If you compete, at the end of the day you will have one of two things: results or reasons. You will either have produced something, or you will have an excuse as to why not. Furthermore, at the end of the day you will be known by one of those two things: results or reasons. […]
Recently I had the chance to speak to two groups of school athletic directors. The discussion began with this question: What percentage of your time is spent on your to-do list, and what percentage is spent dealing with the unexpected? In both groups, estimates on the percentage of time spent dealing with the unexpected ranged […]
Ralph Nader, consumer advocate and former presidential campaign, has found a new crusade. Amid the buzz of the NCAA basketball tournament, Nader has called for an end to college athletic scholarships. You can easily see why someone would look at college sports and see problems. Basketball and football are cesspools filled with recruiting violations, spotty […]
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 […]
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 […]
Spring has brought the usual array of new baseball books, and one of them should catch the eye of coaches everywhere. It’s called “The Genius in All of Us: Why Everything You’ve Been Told About Genetics, Talent and IQ is Wrong,” by David Shenk. The content shouldn’t come as any surprise if you’ve read books […]