“For you,” said the pig, “bacon and eggs are a donation. For me, it’s a full commitment.”

As the AFC and NFC conference title games unfold today, coaches, fans and teammates will be able to separate the pigs from the chickens. Some players will offer total commitment, while others will make a donation now and then.

“If you don’t make a total commitment to whatever you’re doing, then you start to bail out the first time the boat starts leaking,” said former college and NFL coach Lou Holtz.

It’s one thing to enter the game with commitment. It’s another thing to hold onto it when you’ve been drilled with an NFL-style hit, say, from Ray Lewis.

It reminds you of what ex-heavyweight champ Mike Tyson said about strategy in the ring. “Everyone has a plan ’till they get punched in the mouth.”

The San Francisco 49ers can take a punch. They are in the NFC game because they stayed committed even after the New Orleans Saints stunned them with a go-ahead touchdown with just 97 seconds left.

They will face the New York Giants, who showed some commitment of their own by going to Green Bay and dominating the NCF’s top seed.

In the AFC, the Baltimore Ravens and New England Patriots will find their resolve tested as well. Whether on the line or in the open field, they will be tested in ways that would make other people walk away.

Whoever survives will get a chance to test their commitment one more time, two weeks from now in the Super Bowl. There they will play for the Lombardi trophy, named after a man who knew a little about commitment.

No matter what your interest or life pursuit, it will turn out better if you are the pig, not the chicken.

“The quality of a person’s life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence, regardless of their chosen field of endeavor,” said Vince Lombardi, who coached the packers to victory in the first two Super Bowls.

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How? How do turnaround artists show people how to win?

Harbaugh said something that really caught my attention. He told a radio interviewer, “We just try to get better every day.”

Sounds so simple. Coaches say it all the time. But just try doing it. Life, as they say, has its ups and downs. Distractions arise. Discouragement sets in. But you can pursue constant improvement. The Japanese call it ‘kaizen.’ Harbaugh himself warned that improvement is a process.

And here are some parts of the process:

Identify what needs to be done. (Task)
Make sure it gets done. (Stay on task)
Make sure it gets done as well as it can be done. (Complete and perfect the task)
Get all the feedback you can. Learn the best way to measure results.
Try again, using all your new information.
Repeat.
Stay motivated for this process.

Peak performance expert Dr. Anders Ericsson, known as the “expert on experts” for his research into improvement, lists four factors in acquiring skill: Motivation to attend to task; practice design in which the task can easily be understood, lots of feedback, and lots of repetitions.

Steve Jobs was a tireless pursuer of a better way. Walter Isaacson’s biography of Jobs portrays someone who seldom accepted the status quo, even when being treated in the hospital.

“At one point, the pulmonologist tried to put a mask over his face when he was deeply sedated,” Isaacson writes.
“Jobs ripped it off and mumbled that he hated the design and refused to wear it. Though barely able to speak, he ordered them to bring five different options for the mask and he would pick a design he liked. . . . He also hated the oxygen monitor they put on his finger. He told them it was ugly and too complex.”

Any coach can adopt Harbaugh’s ideal of constant improvement, and Dr. Ericsson’s model of achieving it. Just don’t make the mistake of thinking you must add to what already exists.

“Almost all quality improvement comes via simplification of design, manufacturing… layout, processes, and procedures,” said author and speaker Tom Peters.

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication,” said Da Vinci.

With the 49ers on the rise, the other Bay Area team, the Oakland Raiders, are trying to improve. Owner Mark Davis has hired Reggie McKenzie as their general manager, and McKenzie has fired coach Hue Jackson. McKenzie said he wanted to bring in his own man. Only time will tell how that will turn out.

Meanwhile, way back in the NFL preseason, the Saints beat the 49ers. It will be interesting to see who has improved more since then.

Thomas Morstead is a hero in New Orleans today for his onside kick that helped the Saints win the Super Bowl. But it wasn’t always that way.

On the day the Saints drafted him, they received criticism for “wasting” a pick on a kicker. And when he got to camp and started to practice field goals, a coach told him not to bother, and to concentrate on punting instead.

But things changed. The regular kicker was suspended, leaving a vacancy. Morstead was ready to step in. He grew into the role so well that Saints Coach Sean Peyton felt confident enough to call on him for an onside kick to open the second half of the Super Bowl.

“He’s ahead of the curve when it comes to the approach to the kicking game, his workout routine, his mental focus,” said John Carney, a kicker in the NFL for many years. “It may say ‘rookie’ next to his name, but he really trains and behaves as if he’s been in the NFL for five years.”

Carney’s words — approach, routine, focus — can apply to anyone in any field. Morstead used them to go from unpopular draft day pick to Super Bowl hero.

