Training Football Quotes

THE FIRST TEN LIES THEY TELL YOU IN HIGH SCHOOL 1. We are here to help you. 2. You will have time to get to your class before the bell rings. 3. The dress code will be enforced. 4. No smoking is allowed on school grounds. 5. Our football team will win the championship this year. 6. We expect more of you here. 7. Guidance counselors are always available to listen. 8. Your schedule was created with you in mind. 9. Your locker combination is private. 10. These will be the years you look back on fondly. TEN MORE LIES THEY TELL YOU IN HIGH SCHOOL 1. You will use algebra in your adult lives. 2. Driving to school is a privilege that can be taken away. 3. Students must stay on campus during lunch. 4. The new text books will arrive any day now. 5. Colleges care more about you than your SAT scores. 6. We are enforcing the dress code. 7. We will figure out how to turn off the heat soon. 8. Our bus drivers are highly trained professionals. 9. There is nothing wrong with summer school. 10. We want to hear what you have to say.

When I was in high school I asked myself at one point: "Why do I care if my high school's team wins the football game? I don't know anybody on the team, they have nothing to do with me... why am I here and applaud? It does not make any sense." But the point is, it does make sense: It's a way of building up irrational attitudes of submission to authority and group cohesion behind leadership elements. In fact it's training in irrational jingoism. That's also a feature of competitive sports.

Champions never sleep, the eternal spirit keep them alert and awake.

It is not over. Champions extend their limits and make things happen.

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.

The train slowed down at the approach to shrewsbury station and glided between the eleventh-century abbey and the stadium of shrewsbury town football club. Two sacred arenas where men chanted and waited for a miracle that never came.

Practice hard,Train hard,work hard and Play harder.

And the plunder was not just of Prince alone. Think of all the love poured into him. Think of the tuitions for Montessori and music lessons. Think of the gasoline expended, the treads worn carting him to football games, basketball tournaments, and Little League. Think of all the time spent regulating sleepovers. Think of the surprise birthday parties, the daycare, and the reference checks on babysitters. Think of World Book and Childcraft. Think of checks written for family photos. Think of credit cards charged for vacations. Think of soccer balls, science kits, chemistry sets, racetracks, and model trains. Think of all the embraces, all the private jokes, customs, greetings, names, dreams, all the shared knowledge and capacity of a black family injected into that vessel of flesh and bone. And think of how that vessel was taken, shattered on the concrete, and all its holy contents, all that had gone into him, sent flowing back to the earth.

Nobody needed to get all that educated for being a miner, so they let the schools go to rot. And they made sure no mills or factories got in the door. Coal only. To this day, you have to cross a lot of ground to find other work. Not an accident, Mr. Armstrong said, and for once we believed him, because down in the dark mess of our little skull closets some puzzle pieces were clicking together and our world made some terrible kind of sense. The dads at home drinking beer in their underwear, the moms at the grocery with their SNAP coupons. The army recruiters in shiny gold buttons come to harvest their jackpot of hopeless futures. Goddamn. The trouble with learning the backgrounds is that you end up wanting to deck somebody, possibly Bettina Cook and the horse she rode in on. (Not happening. Her dad being head of the football boosters and major donor.) Once upon a time we had our honest living that was God and country. Then the world turns and there’s no God anymore, no country, but it’s still in your blood that coal is God’s gift and you want to believe. Because otherwise it was one more scam in the fuck-train that’s railroaded over these mountains since George Washington rode in and set his crew to cutting down our trees. Everything that could be taken is gone. Mountains left with their heads blown off, rivers running black. My people are dead of trying, or headed that way, addicted as we are to keeping ourselves alive. There’s no more blood here to give, just war wounds. Madness. A world of pain, looking to be killed.

I messed up royally. This wasn’t an easy fix. This wasn’t a let me come over tomorrow and fix the training wheel I accidently broke. Or let me replace the canvas I threw a football in the middle of. This is life. This is what happens when you stop living in the moment. People grow up. They change, they move on, and you find yourself wishing you had looked up in time to walk with them.

I miss being a mistress. I enjoyed it. I loved it, in fact. I never felt guilty. I pretended I did. I had to, with my married girlfriends, the ones who live in terror of the pert au pair or the pretty, funny girl in the office who can talk about football and spends half her life in the gym. I had to tell them that of course I felt terrible about it, of course I felt bad for his wife, I never meant for any of this to happen, we fell in love, what could we do?

Baby Kochamma had installed a dish antenna on the roof of the Ayemenem house. She presided over the world in her drawing room on satellite TV. The impossible excitement that this engendered in Baby Kochamma wasn’t hard to understand. It wasn’t something that happened gradually. It happened overnight. Blondes, wars, famines, football, sex, music, coups d’etat—they all arrived on the same train. They unpacked together. They stayed at the same hotel. And in Ayemenem, where once the loudest sound had been a musical bus horn, now whole wars, famines, picturesque massacres and Bill Clinton could be summoned up like servants.

The thing about being barren is that you’re not allowed to get away from it. Not when you’re in your thirties. My friends were having children, friends of friends were having children, pregnancy and birth and first birthday parties were everywhere. I was asked about it all the time. My mother, our friends, colleagues at work. When was it going to be my turn? At some point our childlessness became an acceptable topic of Sunday-lunch conversation, not just between Tom and me, but more generally. What we were trying, what we should be doing, do you really think you should be having a second glass of wine? I was still young, there was still plenty of time, but failure cloaked me like a mantle, it overwhelmed me, dragged me under, and I gave up hope. At the time, I resented the fact that it was always seen as my fault, that I was the one letting the side down. But as the speed with which he managed to impregnate Anna demonstrates, there was never any problem with Tom’s virility. I was wrong to suggest that we should share the blame; it was all down to me. Lara, my best friend since university, had two children in two years: a boy first and then a girl. I didn’t like them. I didn’t want to hear anything about them. I didn’t want to be near them. Lara stopped speaking to me after a while. There was a girl at work who told me—casually, as though she were talking about an appendectomy or a wisdom-tooth extraction—that she’d recently had an abortion, a medical one, and it was so much less traumatic than the surgical one she’d had when she was at university. I couldn’t speak to her after that, I could barely look at her. Things became awkward in the office; people noticed. Tom didn’t feel the way I did. It wasn’t his failure, for starters, and in any case, he didn’t need a child like I did. He wanted to be a dad, he really did—I’m sure he daydreamed about kicking a football around in the garden with his son, or carrying his daughter on his shoulders in the park. But he thought our lives could be great without children, too. “We’re happy,” he used to say to me. “Why can’t we just go on being happy?” He became frustrated with me. He never understood that it’s possible to miss what you’ve never had, to mourn for it.

Memory is a landscape watched from the window of a moving train. We watch the dawn light break over the acacia trees, the birds pecking at the morning, as though at a fruit. Further off we see the serenity of a river, and the trees embracing its banks. We see the cattle slowly grazing, a couple running, holding hands, children dancing around a football, the ball shining in the sun (another sun). We see the calm lakes where there are ducks swimming, rivers heavy with water where elephants quench their thirst. These things happen right before our very eyes, we know them to be real, but they’re so far away we can’t touch them. Some are so far, so very far away, and the train moving so fast, that we can’t be sure any longer that they really did happen. Maybe we merely dreamed them?

I miss being a mistress. I enjoyed it. I loved it, in fact. I never felt guilty. I pretended I did. I had to, with my married girlfriends, the ones who live in terror of the pert au pair or the pretty, funny girl in the office who can talk about football and spends half her life in the gym. I had to tell them that of course I felt terrible about it, of course I felt bad for his wife, I never meant for any of this to happen, we fell in love, what could we do? The truth is, I never felt bad for Rachel.... She just wasn’t real to me, and anyway, I was enjoying myself too much. Being the other woman is a huge turn-on, there’s no point denying it: you’re the one he can’t help but betray his wife for, even though he loves her. That’s just how irresistible you are.

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.

Okay, let’s pretend to be friends. Just two friends having dinner.” “That doesn’t work in the South. A male friend cannot have dinner with a female friend if the male friend has a wife. It just doesn’t work down here.” “Why not?” “Because men don’t have female friends. No way. I don’t know of a single man in the entire South who is married and has a female friend. I think it goes back to the Civil War.” “I think it goes back to the Dark Ages. Why are Southern women so jealous?” “Because that’s the way we’ve trained them. They learned from us. If my wife met a male friend for lunch or dinner, I’d tear his head off and file for divorce. She learned it from me.” “That makes absolutely no sense.” “Of course it doesn’t.” “Your wife has no male friends?” “None that I know of. If you learn of any, let me know.” “And you have no female friends?” “Why would I want female friends? They can’t talk about football, or duck hunting, or politics, or lawsuits, or anything that I want to talk about. They talk about kids, clothes, recipes, coupons, furniture, stuff I know nothing about. No, I don’t have any female friends. Don’t want any.” “That’s what I love about the South. The people are so tolerant.” “Thank you.

No one is born with the Warrior Ethos, though many of its tenets appear naturally in young men and women of all cultures. The Warrior Ethos is taught. On the football field in Topeka, in the mountains of the Hindu Kush, on the lion-infested plains of Kenya and Tanzania. Courage is modeled for the youth by fathers and older brothers, by mentors and elders. It is inculcated, in almost all cultures, by a regimen of training and discipline. This discipline frequently culminates in an ordeal of initiation. The Spartan youth receives his shield, the paratrooper is awarded his wings, the Afghan boy is handed his AK-47.

Stripped to its essence, combat is a series of quick decisions and rather precise actions carried out in concert with ten or twelve other men. In that sense it’s much more like football than, say, like a gang fight. The unit that choreographs their actions best usually wins. They might take casualties, but they win. That choreography—you lay down fire while I run forward, then I cover you while you move your team up—is so powerful that it can overcome enormous tactical deficits. There is choreography for storming Omaha Beach, for taking out a pillbox bunker, and for surviving an L-shaped ambush at night on the Gatigal. The choreography always requires that each man make decisions based not on what’s best for him, but on what’s best for the group. If everyone does that, most of the group survives. If no one does, most of the group dies. That, in essence, is combat.

What if you wake up hung-over the following morning, not dead, but realizing that you had killed somebody? Even worse, what if you wake up in the morning realizing you destroyed the things you loved most in your life? When she regained consciousness in the hospital scared and alone, Kate realized the nightmare was a reality… her parents were dead… her soul-mate was in prison… her life would never be the same. Through the eyes of many, Troy Trindle had it all… he was good-looking, popular, captain of the football team and dating the head cheerleader. What he lacked were the basic necessities; food, shelter and a family. Kate and Troy’s worlds collide when she moves to Alabama to resume training for a spot on the Olympic Gymnastics Team.

