THE GREAT ONES HAVE NO OFF SWITCH

The stories about Jerry Rice's unparalleled work ethic are as much a part of his legend as numbers that made him the NFL's greatest receiver.

The young boy who gained his speed by chasing horses. The dedicated son who learned about determination from his father while catching bricks during sweltering Mississippi summers.

The teenager sent to the football coach because of the speed he showed running away from a principal while playing hooky. And the frequent 2½-mile uphill sprints that kept him in tiptop shape as an NFL star.

For former teammate Steve Young, the story that best describes Rice's drive comes a few weeks after the San Francisco 49ers won the Super Bowl in January 1995.

Young arrived one day at the team's practice facility to clean out his locker and saw Rice out on the field running sprints and catching passes from the groundskeeper nearly seven months before the start of the next season.

"When people talk about Jerry's work ethic and say, 'Oh it's really extreme,' they do it a disservice," Young said. "There's an iron will to it. It's over his dead body. Jerry to the core was driven. You belittle that drive by saying he had just a great work ethic. Most people have an off switch and they choose when to go all out. Jerry didn't have an off switch."

"There was no way I was going to be denied," Rice said. "I kept working hard and my dream came true. I tell kids do not let any obstacles stand in your way. If you want to achieve something, go for it. I'm living proof with my background and where I came from. I didn't give up and I wanted to be the best football player I could possibly be in the NFL and I was able to accomplish that."

Rice struggled with some drops early in his career, leading some to question why he was a first-round pick. But Lott saw something right away in Rice, who beat the future Hall of Famer with a sly double move on one of the first days of practice.

Then teammate Ronnie Lott saw Rice's reaction to the drops and knew he would become a star.

"You didn't see many rookies with the ability to perform precision routes like that. It just seemed natural to Jerry," Lott said. "After he had a rough game with a couple of drops, I saw him sitting at his locker crying. For a lot of people when they lose, it's not personal. For him it was always personal. It showed how much he wanted to be great."

From an Associated Press article -- read the entire article: http://bit.ly/sZDeFR

IT ALWAYS STARTS AT PRACTICE

“I think we are coming of age. We are growing and getting better every day. That is really from us challenging each other more in practice. We really stepped up the intensity in practice, really getting after it and simulating being in the game. If you make practice harder than the games, we will play better in the games.”

SKYLAR DIGGINS
Notre Dame All-American
From the South Bend Tribune (12-20-11)

YOUR PRACTICE EFFECTS OTHERS

"If I don’t practice one day, I know it.

If I do not practice the next day,

the orchestra knows it.
If I do not practice the third day,

the whole world knows it.”

-Ignace Paderewski (pianist)

BRUCE LEE ON THE WILL TO WIN

"The will to win. The attitude 'that you can win if you want to badly enough' means that the will to win is constant and no amount of punishment, no amount of effort, or no condition is too 'tough' to take in order to win. Such an attitude can be developed only if winning is closely tied to the practitioner’s ideals and dreams. Experience shows that an athlete who forces himself to the limit, can keep going as long as necessary. It means that ordinary effort will not tap or release the tremendous store of reserve power latent in the human body. Extraordinary effort, highly emotionalized conditions, or a true determination to win at all costs will release this extra energy. Therefore an athlete is actually as tired as he feels, and if he is determined to win he can keep on almost indefinitely in order to achieve his objective."

-BRUCE LEE

ARE YOU PROUD OF HOW YOU LIVED TODAY?

"At night when I go to bed, I ask myself, 'If I don’t wake up tomorrow, would I be proud of how I lived today.'”

-Muhammad Ali

MJ ON THE IMPORTANCE OF FUNDAMENTALS

"The minute you get away from fundamentals, the bottom can fall out.  Fundamentals were the most crucial part of my game in the NBA. Everything I did, everything I achieved, can be traced back to the way I approached the fundamentals and how I applied them to my abilities."

-Michael Jordan

IT'S ABOUT MORE THAN JUST HAVING FUN

"I do know that I didn't enjoy little league baseball for the fun of playing.  I can't help it -- but that's true.  When i hear parents tell their kids today, 'It doesn't matter if you win or lose, as long as you have fun,' I'm puzzled.  That's just now how I'm wired.  Bottom line, losing simply isn't any fun.  Oh sure, in thinking back on plays and moments, I knew I was loving every minute of playing the game.  But if there's a score, then there's a purpose to the game beyond having fun -- it's having a greater score.  Of course, there is intrinsic value in playing the game itself and how well you play it, and always playing to the best of your ability, but at some point the actual competition has to be a piece of the analysis as well.  After all, there'd be no point to the rules or to keeping score if it were simply only about having fun."

-Tim Tebow (from his book "Though My Eyes")

IT'S THE JOURNEY, NOT THE DESTINATION

THE BEST TEAMS

“The best teams are teams in any

sport that lose themselves in the team.

The individuals lose their identity.

And their identities come about as a result

of being in the team first.”

-Coach Krzyzewski



COMPETE

"If you're not a competitor,

you've just got to go home."

-Venus Williams

TEAM PLAY DETERMINES SUCCESS

“The way a team plays as a whole determines its success. You may have the greatest bunch of individual stairs in the world, but if they don’t play together, the club won’t be worth a dime.”

-Babe Ruth

DON'T LISTEN WHEN THEY TELL YOU WHAT YOU CAN'T DO

NO EXCUSES

PREPARATION OVER REGRET

"It's better to look ahead and

prepare than to look back and regret."

-Jacki Joyner-Kersee

JIM BROWN AND THE ART OF BEING OBSESSED WITH DETAILS

“The nine years I was in pro ball, I never quit trying to make my mind an encyclopedia of every possible detail — about my teammates, about players on other teams, about the plays we used, and about both our and other teams’ collective and individual tendencies. Every play I ran, I had already run a thousand times in my mind. You get a jump on the game when you visualize beforehand not only the regular players you run, but also the 101 other things that might happen unexpectedly. So when you’re in the actual game, whatever happens, you’ve already seen it in your mind and plotted your countermoves — instantly and instinctively.”

-Jim Brown