What exactly does watching the Super Bowl prove? Everything. It proves that people have the ability to set goals and work to achieve them.

Just think. How often do you find yourself saying things like, “I’d love to, but I just don’t have the time?” On Super Bowl Sunday, you make time. You let nothing stand in your way. You run your errands early, and otherwise arrange your day, to make sure that when the game begins, you’re in front of a TV, with snacks nearby.

It just shows how strong your will can be when you really put your mind to it. It shows how effectively you can form priorities and stick to them.

There’s just one problem with this scenario. Millions of people are going to re-arrange their lives in order to be spectators, not participants. What if you could be as effective at accomplishing things of your own as you are in watching other people — in this case football players — accomplish things?

If you could use your power all the time, you would become unstoppable. If you were to set goals, let nothing stand in your way, and follow your priorities until the mission was complete, then how could you fail? Even if you fell short now and then, your overall level of achievement would skyrocket.

So as you move through this week, and get ready for Super Sunday, remember that the biggest winner will not necessarily be a football team. It can be you — once you start using the incredible power that you have within you.

Everyone associated with the Vikings — players, coaches and fans — will long remember a detail that cost the team a chance to go to the Super Bowl.

“Just the slightest bit of miscommunication,” left guard Steve Hutchinson said on Access Vikings, a Minneapolis StarTribune blog.

Just the slightest bit.

With the Vikings driving toward what shaped up as a game-winning field goal, they huddled for a third-down play. Trouble is, too many of them huddled — 12 instead of 11. That’s illegal. The penalty pushed Minnesota out of field goal range and when quarterback Bret Favre tried a pass on the next play, New Orleans intercepted.

So once again, just as in the Saskatchewan-Montreal Grey Cup game, in which a too-many-men penalty cost Saskatchewan the title, no detail is too small. It wasn’t a complicated pass route that made the difference. Or an intricate defensive scheme. It was the difference between 12 and 11 players.

Where does that leave coaches? Is it possible to anticipate every situation? No. But it’s completely possible to set high standards, and then to keep to them.

“Success is a personal standard,” says Zig Ziglar.

Sivananda says, “A mountain is composed of tiny grains of earth. The ocean is made up of tiny drops of water. Even so, life is but an endless series of little details, actions, speeches, and thoughts. And the consequences whether good or bad of even the least of them are far-reaching.”

Right now the consequence of 12 men instead of 11 is the difference between a trip to the Super Bowl and going home.

Every team has problems, but victory has a way of hiding them. And losing has a way of spotlighting those problems.

“You can learn a line from a win and a book from a defeat,” said legendary football coach Paul Brown.

This makes the streak by the Penn State women’s volleyball team all the more impressive. The Nittany Lions have gone 102 matches without a loss and completed their third straight national title over the weekend. They haven’t lost since a five-game match against Stanford on Sept. 15, 2007. They must have learned a lot from that one!

Only one team in the history of NCAA Division I sports has compiled a longer winning streak. The Miami men’s tennis program captured 137 straight victories from 1957-64.

Somehow these teams managed to avoid the bad habits that slip in when teams are winning. Somehow those athletes avoided the temptation to take any opponent for granted. Somehow they never beat themselves with a lazy approach.

“Winning is the science of being totally prepared,” said football coach George Allen.

With the streak out of the way, and nothing hiding the flaws, New Orleans can focus on preparation.

The Dolphins, the only NFL team ever to go undefeated, now see two teams — The Indianapolis Colts and the New Orleans Saints — threatening to accomplish what they did nearly four decades ago.

Two years ago, the Dolphins watched and waited as the New England Patriots came within one game of joining them — only to lose in the Super Bowl.

What makes it so difficult to go undefeated?

First, of course, you have be a skilled, tough team.

Second, there is so much competition — every team you play is professional — that it’s always possible to face someone who can beat you.

Third, there is the mental challenge. It’s so hard to get up emotionally for every game. And the more you win, the harder it is to take the so-called weaker teams seriously. Finally, there’s always a danger that the streak can become a distraction — winning is so difficult that the moment you stop preparing and start thinking about the record books, you’ve lost a crucial bit of focus. It’s like the story of the tortoise and the hare. Even though the hare ran faster, it lost the race to the tortoise because it stopped running and started to think.

Two weeks ago the Saints saw how hard it is to stay undefeated. Playing the lowly Redskins, they needed some late heroics — as well as some Redskins mistakes — to keep their streak alive.

By the way, there’s a legend that the surviving members of the 1972 Dolphins still get together every year for a toast when the last undefeated team loses. Apparently it’s nothing more than a legend.

But toast or not, the Dolphins have every right to be proud what they accomplished — it is so difficult to do.