The rest of the family looked on with a bemusement that, in the case of Rafa’s mother, occasionally gave way to anger. His father, Sebastián, had his misgivings. His uncle Rafael wondered sometimes whether Toni was pushing his nephew too hard. His godfather, his mother’s brother, Juan, went so far as to say that what Toni was doing to the child amounted to “mental cruelty.” But Toni was hard on Rafa because he knew Rafa could take it and would eventually thrive. He would not have applied the same principles, he insists, with a weaker child. The sense that perhaps he might have been right was what stopped the more doubtful members of his family from outright rebellion. One who did not doubt Toni was Miguel Ángel, the professional football player. Another disciple of the endurance principle, in which he believes with almost as much reverence as Toni himself, Miguel Ángel says that success for the elite sportsman rests on the capacity “to suffer,” even to enjoy suffering. “It means learning to accept that if you have to train two hours, you train two hours; if you have to train five, you train five; if you have to repeat an exercise fifty thousand times, you do it. That’s what separates the champions from the merely talented. And it’s all directly related to the winners’ mentality; at the same time as you are demonstrating endurance, your head becomes stronger.

I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel as I looked around the empty lot. I wavered on getting out when a giant lightning bolt painted a jagged streak across the rainy lavender-gray sky. Minutes passed and still he didn’t come out of the Three Hundreds’ building. Damn it. Before I could talk myself out of it, I jumped out of the car, cursing at myself for not carrying an umbrella for about the billionth time and for not having waterproof shoes, and ran through the parking lot, straight through the double doors. As I stomped my feet on the mat, I looked around the lobby for the big guy. A woman behind the front desk raised her eyebrows at me curiously. “Can I help you with something?” she asked. “Have you seen Aiden?” “Aiden?” Were there really that many Aidens? “Graves.” “Can I ask what you need him for?” I bit the inside of my cheek and smiled at the woman who didn’t know me and, therefore, didn’t have an idea that I knew Aiden. “I’m here to pick him up.” It was obvious she didn’t know what to make of me. I didn’t exactly look like pro-football player girlfriend material in that moment, much less anything else. I’d opted not to put on any makeup since I hadn’t planned on leaving the house. Or real pants. Or even a shirt with the sleeves intact. I had cut-off shorts and a baggy T-shirt with sleeves that I’d taken scissors to. Plus the rain outside hadn’t done my hair any justice. It looked like a cloud of teal. Then there was the whole we-don’t-look-anything-alike thing going on, so there was no way we could pass as siblings. Just as I opened my mouth, the doors that connected the front area with the rest of the training facility swung open. The man I was looking for came out with his bag over his shoulder, imposing, massive, and sweaty. Definitely surly too, which really only meant he looked the way he always did. I couldn’t help but crack a little smile at his grumpiness. “Ready?” He did his form of a nod, a tip of his chin. I could feel the receptionist’s eyes on us as he approached, but I was too busy taking in Grumpy Pants to bother looking at anyone else. Those brown eyes shifted to me for a second, and that time, I smirked uncontrollably. He glared down at me. “What are you smiling at?” I shrugged my shoulders and shook my head, trying to give him an innocent look. “Oh, nothing, sunshine.” He mouthed ‘sunshine’ as his gaze strayed to the ceiling. We ran out of the building side by side toward my car. Throwing the doors open, I pretty much jumped inside and shivered, turning the car and the heater on. Aiden slid in a lot more gracefully than I had, wet but not nearly as soaked. He eyed me as he buckled in, and I slanted him a look. “What?” With a shake of his head, he unzipped his duffel, which was sitting on his lap, and pulled out that infamous off-black hoodie he always wore. Then he held it out. All I could do was stare at it for a second. His beloved, no-name brand, extra-extra-large hoodie. He was offering it to me. When I first started working for Aiden, I remembered him specifically giving me instructions on how he wanted it washed and dried. On gentle and hung to dry. He loved that thing. He could own a thousand just like it, but he didn’t. He had one black hoodie that he wore all the time and a blue one he occasionally donned. “For me?” I asked like an idiot. He shook it, rolling his eyes. “Yes for you. Put it on before you get sick. I would rather not have to take care of you if you get pneumonia.” Yeah, I was going to ignore his put-out tone and focus on the ‘rather not’ as I took it from him and slipped it on without another word. His hoodie was like holding a gold medal in my hands. Like being given something cherished, a family relic. Aiden’s precious.

Stop making excuses for them. … They have eyes! They can see that the toilet paper roll needs changing and the wastebasket is full and that there is no more orange juice and we drink orange juice and orange juice is sold in grocery stores. They’ve trained themselves not to notice things because the less they notice the more we’ll just take care of it for them. They say, you should have told me you wanted my help when we had twelve people coming over for dinner! You should have told me not to sit in front of the computer looking at football scores while you’re running around doing everything by yourself. If you needed my help why didn’t you ask for it? I didn’t know you needed help. It’s madness.

I've never understood how martial arts aren't more popular. Especially here in the states. There's countless fanatics for Football, Basketball and other stuff here. Yet martial arts are considered a niche interest. Throwing a ball through a hoop is supposed to be more interesting than watching two trained fighters compete against one another? Ridiculous.” ​

There would be no more parades of that sort. Probably they would play some beastly yelping game...Like baseball or Association football...And heaven?...Oh, it would be a revival meeting on a Welsh hillside. Or Chautauqua, wherever that was...And God? A Real Estate Agent, with Marxist views...He hoped to be out of it before the cessation of hostilities, in which case he might be just in time for the last train to the old heaven...

Think of all the love poured into him. Think of the tuitions for Montessori and music lessons. Think of the gasoline expended, the treads worn carting him to football games, basketball tournaments, and Little League. Think of the time spent regulating sleepovers. Think of the surprise birthday parties, the daycare, and the reference checks on babysitters. Think of World Book and Childcraft. Think of checks written for family photos. Think of credit cards charged for vacations. Think of soccer balls, science kits, chemistry sets, racetracks, and model trains. Think of all the embraces, all the private jokes, customs, greetings, names, dreams, all the shared knowledge and capacity of a black family injected into that vessel of flesh and bone. And think of how that vessel was taken, shattered on the concrete, and all its holy contents, all that had gone into him, sent flowing back to the earth. Think of your mother, who had no father. And your grandmother, who was abandoned by her father. And your grandfather, who was left behind by his father. And think of how Prince's daughter was now drafted into those solemn ranks and deprived of her birthright — that vessel which was her father, which brimmed with twenty-five years of love and was the investment of her grandparents and was to be her legacy.

The flood of popular scientific books in America is inspired partly, though of course not wholly, by the unwillingness to admit that there is anything in science that only experts can understand. The idea that special training may be necessary to understand, say, the theory of relativity, causes a sort of irritation, although nobody is irritated by the fact that special training is necessary in order to be a first-rate football player.

That was some shady shit out there, Rome,” Braeden said once the total chaos of winning the game had gone down to a considerable roar. We were finally in the locker room, and I was stripping off my sweat and grass-stained gear. “Total douche move.” I agreed. It wasn’t the first time a team had tried to take me out of a game. It was pretty much common practice, especially when something like a title and championship was at stake. Still, I’d never quite had anyone come at me like that before. The play was already in progress. Sacking me wouldn’t have changed the touchdown I’d just thrown. Except of course to keep me from throwing another one. That guy deliberately came in like a freight train and plowed me down. I lay there stunned for long moments, waiting for the air to come back in my lungs and for my body to process the shock of the hit. Thankfully, he wasn’t that good at tackling and it did nothing more than stun me. And it got him thrown out of the game. It really hadn’t been a big deal. Like I said, it happened a lot. But it was the first time it happened in front of Rimmel. I couldn’t help but notice how the large screen on the field had zeroed in on the girl in number twenty-four’s hoodie, who was climbing over the railing and preparing to leap down onto the field. The security guard was yelling at her, but she barely noticed him. Her eyes were trained out on the field, where I was. It was almost laughable that her tiny ass was going to rush out onto a field full of men more than double her size to make sure I was okay. G**damn. I loved her even more just then. When the guard put his hand on her ankle, trying to stop her from going back to her seat, something happened. Something that never had in my entire life of playing football. The game faded away. For once, I was out on the field and unable to focus on only the game. It took a backseat to the girl teetering on the edge of the railing.

With her science-based food guide looking like it had just been rearranged by Picasso, Light was horrified. She predicted—in fervent protests to her supervisor—that these “adjustments” would turn America’s health into an inevitable train wreck. Her opinion of the grain-centric recommendations was that “no one needs that much bread and cereal in a day unless they are longshoremen or football players,” and that giving Americans a free starch-gorging pass would unleash an unprecedented epidemic of obesity and diabetes.

Tom didn’t feel the way I did. It wasn’t his failure, for starters, and in any case, he didn’t need a child like I did. He wanted to be a dad, he really did—I’m sure he daydreamed about kicking a football around in the garden with his son, or carrying his daughter on his shoulders in the park. But he thought our lives could be great without children, too. “We’re happy,” he used to say to me. “Why can’t we just go on being happy?” He became frustrated with me. He never understood that it’s possible to miss what you’ve never had, to mourn for it.

History Eraser I got drunk and fell asleep atop the sheets but luckily i left the heater on. And in my dreams i wrote the best song that i've ever written...can't remember how it goes. I stayed drunk and fell awake and i was cycling on a plane and far away i heard you say you liked me. We drifted to a party -- cool. The people went to arty school. They made their paints by mixing acid wash and lemonade In my brain I re-arrange the letters on the page to spell your name I found an ezra pound and made a bet that if i found a cigarette i'd drop it all and marry you. Just then a song comes on: "you can't always get what you want" -- the rolling stones, oh woe is we, the irony! The stones became the moss and once all inhibitions lost, the hipsters made a mission to the farm. We drove by tractor there, the yellow straw replaced our hair, we laced the dairy river with the cream of sweet vermouth. In my brain I re-arrange the letters on the page to spell your name You said "we only live once" so we touched a little tongue, and instantly i wanted to... I lost my train of thought and jumped aboard the Epping as the doors were slowly closing on the world. I touched on and off and rubbed my arm up against yours and still the inspector inspected me. The lady in the roof was living proof that nothing really ever is exactly as it seems. In my brain I re-arrange the letters on the page to spell your name We caught the river boat downstream and ended up beside a team of angry footballers. I fed the ducks some krill then we were sucked against our will into the welcome doors of the casino. We drank green margaritas, danced with sweet senoritas, and we all went home as winners of a kind. You said "i guarantee we'll have more fun, drink till the moon becomes the sun, and in the taxi home i'll sing you a triffids song!" In my brain I re-arrange the letters on the page to spell your name

And it occurred to me then that you would not escape, that there were awful men who’d laid plans for you, and I could not stop them. Prince Jones was the superlative of all my fears.And if he, good Christian, scion of a striving class, patron saint of the twice as good, could be forever bound, who then could not? And the plunder was not just of Prince alone. Think of all the love poured into him. Think of the tuitions for Montessori and music lessons. Think of the gasoline expended, the treads worn carting him to football games, basketball tournaments, and Little League. Think of the time spent regulating sleepovers. Think of the surprise birthday parties, the daycare, and the reference checks on babysitters. Think of World Book and Childcraft. Think of checks written for family photos. Think of credit cards charged for vacations. Think of soccer balls, science kits, chemistry sets, racetracks, and model trains. Think of all the embraces, all the private jokes, customs, greetings, names, dreams, all the shared knowledge and capacity of a black family injected into that vessel of flesh and bone. And think of how that vessel was taken, shattered on the concrete, and all its holy contents, all that had gone into him, sent flowing back to the earth.

