Today marks the birthday of William Henry Harrison, ninth president of the United States. He came into this world in 1773, the last president to be born before the Declaration of Independence. Few things about Harrison’s life can rival the facts about his death. He served only 32 days, the shortest tenure of any president. […]
How would you like to get better at whatever you do? It’s simple. Just take a trip in your imagination to Red Wing, Minn., where the first North American ski jumping exhibition took place 125 years ago today. Ski jumping came to North American with immigrants from Norway, and it took hold in Minnesota for […]
Charles Dickens, author of several literary classics, was born 200 years ago today. But it’s not his classics that should concern us, especially since Mark Twain once defined a classic as “something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.” Instead, Dickens influenced us not just in the books that he wrote, […]
No wonder the New York Giants are tough, tough enough to win two Super Bowls in the last five seasons. Their coach, Tom Coughlin, is as tough as they come. How tough? Well, not glass-eating, phonebook-ripping tough, but tough enough to do this: Coughlin once asked a player to give him a top-to-bottom list of […]
No one I know thinks of Babe Ruth as an intellectual giant. Ruth, born on this date in 1895, partied his way through life, going for all the gusto he could. He lived that way both on and off the field. “I hit big or I miss big,” he once said. “I like to live […]
For the second time in four years, the New York Giants have won the Super Bowl. And they couldn’t have done it without a great shortstop. Shortstop? Yes, back when Eli Manning was going through a rough stretch as a rookie quarterback with the Giants, he received a phone call from Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter. […]
People like to say that there is no such thing as a stupid question. They are wrong. There are plenty of stupid questions, and for proof all you need to do is hang around the Super Bowl. Over the years, the press corps has used the preview week to pose some questions that have gone […]
No aspect of coaching is as misunderstood as motivation is. Too many coaches think of motivation as a magic wand to be waved over their team before the big game. Great coaches know that isn’t the case. A perfect example is Mike Pope, who coaches the tight ends on the New York Giants. Pope uses […]
Groundhog Day fascinates me. Not the movie, but the fable of what a groundhog can tell us about the weather. No one I know uses the prediction of Punxsutawney Phil to decide how much salt to buy for the driveway or when to buy spring clothes. But lots of people live their lives according to […]