Archive for the ‘football’ Category

Super Bowl Stories

Monday, February 4th, 2008

People who aren’t football fans tune into the Super Bowl to watch the advertisements. You’ve probably seen them, and read about them, already. The talking stain, Shaquille O’Neal as a race jockey, and so forth.

I was fascinated by another ad, part of a fascinating project by the National Football League which gathered stories from over 200 NFL players, and had fans vote on their favorites. The winner was made into a 60-second film, broadcast during the Super Bowl. It’s a narrated story, partially dramatized, about an NFL player who meets a large man working at the grocery store. He convinces the man to try out for the college football team. You’ll have to watch the video for the rest of the story.

The final product is excellent. But it’s also interesting to view the original story, told one-on-one by the Houston Texans’ Ephraim Salaam, and see how it changed in the more polished retelling. (Sadly, as of October 2009 the NFL has taken down the link to the original story. You’ll have to take my word for it; it was better.)

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Posted in Super Bowl, advertising, football, marketing, narrative, sports, storytelling | Comments

Welcome to Sports Analogy Week

Monday, August 13th, 2007

I’m a lifelong sports fan, and as a result can’t help but connect sports to business. This drove my old colleague Roberta crazy. “Why do you keep using sports analogies?” she told me repeatedly. “Don’t you realize some people don’t care about sports?”

So, in honor of everyone else–those who do care about sports–a week of posts on how sports and business relate. (Roberta, I look forward to you tuning back in next Monday.)

For today, a remembrance of the late great Bill Walsh, coach of the San Francisco 49ers during their glory years. What always impressed me about his teams was how prepared they were for pressure situations. For example, being down and needing a touchdown to win in the last few minutes of the game (which played itself out in Super Bowl 23 against the Bengals).

Why did his teams execute so coolly in such pressurized moments? Because they had practiced precisely that scenario, many times before. It was just a matter of executing the plays they already knew, in the sequence they were ready for. The following is from the recent obituary in the San Francisco Chronicle:

“We didn’t beat guys up,” he said in an interview in Football Digest. He preferred to save the contact for the game and concentrate instead on preparing for every situation that might come up in a game.

“The format of practice and contingency planning — those, to me, are the biggest contributions that I’ve made to the game,” he said.

Before Walsh, I didn’t view preparation in business very highly (wiser people than I did, of course). In fact, I liked exercising my improvisatory skills a lot. But in thinking about Walsh’s teams, and how they performed, I learned that these were skills–preparing before meetings, considering contingencies and rehearsing how to respond–I very much needed to learn.

(Photo of Penn State football by bilim via stock.xchng)

Posted in contingency planning, football, leadership, preparation, sports | Comments