What is it?” I asked, pasting a magazine photo of a football--found in an old Seventeen magazine spread--on my beloved’s collage. “Well, a bunch of cattle trucks just showed up,” he said, trying to talk over the symphonic mooing of cows all around him. “They were supposed to get here tomorrow night, but they showed up early…” “Oh, no…that’s a bummer,” I said, not quite sure what he was getting at. “So now I’ve got to work all these cattle tonight and get ’em shipped…and by the time I get done, the store in town will be closed,” he began. Our appointment with Father Johnson was at ten the next morning. “So I think I’m just going to have to come over there really early tomorrow morning and do the thing at your house,” Marlboro Man said. I could hardly hear him through the cattle. “Are you sure?” I asked. “What time were you thinking of coming over?” I braced myself for the worst. “I was thinking around six or so,” he said. “That would give me plenty of time to get it done before we go.” Six? In the morning? Ugh, I thought. I have only one more week of sleeping in. After we’re married, there’s no telling what time I’ll have to get out of bed. “Okay,” I said, my voice dripping with trepidation. “I’ll see you in the morning. Oh, and hey…if I don’t answer the door right away it probably means I’m doing some weight training or something.” “Gotcha,” Marlboro Man answered, humoring me. “And hey--don’t pull any muscles or strain yourself. We’re getting married in less than a week.” My stomach fluttered as I hung up the phone and resumed work on my collage.

There is a persistent theory, held by those who prate most steadily about "the American way of life" that the average American is a rugged individualist to whom the whole conception of "leadership" is something foreign and distasteful—and this theory would certainly seem to be in accord with our national tradition of lawlessness and disrespect for authority. But it is not entirely consistent with the facts. We Americans are inveterate hero worshipers, to a far greater extent than are the British and the French. We like to personalize our loyalties, our causes. In our political or business or labor organizations, we are comforted by the knowledge that at the top is a Big Boss whom we are free to revere or to hate and upon whom we can depend for quick decisions when the going gets tough. The same is true of our Boy Scout troops and our criminal gangs. It is most conspicuously true of our passion for competitive sport. We are trained from childhood to look to the coach for authority in emergencies. The masterminding coach who can send in substitutes with instructions whenever he feels like it—or even send in an entirely new team—is a purely American phenomenon. In British football the team must play through the game with the same eleven men with which it started and with no orders from the sidelines; if a man is injured and forced to leave the field the team goes on playing with only ten men. In British sport, there are no Knute Rocknes or Connie Macks, whereas in American sport the mastermind is considered as an essential in the relentless pursuit of superiority.

Of course L has not been reading the Odyssey the whole time. The pushchair is also loaded with White Fang, VIKING!, Tar-Kutu: Dog of the Frozen North, Marduk: Dog of the Mongolian Steppes, Pete: Black Dog of the Dakota, THE CARNIVORES, THE PREDATORS, THE BIG CATS and The House at Pooh Corner. For the past few days he has also been reading White Fang for the third time. Sometimes we get off the train and he runs up and down the platform. Sometimes he counts up to 100 or so in one or more languages while eyes glaze up and down the car. Still he has been reading the Odyssey enough for a straw poll of Circle Line opinion on the subject of small children & Greek. Amazing: 7 Far too young: 10 Only pretending to read it: 6 Excellent idea as etymology so helpful for spelling: 19 Excellent idea as inflected languages so helpful for computer programming: 8 Excellent idea as classics indispensable for understanding of English literature: 7 Excellent idea as Greek so helpful for reading New Testament, camel through eye of needle for example mistranslation of very similar word for rope: 3 Terrible idea as study of classical languages embedded in educational system productive of divisive society: 5 Terrible idea as overemphasis on study of dead languages directly responsible for neglect of sciences and industrial decline and uncompetitiveness of Britain: 10 Stupid idea as he should be playing football: 1 Stupid idea as he should be studying Hebrew & learning about his Jewish heritage: 1 Marvellous idea as spelling and grammar not taught in schools: 24 (Respondents: 35; Abstentions: 1,000?) Oh, & almost forgot: Marvellous idea as Homer so marvellous in Greek: 0 Marvellous idea as Greek such as marvellous language: 0 Oh & also: Marvellous idea but how did you teach it to a child that young: 8

The thing about being barren is that you're not allowed to get away from it. Not when you're in your thirties. My friends were having children, friends of friends were having children, pregnancy and birth and first birthday parties were everywhere. I was asked about it all the time. My mother, our friends, colleagues at work. When was it going to be my turn? At some point our childlessness became an acceptable topic of Sunday-lunch conversation, not just between Tom and me, but more generally. What we were trying, what we should be doing, do you really think you should be having a second glass of wine? I was still young, there was still plenty of time, but failure cloaked me like a mantle, it overwhelmed me, dragged me under, and I gave up hope. At the time, I resented the fact that it was always seen as my fault, that I was the one letting the side down. But as the speed with which he managed to impregnate Anna demonstrates, there was never any problem with Tom’s virility. I was wrong to suggest that we should share the blame; it was all down to me. Lara, my best friend since university, had two children in two years: a boy first and then a girl. I didn’t like them. I didn’t want to hear anything about them. I didn’t want to be near them. Lara stopped speaking to me after a while. There was a girl at work who told me—casually, as though she were talking about an appendectomy or a wisdom-tooth extraction—that she’d recently had an abortion, a medical one, and it was so much less traumatic than the surgical one she’d had when she was at university. I couldn’t speak to her after that, I could barely look at her. Things became awkward in the office; people noticed. Tom didn’t feel the way I did. It wasn’t his failure, for starters, and in any case, he didn’t need a child like I did. He wanted to be a dad, he really did—I’m sure he daydreamed about kicking a football around in the garden with his son, or carrying his daughter on his shoulders in the park. But he thought our lives could be great without children, too. “We’re happy,” he used to say to me. “Why can’t we just go on being happy?” He became frustrated with me. He never understood that it’s possible to miss what you’ve never had, to mourn for it.

So, my true first time with a boy was like this… You can look but you cannot touch Ha- that is what I thought, I was so wrong too and it was not with him either regrettably. It was okay my heart was beating so rapidly; I thought that it was going to explode out of my chest. The silky-smooth skin ran along my body; it was like an enchanted expression of togetherness. At last, I felt as if I was loved. But I was not with the one that I loved. His brown eyes glazed- sweetly and softly into mine. I was so looking forward to this kiss and moment all my life. However, he walked with me in his arms to his bed. Then I was on his bed stripped of all forms of dignity. The lights were off, and the door was locked, and that took me back to when I was a little girl. Loving at night just holds onto me tight. The room is lit by the moonlight. When you are looking down at me is what you are seeing all right? This is maybe my special night. I cannot believe I am with a football player! I was not prepared at all for the performance of lovemaking. I had no idea what I was doing. I was thinking to myself this is not like the movies at all! Yes, all the touching was extremely steamy, like before and then again, the playing around that he did on me was more intriguing, to say the least. I was thinking that he was the sweetest guy on earth. However, all the thoughts in my mind ran fast… thoughts like should we be doing this? Yet, I am so shy and nervous my knees were knocked beforehand. Then again, this is going to be so beautiful; I had fantasized about this moment since I was a young girl. ‘Yet, I have to say to all you girls out there, to lose it when you are ready to. Please do it for you and no one else. It is about your timing, and what you choose to do, you can choose when and whom you let in!’ So, starting I felt like my tearing and breaking-in took forever, and that his pushing forward was never going to stop, love is painful in more than one way, it was so intense. Yet, it was so perfect and feels so amazing with him now sliding in and out of me. It hurt at the start, but it got more enjoyable, that is for sure. Yet also, it was like being run over by a speeding train, and I could not help but feel that he was not meant to be my first. Me being so naïve and only sixteen years of age I was so embarrassed by the fact that I was so under-experienced in sensual activities. I wanted to make the best of the moments of intimacy. I was happy to say that I got my first French kiss as well, but his soft little kiss was sweeter, the first time we kissed as I remember at that time.

Boys will be boys, and ballplayers will always be arrested adolescents at heart. The proof comes in the mid-afternoon of an early spring training day, when 40 percent of the New York Mets’ starting rotation—Mike Pelfrey and I—hop a chain-link fence to get onto a football field not far from Digital Domain. We have just returned from Dick’s Sporting Goods, where we purchased a football and a tee. We are here to kick field goals. Long field goals. A day before, we were all lying on the grass stretching and guys started talking about football and field-goal kickers, and David Wright mentioned something about the remarkable range of kickers these days. I can kick a fifty-yard field goal, Pelfrey says. You can not, Wright says. You don’t think so? You want to bet? You give me five tries and I’ll put three of them through. One hundred bucks says you can’t, David says. This is going to be the easiest money I ever make. I am Pelf’s self-appointed big brother, always looking out for him, and I don’t want him to go into this wager cold. So I suggest we get a ball and tee and do some practicing. We get back from Dick’s but find the nearby field padlocked, so of course we climb over the fence. At six feet two inches and 220 pounds, I get over without incident, but seeing Pelf hoist his big self over—all six feet seven inches and 250 pounds of him—is much more impressive. Pelf’s job is to kick and my job is to chase. He sets up at the twenty-yard line, tees up the ball, and knocks it through—kicking toe-style, like a latter-day Lou Groza. He backs up to the twenty-five and then the thirty, and boots several more from each distance. Adding the ten yards for the end zone, he’s now hit from forty yards and is finding his range. Pretty darn good. He insists he’s got another ten yards in his leg. He hits from forty-five, and by now he’s probably taken fifteen or seventeen hard kicks and reports that his right shin is getting sore. We don’t consider stopping. Pelf places the ball on the tee at the forty-yard line: a fifty-yard field goal. He takes a half dozen steps back, straight behind the tee, sprints up, and powers his toe into the ball … high … and far … and just barely over the crossbar. That’s all that is required. I thrust both my arms overhead like an NFL referee. He takes three more and converts on a second fifty-yarder. You are the man, Pelf, I say. Adam Vinatieri should worry for his job. That’s it, Pelf says. I can’t even lift my foot anymore. My shin is killing me. We hop back over the fence, Pelf trying to land as lightly as a man his size can land. His shin hurts so much he can barely put pressure on the gas pedal. He’s proven he can hit a fifty-yard field goal, but I go into big-brother mode and tell him I don’t want him kicking any more field goals or stressing his right leg any further. I convince him to drop the bet with David. The last thing you need is to start the season on the DL because you were kicking field goals, I say. Can you imagine if the papers got ahold of that one? The wager just fades away. David doesn’t mind; he gets a laugh at the story of Pelf hopping the fence and practicing, and drilling long ones.

