if one of our star players was injured, we could still play well and still win. So even though we had many Hall of Fame players, our games were never about individual accomplishments. Teamwork was valued above all. It was not about “I” or “me” but about “us” and “we.” This was the primary reason that Coach Noll brought in assistant coaches from the college ranks. Similarly, when he traded players away (like me!), he always looked to get draft picks in return, not players from other teams. He wanted people who would buy into the “Steeler Way” and not try to bring other ideas into play. Other teams may have good ideas that work well for them, but we would win the Steeler Way. And every Steeler believed that, which is one of the reasons we were so successful.

the Pittsburgh Steelers during their heyday in the 1970s. He said, “We made every decision like we were going to the Super Bowl,” and they ended up winning the Super Bowl four times. That is what every leadership team needs to do. You should make all of your decisions as though you are going to your own Super Bowl—as though you were achieving your vision.