It never fails. Snow is falling here in Northern New Jersey, only days after the temperature reached the 70s. That sort of thing happens every March, making it an uncomfortable kind of month. One day it’s spring, the next day it’s winter again. We don’t like these abrupt changes. We prefer consistency. We want to […]
No subject interests me as much as how and why people improve. Just now on TV, hockey expert Stan Fischler did a piece on “Diamonds in the Rough,” a look at the top five players who reached the National Hockey League despite not being drafted. Each player represents a story that is hard to believe. […]
Beware the player who performs best when either far behind or far ahead. Someone gave me that advice years ago, and it comes to mind as the season unfolds for New Jersey Devils forward Ilya Kovalchuk. A high-scoring winger acquired last year, Kovalchuk thrived when his team seemed to be out of contention. Then, with […]
When you play the lottery, do you get the feeling that you’re going to win? Of course! Otherwise, why would you play? Here’s the hard reality: The odds can range from 18 million to 1 to as much as 120 million to 1. Not very good. But this is not really about the lottery. It’s […]
Yesterday I read a very interesting article on how little tryouts really tell us. The author, Jonah Lehrer, used the NFL combine as an example. The combine, for those who don’t know, is an audition in which players run and perform other physical skills while being evaluated by all of the NFL teams. Here are […]
The other day I heard about a millionaire executive who interviewed his salesmen by taking them to dinner. If they put salt of their food before tasting it, he immediately disqualified them. His reasoning was that they should taste first, then make adjustments if necessary. Kind of like a sales call. Listen first, instead of […]
Let’s say you’re fortunate enough to have reached your “Big Dance,” whether it’s the NCAA tournament or your state final. Many coaches make the fatal mistake of believing they must do something special because of the occasion. Dave Cross can help you avoid that. Dave is a nationally known coach, an expert on mental skills […]
Do you suppose that, between now and the NCAA tournament, the athletes will get any faster? Taller? Stronger? No, they’re as fast, as tall and as strong as they are going to be for the next three weeks. If they’re going to make any improvement at all, it must be in their mental game. Here […]
Not long ago I heard of an office where a worker had recently been shown the door. It seems that this person brought an attitude that drove colleagues to distraction. One of them, as a coping mechanism, began to keep a simple log. It noted the first words out of this person’s mouth every day […]
When you look at what Albert Pujols has accomplished in the big leagues — things no player has ever done — you wonder how teams could have passed over him on draft day. Yet it happened. Through 12 rounds of the 1999 draft, every single franchise looked at Pujols and decided there was someone better […]