Intuitively it makes sense that difficulties that don’t strengthen the skills you will need, or the kinds of challenges you are likely to encounter in the real-world application of your learning, are not desirable. Having somebody whisper in your ear while you read the news may be essential training for a TV anchor. Being heckled by role-playing protestors while honing your campaign speech may help train up a politician. But neither of these difficulties is likely to be helpful for Rotary Club presidents or aspiring YouTube bloggers who want to improve their stage presence. A cub towboat pilot on the Mississippi might be required in training to push a string of high-riding empty barges into a lock against a strong side wind. A baseball player might practice hitting with a weight on his bat to strengthen his swing. You might teach a football player some of the principles of ballet for learning balance and movement, but you probably would not teach him the techniques for an effective golf drive or backhand tennis serve. Is there an overarching rule that determines the kinds of impediments that make learning stronger? Time and further research may yield an answer. But the kinds of difficulties we’ve just described, whose desirability is well documented, offer a large and diverse toolkit already at hand.

Research from Brunel University shows that chess students who trained with coaches increased on average 168 points in their national ratings versus those who didn’t. Though long hours of deliberate practice are unavoidable in the cognitively complex arena of chess, the presence of a coach for mentorship gives players a clear advantage. Chess prodigy Joshua Waitzkin (the subject of the film Searching for Bobby Fischer) for example, accelerated his career when national chess master Bruce Pandolfini discovered him playing chess in Washington Square Park in New York as a boy. Pandolfini coached young Waitzkin one on one, and the boy won a slew of chess championships, setting a world record at an implausibly young age. Business research backs this up, too. Analysis shows that entrepreneurs who have mentors end up raising seven times as much capital for their businesses, and experience 3.5 times faster growth than those without mentors. And in fact, of the companies surveyed, few managed to scale a profitable business model without a mentor’s aid. Even Steve Jobs, the famously visionary and dictatorial founder of Apple, relied on mentors, such as former football coach and Intuit CEO Bill Campbell, to keep himself sharp. SO, DATA INDICATES THAT those who train with successful people who’ve “been there” tend to achieve success faster. The winning formula, it seems, is to seek out the world’s best and convince them to coach us. Except there’s one small wrinkle. That’s not quite true. We just held up Justin Bieber as an example of great, rapid-mentorship success. But since his rapid rise, he’s gotten into an increasing amount of trouble. Fights. DUIs. Resisting arrest. Drugs. At least one story about egging someone’s house. It appears that Bieber started unraveling nearly as quickly as he rocketed to Billboard number one. OK, first of all, Bieber’s young. He’s acting like the rock star he is. But his mentor, Usher, also got to Billboard number one at age 18, and he managed to dominate pop music for a decade without DUIs or egg-vandalism incidents. Could it be that Bieber missed something in the mentorship process? History, it turns out, is full of people who’ve been lucky enough to have amazing mentors and have stumbled anyway.

Southern girls know their four seasons… Recruiting Spring Training Practice Football

I tried to explain to the NSC officials my own wonder at this teeming ramshackle metropolis with cinemas, football leagues, hotels and hospitals, and to emphasize that, contrary to what they might expect, a large portion of the refugees are extremely pro-American. I said that the Kenyan security forces, underwritten by US and British money, weapons and training, were going about things in the wrong way: rounding up refugees, raping and extorting them, encouraging them to return to war-racked Somalia.

Manchester City’s moved their training facilities from Carrington to the Etihad Complex - a purpose built £200million facility in the East of the city in December 2014. It is without doubt the best football club training facility in the UK.

After witnessing a particularly brutal Harvard–Yale match in the 1890s, boxing champ John L. Sullivan boarded a train for New York City. In the washroom, he encountered noted football official Paul Dashiell, who asked the prizefighter what he had thought of the match. Sullivan lowered his voice to a whisper before observing, “There’s murder in that game.

Good kit design is all about persuading the eye to go where you want it: usually the sponsor’s logo and kit brand followed by the club crest in a distant third. The best real estate for any product is the top left corner as our eyes, trained by a lifetime of reading from there, are primed to seek out anything shiny on the left rather than the right (unless you are a reader of Arabic or Urdu where words travel in the opposite direction).

train me, nice as could be other than acting like she’s my mom, all honey-this and honey-that and “You think you can remember all that, sweetie?” Just three or four years out of high school herself. But she did have three kids, so probably she’d wiped so many asses she got stuck that way. I didn’t hold it against her. Coach Briggs’s brother stayed upstairs in the office. Heart attack guy was a mystery. First they said he might come back by the end of summer. Then they all stopped talking about him. As far as customers, every kind of person came in. Older guys would want to chew the fat outside in the dock after I loaded their grain bags or headgates or what have you. I handled all the larger items. They complained about the weather or tobacco prices, but oftentimes somebody would recognize me and want to talk football. What was my opinion on our being a passing versus running team, etc. So that was amazing. Being known. It was the voice that hit my ear like a bell, the day he came in. I knew it instantly. And that laugh. It always made you wish that whoever made him laugh like that, it had been you. I was stocking inventory in the home goods aisle, and moved around the end to where I could see across the store. Over by the medications and vaccines that were kept in a refrigerator case, he was standing with his back to me, but that wild head of hair was the giveaway. And the lit-up face of Donnamarie, flirting so hard her bangs were standing on end. She was opening a case for him. Some of the pricier items were kept under lock and key. I debated whether to go over, but heard him say he needed fifty pounds of Hi-Mag mineral and a hundred pounds of pelleted beef feed, so I knew I would see him outside. I signaled to Donnamarie that I’d heard, and threw it all on the dolly to wheel out to the loading dock. He pulled his truck around but didn’t really see me. Just leaned his elbow out the open window and handed me the register ticket. He’d kept the Lariat of course, because who wouldn’t. “You’ve still got the Fastmobile, I see,” I said. He froze in the middle of lighting a smoke, shifted his eyes at me, and shook his head fast, like a splash of cold water had hit him. “I’ll be goddamned. Diamond?” “The one,” I said. “How you been hanging, Fast Man?” “Cannot complain,” he said. But it seemed like he wasn’t a hundred percent on it really being me loading his pickup. He watched me in the side mirror. The truck bounced a little each time I hefted a mineral block or bag into the bed. Awesome leaf springs on that beauty. I came around to give him back his ticket, and he seemed more sure.

His name is C. J. Skender, and he is a living legend. Skender teaches accounting, but to call him an accounting professor doesn’t do him justice. He’s a unique character, known for his trademark bow ties and his ability to recite the words to thousands of songs and movies on command. He may well be the only fifty-eight-year-old man with fair skin and white hair who displays a poster of the rapper 50 Cent in his office. And while he’s a genuine numbers whiz, his impact in the classroom is impossible to quantify. Skender is one of a few professors for whom Duke University and the University of North Carolina look past their rivalry to cooperate: he is in such high demand that he has permission to teach simultaneously at both schools. He has earned more than two dozen major teaching awards, including fourteen at UNC, six at Duke, and five at North Carolina State. Across his career, he has now taught close to six hundred classes and evaluated more than thirty-five thousand students. Because of the time that he invests in his students, he has developed what may be his single most impressive skill: a remarkable eye for talent. In 2004, Reggie Love enrolled in C. J. Skender’s accounting class at Duke. It was a summer course that Love needed to graduate, and while many professors would have written him off as a jock, Skender recognized Love’s potential beyond athletics. “For some reason, Duke football players have never flocked to my class,” Skender explains, “but I knew Reggie had what it took to succeed.” Skender went out of his way to engage Love in class, and his intuition was right that it would pay dividends. “I knew nothing about accounting before I took C. J.’s class,” Love says, “and the fundamental base of knowledge from that course helped guide me down the road to the White House.” In Obama’s mailroom, Love used the knowledge of inventory that he learned in Skender’s class to develop a more efficient process for organizing and digitizing a huge backlog of mail. “It was the number-one thing I implemented,” Love says, and it impressed Obama’s chief of staff, putting Love on the radar. In 2011, Love left the White House to study at Wharton. He sent a note to Skender: “I’m on the train to Philly to start the executive MBA program and one of the first classes is financial accounting—and I just wanted to say thanks for sticking with me when I was in your class.

And the plunder was not just of Prince alone. Think of all the love poured into him. Think of the tuitions for Montessori and music lessons. Think of the gasoline expended, the treads worn carting him to football games, basketball tournaments, and Little League... Think of soccer balls, science kits, chemistry set, racetracks, and model trains. Think of all the embraces, all the private jokes, customs, greetings, names, dreams, all the shared knowledge and capacity of a black family injected into that vessel of flesh and bone. And think of how that vessel was taken, shattered on the concrete, and all its holy contents, all that had gone into him, sent flowing back to the earth.

In a way, if you are the data-driven marketing business owner, your position is similar to the owner of a football team. You don’t get to train the players or call the plays, you just get to pay the bills but really need results to sell tickets and keep the stadium full.

If I were to ask you about let’s say coaching a high school football team for your local high school and told you the only time you were needed to be there as coach, was on game day. That is right no practice during the week, just take the team and win is all we ask. How do I prepare them if I cannot practice you ask? Well sir they have been trained and practiced in their freshman, sophomore and junior years. You will be the varsity coach and the team knows the game and how it’s played, all you need to do is set up the game plan on game day and organize your team so they win! Ludicrous! How can I be expected to develop the cohesion necessary to put a winning team on the field, without practice, despite their prior training and the three-plus years’ experience? Yes it is ludicrous. Yet this is exactly what we expect of law enforcement, security personnel and other first responders tasked with responding to and winning in crisis situations.

Let me guess—you were good at hockey and football when you were at school, but not at tennis.” He laughed at that, eyes crinkling at the corners. “Tennis? At an Inverness grammar school? Soft Southron sport, we’d have called it; game for poofters. But I take your point—no, you’re right, I was fine at the football, but not much at rounders. Why?” “You don’t have any binocular vision,” I said. “Chances are that someone noticed it when you were a child, and made an effort to correct it with prismatic lenses—but it’s likely that it would have been too late by the time you were seven or eight,” I added hastily, seeing his face go blank. “If that’s going to work, it needs to be done very young—before the age of five.” “I don’t … binocular vision? But doesn’t everyone?… I mean, both my eyes do work, don’t they?” He looked mildly bewildered. He looked down into the palm of his hand, closing one eye, then the other, as though some answer might be found among the lines there. “Your eyes are fine,” I assured him. “It’s just that they don’t work together. It’s really a fairly common condition—and many people who have it don’t realize it. It’s just that in some people, for one reason or another, the brain never learns to merge the images coming in from both eyes in order to make a three-dimensional image.” “I don’t see in three dimensions?” He looked at me, now, squinting hard, as though expecting me suddenly to flatten out against the wall. “Well, I haven’t quite got a trained oculist’s kit”—I waved a hand at the burned-out candle, the wooden spoon, the drawn figures, and a couple of sticks I had been using—“nor yet an oculist’s training. But I’m reasonably sure, yes.

