Looking for people with convictions who can influence their peers

Came across a great quote from Joe Paterno in the book "The Competitive Edge" by Dr. Jeffrey Brown, a sports psychologist and instructor at Harvard Medical School.

"We need people who influence their peers and who cannot be detoured from their convictions by peers who do not have the courage to have any convictions."

[Here's a video at Coach Paterno at work that's worth a look.]

18 Old-School Values

From Coach Silver's email, a great weekly read, comes coach Herb Welling's list of "old school basketball values.

[Here's a story about Coach Welling, pictured here.]




Basketball's Old-School Values

1. We value the ball.
2. We take good shots.
3. We share the ball and make the extra pass.
4. We sprint back on defense and we don't give up lay-ups.
5. We defend the ball and help our teammate guarding the ball.
6. We contest shots without fouling.
7. We box out.
8. We rebound and run the floor.
9. We dive for loose balls.
10. We take charges.
11. We respect the game, officials, coaches, opponents, and our teammates.
12. We have good body language.
13. We compete hard and we play with passion.
14. We have no excuses and we have "next play" mentality.
15. We listen with our eyes and our ears.
16. We only care about one stat -- the final score.
17. We are responsible and accountable to the team -- on and off the floor.
18. We play as a team -- the we is great than the me.

One team's brotherhood

There's an old saying:

"To lead people, walk beside them."

That's a good description of how 76-year-old Steelers owner and Hall of Fame member Dan Rooney leads.

After all, as described in this NY Times article, how many owners of a professional team...

-- Walks to his team's home games, including passing under a highway overpass?

-- Flies on the team charter, where he sits on the non-reclining row next to the bathroom?

-- Eats lunch in the team cafeteria with Steelers employees and players?

-- Invites players into his office to nap on the sofa?

-- Lives in a modest house across the street from an abandoned lot and a Wendy's fast-food restaurant?

“Some owners treat you like a rental property,” said defensive end Nick Eason, who has played in Denver and in Cleveland . “They have some maintenance guy to take care of it, they just come by to check on it, they look and they leave. Mr. Rooney comes around, he always sticks his hand out to you. ‘Hey, Nick’— and I’m like, he knows my name?”

Nose tackle Casey Hampton said: “A lot of owners, this is a hobby, but for him, this is his business, what he does. He’s here, shakes your hand, talks to you every day. Every day.”

According to this article, "strong safety Troy Polamalu said he treats all the players as his equal, “from Hines Ward to a free-agent rookie."

The Steelers family encompasses not only the current team but past players as well. “You come back, and you’re still a part of here,” Ward said. “We know the history of the team. Not only do we represent ourselves but all the players who wore the black and gold before us.”

The former linebacker Andy Russell, who played for the Steelers for 13 years, said: “Here I’ve been out of the game over 30 years, and they jump up and come over and shake my hand and tell me how pleased they are to see me. You know, I’m thrilled to see them. It’s a brotherhood.”

Mr. Rooney takes no credit for the "brotherhood," saying that the team's culture has been cultivated over a number of years.

"It started with my father," he said. "He gave me the values. He treated players, coaches, general staff as people. He was concerned about them."

This author contends that the "culture now permeates the entire organization — a sort of ego-free zone in which players and coaches can occasionally seem as if they’re competing for a Nobel prize in humility."

"We don’t care who gets the credit, and all we want to do is win. It’s very important that a team come together, that they develop respect for each other — you can call it love."

A belief that when the team flourishes, the individual flourishes

How many times have you read where a veteran player -- a former All-Pro -- is benched late in his career and becomes a distraction from the team's goals?

Now, consider Cardinals RB Edgerrin James, a guy who has had more than 300 carries in seven of his 10 seasons in the league, rushing for more than 1,100 yards in each of those seasons.

When he was benched for rookie RB Tim Hightower, James wasn't happy about it, but he "never sulked, never pouted. He worked hard and practiced as if he were starting."

As this story from the NY Times puts it, "James is especially compelling at a time when we have become used to seeing sports stars complain about playing time and statistics, team be damned."

This article contends that "if James had chosen to become a negative influence in the locker room, he might have done irreparable damage to the Cardinals' postseason hopes. Instead, he helped drive them to the franchise's first division title since 1975 by showing how much he cared about the team."

In a situation where some players would have held contempt for the player who replaced them, "James turned his attention to helping Hightower through a complex situation for both of them."

"Our relationship got even better, and that's the funny part of it. The more I played, the more he was talking to me," Hightower says. "Every single time I'd come to the sideline, he'd point out things that he saw. He showed me how to watch film. He was calling me every day to make sure I was putting the right things in my body. It just blows my mind away that somebody could be so selfless."

James' team-first attitude is unusual in today's pro game, and it shows that he takes seriously "the core values that carried him from Immokalee, Fla., to the Super Bowl: hard work and a dedication to doing what is required to help the team, a belief that when the team flourishes, the individual flourishes."

“Some guys focus on the business side more than the football side, and it doesn’t work out,” James said Tuesday. “Whenever I talk to a young guy, I always say: ‘Make sure you put football first, do everything the right way, as far as being a football player. Everything else is going to come.’ You understand that it’s not personal, it’s business,” he said. “This is business, regardless of what anyone may say or think, the N.F.L. is a business, and that’s the approach I’ve always taken.”

Worrying about being productive versus being liked

Donovan McNabb's season ended yesterday -- just short of the Super Bowl -- but in this article the 10-year veteran QB earns high praise from Brad Childress, the former Eagles' QB coach and O-coordinator and current head coach in MIN:

"He's one of those people that learns from the past and makes the most of what's ahead of him. He doesn't worry about being liked, he worries about being productive. He worries about the things he can change and how he can work to change them. There is something interwoven deep inside his fiber with his values and the values of his parents that have made him the person he is. To me, that's as important as the physical skills and ability."

A signed commitment to core beliefs

At Virginia Tech this week, coach Seth Greenberg had his players sign a contract asking "his players to commit to his 'core beliefs.'"

According to this article, "the move came in the wake of Sunday's 69-44 loss at Duke -- a defeat in which the Hokies mustered just 13 second-half points. Tech forward Jeff Allen has said that Duke played harder than the Hokies in the second half, and that his team 'gave up.'"

Greenberg said Thursday he didn't like the team's "competitive spirit" in the second half at Duke. He said the contract reminds the players "of the essence of the culture of the program" and makes sure they don't "compromise" that culture. Players said this year's version of the contract covers everything from playing hard and playing up to one's potential in games to not talking back to coaches in practice to not using cellphones during team dinners.

In Coach Greenberg's words, "I've done a contract almost every single year I've been here at different times. I'm taking measures to help us get better."

Says one player: "It's just stuff on and off the court, the stuff that we [were] kind of letting go, and it was kind of affecting the team. [Coach Greenberg] won't tolerate some of the small stuff he was tolerating. A lot of the contract is ... [about] effort in practice."

Believing in a process

New Milwaukee Brewers manager Ken Macha on what he values as a coach:

"What you need to do is let these players know what is important to you. Playing good, fundamental baseball is important to me. Going out there and grinding it out every day is important to me. Putting a good day's work in every day and trying to get yourself improved is important to me.

I believe in process. You've got to think what you're going to do every day to get yourself better and go out and follow that process. If you follow that process over the course of the whole year, you're going to see results. You go out and play hard and prepare yourself properly and you're going to get the most out of what you have."