At the time I didn’t understand any of this and simply believed they didn’t like me; however, since then I have begun to sense what it was that made my presence uncongenial. I was unable to dissemble, unable to play a role, and the scholarly earnestness I brought into the house was impossible to keep at arm’s length in the long run, sooner or later even they would have to engage with it, and the resultant disequilibrium, as their banter never demanded anything at all of me, that was what must have made them ring my mother in the end. My presence always made demands on them, either in concrete ways, such as food, for if I went there after school and before football training, I would otherwise have had to last until eight or nine at night without eating,

How can you know if a college is prioritizing education and training rather than amenities or a bloated bureaucracy? One way is to look at the quality of the academic and professional resources (the buildings where classes are held, the classrooms themselves, the library, the laboratories, the career center, and so on) in comparison to the social and recreational amenities (the cafeteria, student union, football stadium, fitness center, and so forth). Go on a campus tour and see how the tour guide “sells” the college.

After parking in the west lot, far from a certain gang member with a reputation that could scare off even the toughest Fairfield football players, Sierra and I walk up the front steps of Fairfield High. Unfortunately, Alex Fuentes and the rest of his gang friends are hanging by the front doors. “Walk right past them,” Sierra mutters. “Whatever you do, don’t look in their eyes.” It’s pretty hard not to when Alex Fuentes steps right in front of me and blocks my path. What’s that prayer you’re supposed to say right before you know you’re going to die? “You’re a lousy driver,” Alex says with his slight Latino accent and full-blown-I-AM-THE-MAN stance. The guy might look like an Abercrombie mode with his ripped bod and flawless face, but his picture is more likely to be taken for a mug shot. The kids from the north side don’t really mix with kids from the south side. It’s not that we think we’re better than them, we’re just different. We’ve grown up in the same town, but on totally opposite sides. We live in big houses on Lake Michigan and they live next to the train tracks. We look, talk, act, and dress different. I’m not saying it’s good or bad; it’s just the way it is in Fairfield. And, to be honest, most of the south side girls treat me like Carmen Sanchez does…they hate me because of who I am. Or, rather, who they think I am. Alex’s gaze slowly moves down my body, traveling the length of me before moving back up. It’s not the first time a guy has checked me out, it’s just that I never had a guy like Alex do it so blatantly…and so up-close. I can feel my face getting hot. “Next time, watch where you’re goin’,” he says, his voice cool and controlled. He’s trying to bully me. He’s a pro at this. I won’t let him get to me and win his little game of intimidation, even if my stomach feels like I’m doing one hundred cartwheels in a row. I square my shoulders and sneer at him, the same sneer I use to push people away. “Thanks for the tip.” “If you ever need a real man to teach you how to drive, I can give you lessons.” Catcalls and whistles from his buddies set my blood boiling. “If you were a real man, you’d open the door for me instead of blocking my way,” I say, admiring my own comeback even as my knees threaten to buckle. Alex steps back, pulls the door open, and bows like he’s my butler. He’s totally mocking me, he knows it and I know it. Everyone knows it. I catch a glimpse of Sierra, still desperately searching for nothing in her purse. She’s clueless. “Get a life,” I tell him. “Like yours? Cabróna, let me tell you somethin’,” Alex says harshly. “Your life isn’t reality, it’s fake. Just like you.” “It’s better than living my life as a loser,” I lash out, hoping my words sting as much as his words did. “Just like you.” Grabbing Sierra’s arm, I pull her toward the open door. Catcalls and comments follow us as we walk into the school. I finally let out the breath I must have been holding, then turn to Sierra. My best friend is staring at me, all bug-eyed. “Holy shit, Brit! You got a death wish or something?” “What gives Alex Fuentes the right to bully everyone in his path?” “Uh, maybe the gun he has hidden in his pants or the gang colors he wears,” Sierra says, sarcasm dripping from every word. “He’s not stupid enough to carry a gun to school,” I reason. “And I refuse to be bullied, by him or anyone else.

I do like football fans, though, contrary to most people of my skinny-train-enthusiast build. I like how merry they all are. They mean things good-naturedly. I find it sweet that they sing such girly songs with such conviction. The West Ham theme, for example, begins: “I’m forever blowing bubbles, pretty bubbles in the air”, which is the least manly thing you could ever hear anyone sing, and yet they bellow it with all the testosterone they have in them. What’s more, it’s a song completely ill-chosen to be a football anthem, as it’s about hoping you achieve your dreams but never doing so; after the first two lines, the song continues, “they fly so high, nearly reach the sky, then like my dreams they fade and die; fortune’s always hiding, I’ve looked everywhere; I’m forever blowing bubbles, pretty bubbles in the air”. It’s poetic, humble and very sweet. Bless those lovely little football fans.

Instead of adhering to his father’s commands, Donald had a new master, a gruff, barrel-chested combat veteran named Theodore Dobias. Dobias, or Doby as he was known, had served in World War II and had seen Mussolini’s dead body hanging by a rope. As the freshman-football coach and tactical-training instructor, Doby smacked students with an open hand if they ignored his instructions. Two afternoons a week, he would set up a boxing ring and order cadets with poor grades and those who had disciplinary problems to fight each other, whether they wanted to or not. “He could be a fucking prick,” Trump once recalled. “He absolutely would rough you up. You had to learn to survive.” To glare at Doby, or suggest the slightest sarcasm, Trump said, caused the drill sergeant to come “after me like you wouldn’t believe.” Whether

used to say, “Steve, if you don’t warm up, your body will become rigid and you will become slow. Never miss out on your warm-ups.” Jeffery was their football coach. He asked them to make a kick inside the goalpost. He himself became the goalkeeper. Everyone started trying to make a goal but did not succeed. Jeffery was a very good goalkeeper. After a while, it was Paul’s turn. Paul was a good soccer player. He was better than Steve. He was in their school football team. Paul tried to hit as fast as he could, but Jeffery deflected the ball, just in time. It was a close call, but Jeffery, somehow managed to save the goal. Now, it was Steve’s turn. Steve walked towards the ball and thought for a second. He figured out that if he had to beat Jeffery, he had to confuse him. His training in the Minecraft world had taught him to confuse his opponent.

people are different. -some play football as though they have been training before they were born. -some sing as if they rehearsal with angels. -other think as though they have five brains. -some teach as if they have been trained for 50 years. *the best thing is to discover what you are good at.

Gerard van der Lem, Van Gaal’s right-hand man at Ajax and Barcelona, explains: ‘The main principle was possession of the ball. We trained on this endlessly. In some European Cup and Dutch League games we had seventy per cent ball possession. Seventy per cent! You need a lot of technical skills to do that. We almost always had the ball and we were always trying to find solutions. People think our system was rigid, but it was not. It could not be rigid. We could play with three strikers, or with three in midfield, with or without a shadow spits [striker]; whatever you like. The thing was to understand what consequences these formations have for the team. The players must be tactically very skilful and they have to be thinking spatially in advance. When we won the European Cup, everything fitted. Everything fell like a puzzle. Every player knew the qualities of his fellow players. Each player knew how to play a ball to his fellow players. In defence, they knew exactly how to press. They all knew the distances… Yeah, it was like solving a puzzle.

You train dogs… I like to educate players.” (Brendan Rodgers)

It's an unceremonious end to a big dig - excavating and building 8,300 linear feet of concrete-lined tunnels running from South of Market beneath Union Square and Chinatown to North Beach. But the excavation passed unnoticed by people on the surface, who didn't even feel vibrations. Big Alma and Mom Chung, each weighing 750 tons and stretching longer than a football field, even passed 7 feet beneath the BART tracks below Market Street without requiring the transit system to stop, or even slow, its trains.

Two of my teachers made a huge positive difference for me. One was my football coach who did not think I was a loser, and encouraged me to stay in school and keep trying. The other was a special ed teacher who realized that I had a reading disability but that I wasn’t retarded. She honestly told me that she wasn’t trained to help people with dyslexia but that she knew it existed and that it wasn’t my fault. She knew how hard I was trying. She spent a year teaching me to fill in the blanks on paperwork such as job applications so I would have that skill when I needed it. She also let me leave class early so I could saunter into the lunch room from the direction of the “regular” classrooms so other kids wouldn’t know I was a SPED.” —Eddie—

We should probably get some things out of the way,” I say, wincing as the words come out of my mouth. “Like dinner?” he says. He fills my plate with food. “Yeah, let’s get dinner out of the way.” He grins. He jabs his fork toward my plate. “Eat.” “But I feel like there’s this thing between us.” He nods and takes a bite of his chicken. He chews with one eye closed, and watches me with the other. After he swallows, he says, “There’s definitely something between us.” He takes another bite of his dinner. “But…” I sniff the dinner in front of me. My mouth is watering. But I’m afraid to take a bite. “But what?” “But while I’m here, I think it’s best if you go on with life as normal.” He looks around the room. “This is my normal life.” He points to his shin. “I’m injured, remember? No training for me. No football.” He makes a motion that encompasses his apartment. “This is my life.” He reaches over and squeezes my good hand. “I’m really glad you’re here. I’ve been trying to talk to you for weeks.” “Why?” I want to bite it back right away, but can’t. He chokes on his food. “Why what?” he asks when he can finally get a breath. “Why have you been trying to talk to me?” “I missed you.” “You don’t even know me.” “Whose fault is that?” I sigh. “Sam…” He mocks me. “Peck…

PART1: To say Sean felt stressed was a huge understatement. Give him a cliff to scale or a bar brawl to break up. Hell, give him a freight train to try to outrun, anything but having to pull off being the best man for his brother Finn’s wedding—including but not limited to keeping said brother from losing his collective shit. It’s not like Sean didn’t understand. Getting married was a big deal. Okay, so he didn’t fully understand, not really, but he wanted to. He really did. And how funny was that? Sean O’Riley, younger brother, hook-up king extraordinaire, was suddenly tired of the game and found himself aching for his own forever after. “We almost there?” Finn asked him from the backseat of the vehicle Sean was driving. “Yep.” “And you double checked on our reservations?” “Yep.” “No, I’m serious, man,” Finn said. “Remember when you took me to Vegas and when we got there, every hotel was booked and we had to stay at the Magic-O motel?” “Man, a guy screws up one time . . .” “We had a stripper pole in our rooms, Sean.” Sean sighed. “Okay, but to be fair, that was back when I was still in my stupid phase. I promise you that we have reservations—no stripper poles. I even double and triple checked, just like you asked me a hundred and one times. Pru, I hope you realize you’re marrying a nag.” Pru, Finn’s fiancée, laughed from the shotgun position. “Hey, one of us has to be the nag in this relationship, and it isn’t me.” Sean held up a palm and Pru leaned over the console to give him a high-five. “Just so you know,” Sean said to Finn, “I didn’t pick this place, your woman did.” “True story,” Pru said. “The B&B’s closed to the public this entire weekend. Sean booked the whole place for our bachelor/bachelorette party weekend extravaganza.” “I superheroed this thing,” Sean said. Finn snorted and let loose of a small smile because they both knew that for most of Sean’s childhood, that’s what he’d aspired to be, a superhero—sans tights though. Tights had never been Sean’s thing, especially after suffering through them for two seasons in high school football before he’d mercifully cracked his clavicle.

According to the principles Johan Cruyff introduced to Barcelona, coaches should lead by example: play football, be on the field during training and teach, because there is nothing better than stopping the game, correcting and instructing, explaining why someone needed to pass to a certain player, move to a particular position or change an element of their technique. That’s how Carles Rexach, Cruyff ’s assistant for eight years at Barcelona, explains it: ‘One word from Johan during a training drill is worth more than a hundred hours of talks at the blackboard.

There are other media too [the first being newspapers and control of information] whose basic social role is quite different. It’s diversion. There’s the real mass media, the kinds that are aimed at the guys who… Joe six-pack. That kind. The purpose of those media is just to dull people’s brain. This is an over-simplification, but for the 80 per cent or whatever they are, the main thing for them is to divert them. To get them to watch National Football League, and to worry about the… you know… mother with child with six heads, or whatever the thing you pick up on the supermarket stands, and so on. Or, you know, look at astrology, or get involved in fundamentalist stuff, or something. Just get them away you know. Get them away from things that matter. And for that, it’s important to reduce their capacity to think. Sports. That’s another crucial example of the indoctrination system in my view. For one thing, because it offers people something to pay attention to that is of no importance. That keeps them from worrying about things that matter to their lives that they might have some idea about doing something about. And in fact, it’s striking to see the intelligence that’s used by ordinary people in sports. You listen to radio sations where people call in. They have the most exotic information and understanding of all kinds of arcane issues, and the press undoubtedly does a lot with this. I remember in high school I suddenly asked myself at one point: Why do I care if my high school team wins the football game? I mean, I don’t know anybody on the team, you know. […] It doesn’t make any sense. But the point is, it does make sense. It’s a way of building up irrational attitudes of submission to authority. And, you know, group cohesion behind… you know, leadership elements. In fact, it’s training in irrational jingoism. That’s also a feature of competitive sports. I think, if you look closely at those things, typically, they do have functions, and that’s why energy is devoted to supporting them, and creating basis for them, and advertisers are willing to pay for them.

there are few pure footballing training sessions and there is a lot of co-existence and it isn’t easy. But the lucky thing in this team is having found people with important human values.

I drive into the high school parking lot with my mind more on my sister than on the road. My wheels screech to a stop when I almost hit a guy and girl on a motorcycle. I thought it was an empty parking space. “Watch it, bitch,” Carmen Sanchez, the girl on the back of the motorcycle, says as she flips me the finger. She obviously missed the Road Rage lecture in Driver’s Ed. “Sorry,” I say loudly so I can be heard over the roar of the motorcycle. “It didn’t look like anyone was in this spot.” Then I realize whose motorcycle I almost hit. The driver turns around. Angry dark eyes. Red and black bandana. I sink down into the driver’s seat as far as I can. “Oh, shit. It’s Alex Fuentes,” I say, wincing. “Jesus, Brit,” Sierra says, her voice low. “I’d like to live to see graduation. Get outta here before he decides to kill us both.” Alex is staring at me with his devil eyes while putting the kickstand down on his motorcycle. Is he going to confront me? I search for reverse, frantically moving the stick back and forth. Or course it’s no surprise my dad bought me a car with a stick shift without taking the time to teach me how to master driving the thing. Alex takes a step toward my car. My instincts tell me to abandon the car and flee, as if I was stuck on railroad tracks with a train heading straight for me. I glance at Sierra, who’s desperately searching through her purse for something. Is she kidding me? “I can’t get this damn car in reverse. I need help. What are you looking for?” I ask. “Like…nothing. I’m trying not to make eye contact with those Latino Bloods. Get a move on, will ya?” Sierra responds through gritted teeth. “Besides, I only know how to drive an automatic.” Finally grinding into reverse, my wheels screech loud and hard as I maneuver backward and search for another parking spot. After parking in the west lot, far from a certain gang member with a reputation that could scare off even the toughest Fairfield football players, Sierra and I walk up the front steps of Fairfield High. Unfortunately, Alex Fuentes and the rest of his gang friends are hanging by the front doors. “Walk right past them,” Sierra mutters. “Whatever you do, don’t look in their eyes.” It’s pretty hard not to when Alex Fuentes steps right in front of me and blocks my path. What’s that prayer you’re supposed to say right before you know you’re going to die?

Speaking of money, I can pay rent. I talked to the housing office yesterday, and they said I can use the funds allocated for the football house to pay you. I just need you to fill out a form.” I expect her to be happy about the news, but she frowns. “Maybe just give me half of that money and keep the rest.” “Why would I do that?” “Because like Billy said, this place is a mess, and you’re not getting any of the amenities you had at the football house.” Fucking Billy. “Think of it as both of us investing our money in something for the twins.” She thinks about that a moment. “Really?” “Yes, really.” Before I forget, I grab a notepad off the counter. “I’m going to get groceries later. Why don’t you jot down whatever you want me to get?” “I don’t need anything.” This woman is going to kill me. “What do you plan on eating this week?” She shrugs. “Ham and cheese on crackers. Some soup. Why?” “You need more than that. You’re gestating two babies, Magnolia. You can’t treat yourself like a starving college student.” “I just… I can’t pay you back right away.” Did I not just offer to pay her rent and she was trying to return half of it? She’s making me insane. “I don’t expect you to pay me anything. I want to get us groceries because we need them. I’m in training and burn a shit ton of calories. You’re pregnant and need to eat more than a damn Triscuit.” “Why are you raising your voice at me? I’m doing the best I can. Half the time I can’t eat anything because it comes right back up, so what’s the point? I’ll try to eat something later, okay?” She storms off and slams her bedroom door.

Sean drove down to Ole Miss to have a word with Coach O. He didn’t think he could talk him out of sticking Michael in the starting lineup, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to anyway. He thought it would be good for Michael to see right away what he was up against—to learn that natural ability might not be enough to “get to the league.” But he worried that Coach O might not fully understand what a challenge big-time football would be for Michael. Michael had just turned nineteen. He’d never lifted weights or trained for football in the way that serious football players usually do. He hadn’t had the time. He had played fifteen games in high school on the offensive line. In less than a month, he’d be starting in the SEC, across the line of scrimmage from grown men of twenty-two who had spent the past four years majoring in football, and were just six months away from being drafted to play in the NFL. As these beasts came after him, he’d need to think on his feet. Coach O wasn’t one for sitting behind a desk. When he had people into his office at Ole Miss, he’d install them on his long black leather sofa while he marched back and forth, giving pep talks. The subject of Michael Oher brought out the student in him; when Sean came, he sat behind a desk. Coach O actually had a yellow pad to write on. He didn’t get up. He didn’t answer the phone. He too

Should a child be allowed to “decide for himself” on matters related to God? Aren’t we forcing our religion down children’s throats when we tell them what to believe? Let me answer with an illustration from nature. A little gosling (baby goose) has a peculiar characteristic that is relevant at this point. Shortly after it hatches from its shell it becomes attached, or “imprinted,” to the first thing seen moving nearby. From that time forward, the gosling follows that particular object when it moves in the vicinity. Ordinarily, it becomes imprinted to the mother goose which hatched the new generation. If she is removed, however, the gosling settles for any mobile substitute, whether alive or not. In fact, a gosling becomes imprinted most easily to a blue football bladder, dragged by on a string. A week later, the baby falls in line behind the bladder as it scoots by. Time is the critical factor in this process. The gosling is vulnerable to imprinting for only a few seconds after hatching from the shell. If that opportunity is lost, it cannot be regained. In other words, there is a critical, brief period in the gosling’s life when this instinctual learning is possible. There is also a critical period when certain kinds of instruction are easier in the life of children. Although humans have no instincts (only drives, reflexes, urges, etc.), there is a brief period during childhood when youngsters are vulnerable to religious training. Their concepts of right and wrong are formulated during this time, and their view of God begins to solidify. As in the case of the gosling, the opportunity of that period must be seized when it is available. Leaders of the Catholic Church have been widely quoted as saying, “Give us the child until he is seven years old and we’ll have him for life.” They are usually correct, because permanent attitudes can be instilled during these seven vulnerable years. Unfortunately, however, the opposite is also true. The absence or misapplication of instruction through that prime-time period may place a severe limitation on the depth of a child’s later devotion to God. When parents withhold indoctrination from their small children, allowing them to “decide for themselves,” the adults are almost guaranteeing that their youngsters will “decide” in the negative. If parents want their children to have a meaningful faith, they must give up any misguided attempts at objectivity. Children listen closely to discover just how much their parents believe what they preach. Any indecision or ethical confusion from the parent is likely to be magnified in the child. After the middle adolescent age (ending at about fifteen years), children resent being told exactly what to believe. They don’t want religion “forced down their throats,” and should be given more autonomy in what they believe. If the early exposure has been properly conducted, children will have an inner mainstay to steady them. Their early indoctrination, then, is the key to the spiritual attitudes they carry into adulthood.

And it occurred to me then that you would not escape, that there were awful men who’d laid plans for you, and I could not stop them. Prince Jones was the superlative of all my fears. And if he, good Christian, scion of a striving class, patron saint of the twice as good, could be forever bound, who then could not? And the plunder was not just of Prince alone. Think of all the love poured into him. Think of the tuitions for Montessori and music lessons. Think of the gasoline expended, the treads worn carting him to football games, basketball tournaments, and Little League. Think of the time spent regulating sleepovers. Think of the surprise birthday parties, the daycare, and the reference checks on babysitters. Think of World Book and Childcraft. Think of checks written for family photos. Think of credit cards charged for vacations. Think of soccer balls, science kits, chemistry sets, racetracks, and model trains. Think of all the embraces, all the private jokes, customs, greetings, names, dreams, all the shared knowledge and capacity of a black family injected into that vessel of flesh and bone. And think of how that vessel was taken, shattered on the concrete, and all its holy contents, all that had gone into him, sent flowing back to the earth. Think of your mother, who had no father. And your grandmother, who was abandoned by her father. And your grandfather, who was left behind by his father. And think of how Prince’s daughter was now drafted into those solemn ranks and deprived of her birthright—that vessel which was her father, which brimmed with twenty-five years of love and was the investment of her grandparents and was to be her legacy.

I believe even athletes who participate in explosive sports will benefit from interspersing more slow repetition tempos to bolster connective tissue health and safely increase muscle length in commonly tight muscles. For football players, volleyball players, and other athletes who rely on explosive movements during competition, training should match the sport’s demands: more plyometric training and speed work with periods of therapeutic slow eccentric training interspersed.

She was in my jersey and it fell around her like a dress. I was freezing my tits off beside her in nothing but a pair of training shorts, socks, and studded football boots. Oh, and the pink fucking schoolbag slung on my back.

This was Mahomes. He was different at quarterback. He was not about having the perfect technique. He did not need to be trained to throw it like Tom Brady or Peyton Manning. He did not want to be the next Joe Montana or Brett Favre. He wanted to be the first Patrick Mahomes.

I think about a story told by a Serbian player I very much admired. He must have lived in a village that was like mine but even poorer, far from everything, lost in the Yugoslavian countryside. When he was small, his uncle had given him a fabulous, shiny-white new ball. In order not to spoil it, he and his brother decided never to let it bounce on the ground and play only with their heads. There was only one ball, and they had to make it last. During one match, a coach from Red Star Belgrade spotted him. He was recruited thanks to the skills he had developed playing with his head in this way. What sort of player would he have been if he’d had access to twenty balls? Not spoiling the ball he was given, playing all the time, developing his own qualities through perseverance and training: I liked everything about this story. The white ball was sacred to me, too, and it remains so to this day. That was the kind of football I came from.

What do you do with this inner trash talk? Similar to athletes who deal with trash talk, you have to learn to focus on the task at hand, not the trash talk. Think about it. Do you ever see a visiting football player try to hush the home team’s crowd? Of course not—it’s not a productive use of energy. In the same way, trying to tell your inner voices to stop talking trash will only increase their volume. Once you allow yourself to confront this trash talk head-on, you may start to see ways to move past it. It can be hard to be honest with yourself, but the Think part of engaging your core is key here. Ask yourself: Where do these thoughts and beliefs come from? How do they serve me? What would it look like to move past them? This is the time to stop accepting all of your trash-talking thoughts as truth and discover new ways to move forward.

SEE FASTER, MOVE SOONER, & FOCUS BETTER when you train with Strobe Sport glasses. Your brain is naturally lazy. The flicker/strobe MAKES the brain learn to work faster and ignore irrelevant stimuli. Train for baseball, softball, football, golf, MMA, soccer, & hockey. Improve reaction time. Improve focus. Reduce performance anxiety. Quiet the brain and perform better more consistently. Slow down the game. Train your brain to process stimuli like the brains of elite athletes.

He left Yale in 1890 and eventually made his way to the International Young Men’s Christian Association Training School in Springfield, Massachusetts, joining a staff that included James Naismith, who would invent basketball there a year later.

I begged and pleaded and nagged, and eventually my mother gave in and allowed me to travel to away games. Back then I was jubilant; now I’m indignant. What did she think she was doing? Didn’t she ever read the papers or watch TV? Hadn’t she heard of hooligans? Was she really unaware of what Football Specials, the infamous trains that carried fans all over the country, were like? I could have been killed.

from my Linkedin post: The sudden cardiac arrest of a Buffalo Bills football player, Damar Hamlin reminds me as a cardiologist that widely available, basic life support classes teach the two primary determinants of victim survival: -time to initiation of effective cardiopulmonary resuscitation, -time to electrical defibrillation. As described in my memoir, Different Drummer; "Cardiac resuscitation has evolved from physicians cutting open a patient's chest and rhythmically squeezing the victim's heart...to closed-chest compressions at a rate equal to the song Stayin' Alive'... Defibrillation can now be administered by trained laypeople using an automated external defibrillator, a device that is often available in public facilities...

You testified that your son was drafted for the NFL," Zara said, the tone of her voice changing from demanding to conversational. "Did he get his love of the sport from you?" "I played in college," the witness said. "Wide receiver. I was a lock for a top-ten draft selection until I tore a ligament and that was the end for me." "You must have caught some good ones in your time." Now her voice was all warmth and sympathy, tinged with awe. The witness's eyes grew misty. "I miss those days." Plaintiff's counsel objected on the basis of irrelevance, and the judge sustained. Zara walked back to her table and consulted her notes. Was that it? He'd been expecting some theatrics, a smoking gun, or even a witness reduced to tears. Even without any legal training, he could see her cross-examination hadn't elicited any particularly useful information, and yet she didn't seem perturbed. Zara bent down to grab something from her bag. "Hut!" She spun around and threw a foam football at the plaintiff, her shout echoing through the courtroom, freezing everyone in place. The plaintiff shot out of his seat and took two steps to the side, hands in the air. "I got it. I got it." With a jump he grabbed the football and held it up, victorious. His smile faded as he stared at the stunned crowd, clearly realizing what he'd just done. "Objection." Plaintiff's counsel glared at Zara. "What was that?" "I believe it's called a Hail Mary pass." Zara smiled at the judge. "No further questions.

During induction week we were housed in apartments on South Fremantle’s South Terrace and given a tour of the club - not that there was that much of a club to tour in those days. It was a dilapidated and substandard set-up. The gymnasium, team meeting room and physio treatment room were all housed in the old Victoria Pavilion at the western end of Fremantle Oval. Our official change rooms were in the South Fremantle visitors’ change rooms, which were normally reserved for the opposition at WAFL matches, and the team was shipped to other venues around Perth as required for training sessions. We trained regularly at Subiaco Oval, Aquinas College, Troy Park, McGillivray Oval and various military facilities, in particular the Leeuwin barracks in East Fremantle, in my early days.

It all made for a mixed first impression. When I watched training with the new draftees, I could see this was an AFL team with some seriously good players. But the infrastructure around the team was relatively scant, felt amateurish and was not what I expected from an AFL club. It was all by virtue of not having a home; we had a nomadic existence in those formative years. At that point most Victorian clubs too still had to be satisfied with unprofessional working environments at suburban grounds, but it is fair to say that Fremantle was at the extreme end of the scale.

We train to be good and we prepare to be great.

People are confounded when a football player puts Bible verses in his eye black or kneels to pray in the end zone. To non-believers, it seems like a kind of spiritual flamboyance or pushy proselytizing when athletes publicly acknowledge God as the central pillar of their game plan. What these spectators rarely consider is why this spiritual orientation is so effective, on and off the field—why it works, and feeds on itself. Instead of “I’m the king of the world if I win, and a failure if I lose,” and the crushing pressure that entails, the spiritually rewired athlete’s internal logic is this: I’m a child of God; that’s my primary identity. God loves me regardless of what happens in this competition. God has given me these talents, these amazing gifts, and it’s my responsibility to use them as best I can, to perform and succeed to the utmost of my ability. But it’s not for personal glory, or to feed my towering ego. Rather, every burst of speed and power is a testament to a higher power whose love transcends any kind of earthly success. The competitive results are not part of that higher reality. But the effort is. The leap toward perfection of effort, a kinetic hymn, is a connection to God. It’s sacred, the way prayer is sacred. And at the same time it is exquisitely concrete. It has mass, speed, position, trajectory, in the now of a throw or a catch or a weight that needs to be lifted. It’s where physics meets the soul. This transcendent frame of reference doesn’t take away competitive pressure. But it takes away the emotional pressure that degrades performance and locks an athlete up. Faith eliminates a lot of psychic gear grinding and inefficiency. For a well-prepared, well-trained athlete, it’s a winning formula. And it was a winning formula for Rich Froning in July 2011.

The way I identified with Wu-Wei was through football. You often hear athletes talking about being “in the zone”—a state of unself-conscious concentration. In the World Cup, when England inevitably end up in a quarterfinal penalty shoot-out, I believe it is their inability to access Wu-Wei that means the Germans win. (This was written prior to the 2014 World Cup, so my assumption that England would reach the quarterfinal has been exposed as hopelessly optimistic, but, look, I correctly predicted a German victory.) If you are in a stadium with 80,000 screaming supporters and the hopes of a nation resting on the outcome of a penalty kick, you need to be focused, you need at that moment to be in a state of mind which is the result of great preparation but has total fluidity. Kind of like a self-induced trance where the body is free to act upon its training without the encumbrance of a neurotic mind. Stood in front of the keeper, the ball on the spot, you need to have access to all the preparation that has gone into perfecting the kick that will place the ball in the top right corner of the net. You cannot be thinking, “Oh, God, if I miss this they’ll burn effigies of me in Essex,” or “I think my wife is fucking another member of the team,” “My dad never loved me; I don’t deserve to score.”—those mental codes are an obstacle to success. I once was a guest on Match of the Day, a British Premier League football-analysis show; before it began, I hung out with the host, ex-England hero Gary Lineker and pundit, and another ex-England hero, Alan Shearer. I chatted to the two men about their lives as top-level athletes and they both agreed that the most important component in their success had been mental strength, the ability to focus the mind, literally, in their case, on the goal, excluding all irrelevant, negative, or distracting information. Both of those men have a quality that you can feel in their presence of focus and assuredness. Lineker is more superficially affable and Shearer more stern, but there is a shared certainty and connectedness to their physicality that is interesting.

Your job is to go to training camp, compete, and make the veteran players in your position feel uncomfortable, and apply pressure because you are competing at a high level and looking to move up the depth chart and earn playing time. In order to do this, you must have a full understanding of the playbook, grit, and a competitive edge that comes from within to find success at the next level.

And if he, good Christian, scion of a striving class, patron saint of the twice as good, could be forever bound, who then could not? And the plunder was not just of Prince alone. Think of all the love poured into him. Think of the tuitions for Montessori and music lessons. Think of the gasoline expended, the treads worn carting him to football games, basketball tournaments, and Little League. Think of the time spent regulating sleepovers. Think of the surprise birthday parties, the daycare, and the reference checks on babysitters. Think of World Book and Childcraft. Think of checks written for family photos. Think of credit cards charged for vacations. Think of soccer balls, science kits, chemistry sets, racetracks, and model trains. Think of all the embraces, all the private jokes, customs, greetings, names, dreams, all the shared knowledge and capacity of a black family injected into that vessel of flesh and bone. And think of how that vessel was taken, shattered on the concrete, and all its holy contents, all that had gone into him, sent flowing back to the earth. Think of your mother, who had no father. And your grandmother, who was abandoned by her father. And your grandfather, who was left behind by his father. And think of how Prince’s daughter was now drafted into those solemn ranks and deprived of her birthright—that vessel which was her father, which brimmed with twenty-five years of love and was the investment of her grandparents and was to be her legacy.

Think of all the love poured into him. Think of the tuitions for Montessori and music lessons. Think of the gasoline expended, the treads worn carting him to football games, basketball tournaments, and Little League. Think of the time spent regulating sleepovers. Think of the surprise birthday parties, the daycare, and the reference checks on babysitters. Think of World Book and Childcraft. Think of checks written for family photos. Think of credit cards charged for vacations. Think of soccer balls, science kits, chemistry sets, racetracks, and model trains. Think of all the embraces, all the private jokes, customs, greetings, names, dreams, all the shared knowledge and capacity of a black family injected into that vessel of flesh and bone. And think of how that vessel was taken, shattered on the concrete, and all its holy contents, all that had gone into him, sent flowing back to the earth.

Elmwood UFO Capital of the World Stop through Elmwood at any time of year other than the last full weekend in July, and you’ll think the aliens have already come and gone … and took everyone with them! Not much seems to be happening in this sleepy little burg. But that hasn’t always been the case. The first UFO sighting near Elmwood occurred on March 2, 1975. A star-shaped light chased a local woman and eventually landed on her car’s hood when she stopped to get a better look. A year later, in April 1976, another fireball—this one the size of a football field—shot out a blue light beam that blasted all the sparkplugs in a police cruiser driven by officer George Wheeler. Little green men seem to have trained their laser sights on Elmwood. And Elmwood welcomes the extraterrestrial attention. A few years ago Tomas Weber of the UFO Site Center Corporation in Chippewa Falls proposed that a two-square-mile UFO landing pad be built near town. The price? Twenty-five million dollars. The project has yet to get off the ground, or on the ground. Nobody talks much about it anymore, perhaps due to some type of black-ops “shadow government” cover-up.

the matches are won on the training ground, not on the football pitch. -Red White Love: The Love of Liverpool FC

black lace-ups and wiggled her toes inside her ugly police-issue regulation black tights. Her big toe had gone right through the hole in the tights now and a ladder was climbing up towards one of her big footballer’s knees. ‘It’ll be some old bloke who’s been lying here for weeks,’ she said. ‘I bloody hate them.’ ‘I hate train jumpers.’ ‘Dead kiddies.’ ‘Yeah. They’re the worst,’ Arkwright agreed. Dead children were trumps, every time. Tracy took her thumb off the doorbell and tried turning the door handle. Locked. ‘Ah, Jesus, Arkwright, it’s humming in there. Something that’s not about to get up and walk away, that’s for sure.’ Arkwright banged on the door and shouted, ‘Hello, it’s the police here, is anyone in there? Shit, Tracy, can you hear that?’ ‘Flies?’ Ken Arkwright bent down and looked through the letterbox. ‘Oh,

Time passed fast and I was coming out from the reputed engineering college at last after the same Professor had intervened with the college authority for holding the examination in spite of political troubles, prevailing during seventies in Calcutta. The sprawling complex of the university would suddenly vanish from my view. I would be missing the chirping of the birds in early morning, view of green grass of the football field right in front of our building, badly mauled by the students and pedestrians who used to cut short their journey moving across the field, whistling of steam trains passing parallel to the backside of boundary wall of our building, stentorian voice of our Professors, ever smiling and refreshing faces of the learned Professors every day. I would definitely miss the opportunity of gossiping on a bench by the lake side with other students, not to speak of your girlfriend with whom you would try to be cozy with to keep yourself warm when the chilling breeze, which put roses in girls’ cheeks but made sinuses ache, cut across you in its journey towards the open field during winter. The charm of walking along the lonely streets proscribed for outsiders and bowing occasionally when you meet the Professors of repute, music and band for the generation of ear deafening sound - both symphony and cacophony, on Saturdays and Sundays in the auditorium, rhythmic sound of machines in the workshop, hurly-burly of laughter of my friends, talks, cries at the top of  their lunges in the canteen and sudden departures of all from the canteen on hearing the ding-dong sound of the big bell hung in the administration building indicating the end of the period would no longer be there. The street fighting of two groups of students on flimsy grounds and passionate speeches of the students during debate competition would no longer be audible. Shaking of long thin pine trees violently by the storm flowing across these especially during summer, shouting and gesticulation of students’ union members while moving around the campus for better amenities or administration, getting caught with friends all around with revolvers in hand during the violent Naxalite movement, hiding in the toilet in canteen to avoid beating by police personnel, dropping of mangoes from a mango tree which spread its wings in all directions during the five years we were in the college near our building and running together by us to pick the green/ripe mangoes as fast as possible defying inclement weather and rain etc. were simply irresistible. The list was endless. I was going to miss very much the competition among us regarding number of mangoes we could collect for our few girlfriends whom we wanted to impress! I

Kettlebell Onе-Arm Kettlebell Snаtсh Plасе a kеttlеbеll between уоur feet. Bend уоur knees аnd рuѕh уоur butt bасk to gеt in thе рrореr ѕtаrting position. Lооk ѕtrаight ahead аnd ѕwing thе kеttlеbеll bасk bеtwееn уоur legs as if уоu аrе раѕѕing a football to ѕоmеоnе bеhind уоu. Immеdiаtеlу rеvеrѕе thе dirесtiоn аnd drive thrоugh еxрlоѕivеlу with уоur hiрѕ. Pull the kеttlеbеll tоwаrdѕ уоur bоdу as if уоu are starting a lаwn mower. Thе trajectory оf the kеttlеbеll will resemble a J Curvе rather thаn аn аrс. Aѕ thе kettlebell riѕеѕ to уоur shoulder ореn уоur hаnd and gеt уоur hаnd аrоund thе bеll rаthеr thаn letting the bell fliр оvеr аnd bang uр уоur wriѕt. Punсh thrоugh straight overhead tо соmрlеtе thе ѕnаtсh.

What John Ayers was doing seemed routine. But to the few who knew, and watched, it was a thing of beauty. The ball is snapped and John Ayers sees Taylor coming, and slides quickly back one step and to his left. And as he slides, he steps to meet his future. He’s stepping into 1985, when the turf will be fast and he won’t be able to deal with Lawrence Taylor…. Another quick step, back and left, and it’s 1986, and he’s injured and on the sidelines when the Giants send Joe Montana to the hospital and the 49ers home on the way to their own Super Bowl victory…. A third quick step and he crouches like one power forward denying another access to the hoop. But now it’s 1987 and Coach Bill Walsh is advising John Ayers to retire. Ayers ignores the advice and then learns that Walsh won’t invite him back to training camp…. He takes his final quick step back and left and times his blow, to stop dead in his tracks the most terrifying force ever launched at an NFL quarterback. “I don’t think I’ve ever played against a football player who had more drive and intensity to get to the quarterback,” John Ayers will say, after it’s all over, and he’s been given the game ball by his teammates. “It was almost like he was possessed.”…But now it’s 1995, and John Ayers has just died of cancer, at forty-two, and left behind a wife and two children. Joe Montana charters a plane to fly a dozen teammates to Amarillo, Texas, to serve as pall-bearers. At the funeral of John Ayers the letter of tribute from Bill Walsh is read aloud.

NOBODY CAN PREDICT WHO’LL MAKE it through BUD/S. The brass tries to figure it out; they bring in psychologists and boost the number of guys beginning the process, hoping more SEALs will be left standing at the end. They tweak the design to create more equal opportunity for minorities, but all that happens is that the instructors do to the students exactly what was done to them, and always 80 percent don’t make it. We have more white SEALs simply because more white guys try out. Eighty percent of white guys fail, 80 percent of Filipinos fail, 80 percent of black guys fail. And the irony is, the Navy doesn’t want an 80 percent failure rate. There can’t be too many SEALs. We’re always undermanned. From the beginning of boot camp, the instructors try separating guys who want to be SEALs. They put them together, feed them better, give them workouts designed to prepare them for BUD/S. These promising rookies get in better shape, are better nourished, and are psychologically primed to go. Then they’re sent to SEAL training and 80 percent fail. No matter what the Navy process tweakers do, they can’t crack it. You’d think the Olympic swimmer would make it. You’d think the pro-football player would make it. But they don’t—well, 80  percent don’t. In my experience, the one category of people who get reliably crushed in BUD/S are that noble demographic, the loudmouths. They’re usually the first to ring the bell. As for who will make it, all I can say is: Are you the person who can convince your body that it can do anything you ask it to? Who can hit the wall and say, “What wall?” That strength of mind isn’t associated with any ethnicity or level of skin pigmentation. It’s not a function of size or musculature or IQ. In the end, it’s sheer cussedness, and I’m guessing you’re either born that way or you never get there.

He led the USFL with 28 sacks for 199 yards lost (both professional football records), but also led in manic mayhem. Early on during training camp, Corker—nicknamed Sack Man—gathered the team in a circle and guided the Panthers in prayer. “He started praying like a Baptist black preacher,” said Dave Tipton, a defensive tackle, “and I thought, Wow, Corker must walk with the Lord.” Not quite. Blessed with the world’s largest penis, Corker never shied away from showing it off to fellow Panthers. “The biggest johnson in the USFL,” said Matt Braswell, the team’s center. “We had women reporters come into the locker room, and Corker would position himself so he was in full view of any females. He had this vat of Nivea skin cream, and he would just make sure to completely rub it and moisturize it.” Corker operated on a clock that required only two to three hours of sleep per night, and was powered by the dual fuels of alcohol and cocaine. He kept a gun in his car’s glove compartment, missed as many meetings as he attended, and proudly pasted his pay stubs to his locker, so that teammates could marvel at the money he was being docked. Once, Hebert drove with Corker from Pontiac to Detroit for a promotional appearance. It was snowing outside, the roads were slippery—“and Corker was driving, smoking one joint after another,” said Hebert. “We both walked in reeking of pot.” In a USFL urban legend that actually checks out, Corker was once found naked on the ice at Joe Louis Arena in the early-morning hours. He had passed out, and spent so much time on the cold surface that some of his skin had to be ripped off. “That,” said Bentley, “surprised none of us.

It was obvious that the violence was a protest. It made sense that it would be: that football matches were providing an outlet for frustrations of a powerful nature. So many young people were out of work or had never been able to find any. The violence, it followed, was a rebellion of some kind—social rebellion, class rebellion, something. I wanted to know more. I had read about the violence and, to the extent that I thought about it, had assumed that it was an isolated thing or mysterious in the way that crowd violence is meant to be mysterious: unpredictable, spontaneous, the mob. My journey from Wales suggested that it might be more intended, more willed. It offered up a vision of the English Saturday, the shopping day, that was different from the one I had known: that in the towns and cities, you might find hundreds of police, military in their comprehensiveness, out to contain young, male sports fans who, after attending an athletic contest, were determined to break or destroy the things that were in their way. It was hard to believe. I repeated the story of my journey to friends, but I was surprised by how unsurprised they were. Some acted as if they were disgusted; others were amused; no one thought it was anything extraordinary. It was one of the things you put up with: that every Saturday young males trashed your trains, broke the windows of your pubs, destroyed your cars, wreaked havoc on your town centres. I didn’t buy it, but it seemed to be so. In fact the only time I felt that I had said something surprising was when I revealed that, although I had now seen a football crowd, I had never been to an English football match. This, it seemed, was shocking.

If mutual decimation of the McLaughlins and the McLeans marked the end of Charlestown’s “gangster era,” a host of gangs endured in the Town. These were less criminal bands than expressions of territorial allegiance. Every street and alley, every park and pier had its own ragged troop which hung on the corner, played football, baseball, and street hockey, and defended its turf against all comers. The Wildcats hung at the corner of Frothingham and Lincoln streets, the Bearcats at Walker and Russell streets, the Falcons outside the Edwards School, the Cobras on Elm Street, the Jokers in Hayes Square, the Highlanders on High Street, the Crusaders at the Training Field. Each had its distinctive football jersey (on which members wore their street addresses), its own legends and traditions. The Highlanders, for example, took their identity from the Bunker Hill Monument, which towered over their hangout at the top of Monument Avenue. On weekends and summer afternoons, they gathered there to wait for out-of-town tourists visiting the revolutionary battleground. When one approached, an eager boy would step forward and launch his spiel, learned by rote from other Highlanders: “The Monument is 221 feet high, has 294 winding stairs and no elevators. They say the quickest way up is to walk, the quickest way down is to fall. The Monument is fifteen feet square. Its cornerstone was laid in 1825 by Daniel Webster. The statue you see in the foreground is that of Colonel William Prescott standing in the same position as when he gave that brave and famous command, ‘Don’t fire till you see the whites of their eyes.’ The British made three attempts to gain the hill …” And so forth. An engaging raconteur could parlay this patter into a fifty-cent tip.