May 6, 2006, 8:28 PM CT

Desire To Win Brought Favre Back

The decision Brett Favre made to return to Green Bay this season wasn't easy, but it was rather simple.

"Ultimately I still wanted to play, I still felt like I could help this team win," Favre said. "I wondered what it would be like at home on Sundays next year and saying I could be doing that, I could be helping that team.

"Regardless of what decision I made, there will be regrets at times".

On the field inside the Don Hutson Center Friday, Favre began his 16th NFL campaign throwing completion after completion, moving in and out of the pocket and seemingly enjoying the nearly two-hour practice.........

Posted by: Jim      Permalink         Source

April 25, 2006, 7:09 PM CT

Does This Guy Look Like A History Grinch?

At 11-0 you would think Dungy would look a little happier, you know, have a little spring in his step, a little twinkle in his eye? Nope. Not Dungy. You'd think the prospects of re-writing the history books with an undefeated season would at least draw some sort of positive reaction? Nope. Not Dungy. Every time a reporter asks Tony about going undefeated, he looks like you've just asked him to knock back a glass of Metamucil. Short of Jim Kiick threatening his family, one would have to wonder why Tony Dungy seems hell-bent on passing up football immortality.

"Hopefully, we can win these next two, and we'll see what happens," Dungy said. "I know if we win them, there will be a lot of talk, 'Could you possibly go undefeated?' That's never been a goal of ours".

Ok, fair enough. No head coach starts a football season by pinning up a locker room sign that reads 'goal number #1 - let's have an undefeated season'. My good Footblog readers, I don't have to point out to you why that's a very. bad. idea. Thanks for the tip, coach. But saying something was never a goal, and resting your star players are two completely different things. Oh, but wait.........

Posted by: Jim      Permalink         Source

April 15, 2006, 6:21 PM CT

The new Amazin' Mets

Wow, it's finally good to be a New York Mets fan again. (Haven't wavered since I was 10.) Sure, there was the brief flirt with glory when they went to the 2000 World Series. But this Mets team -- 6-1 after Pedro's win tonight -- looks formidable. As the Washington Nationals play-by-play announcer said tonight, "They look like they're doing everything right right now.

They're hitting better than anybody else [.312 BA], they're pitching better than anybody else [leading the league at 2.95 ERA], they're playing outstanding defense, plus they have that outstanding speed element. I just don't see a chink in their armor."

I haven't seen a Mets team this good since 20 years ago, when the '86 team went 108-54 and won the division by 21½ games (before winning the Bucky Dent World Series by a stroke of fate). They won't win quite that a number of games this year, but they could come close.........

Posted by: Jim      Permalink         Source

April 11, 2006, 11:31 PM CT

New Data On Risks And Consequences Of Seatbelt Non-use

In the nation's first statewide study of its kind, the Injury Research Center of the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee has revealed new data on an old problem..... people who don't use seatbelts. The scientists found that unbelted crash occupants who make it to an emergency department alive are more than three times as likely as belt users to die.

The team used data from the 2002 Crash Outcome Data Evaluation System (CODES)* for Wisconsin. They studied 23,920 crash occupants, ages 16 and over, who were treated in hospital-based emergency departments (ED)'s, statewide in 2002, and compared ED outcomes and characteristics of seatbelt users with non users. Their study appears in the March 10, online issue of Academic Emergency Medicine.

"Unbelted crash occupants represented 68 percent of the patients dying in the ED's," says lead author Shane Allen, a third year medical student. "Among motor vehicle crash patients who survived, only 20 percent of surviving unbelted occupants were successfully treated in an ED and discharged. The remainder mandatory hospital admission."

Motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death for Americans ages two through 33 years. As per the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, crash fatalities in Wisconsin rose from 763 in 2001, to 803 in 2002; while reported seatbelt use in the state dropped from 69 percent in 2001 to 66 percent in 2002.........

Posted by: Jim      Permalink         Source

April 11, 2006, 5:43 PM CT

Do You Have What It Takes ?

Are you by any chance watching the Olympics ?

Pierre de Coubertin who invented the modern Games once said (or is supposed to have said), that the important part is not to win, but to participate.

Eventhough I could fall in love with that idea, I totally disagree by now. The only thing that matters is to win.

Jack Welch used the concept as the title of his last book, and he is so right: "winning".

If you are not watching the Games this last week, you should. I very very seldom see so much determination in competing on the GLOBAL scene, individually, just to be the BEST.

Sports teach us a lot about entrepreneurship and business, eventhough we Europeans might not grab the whole importance and relevance : team work in preparation, discipline, concentration, focus, ambition, execution.........

Posted by: Jim      Permalink

April 11, 2006, 5:31 PM CT

Frugal Golf

Is there any such thing as golf on a budget? Yes, there is, if you take a good look at the marketing strategies used in selling golf products.

Here is one example. Today I interviewed a local golf shop owner and we were talking about the new golf balls. He said that representatives from the different companies send him golf balls for his own use, hoping that they will be recommended to customers.

He went on to say that he has tried just about all of them and they pretty much play the same. After picking up the box of Titleist balls he said, "This one is probably the best." The box he picked up cost $24.99 a dozen. Then he began laughing, picked up another box, and said that it was the best seller.

That box was $44.99 a dozen. I was surprised, but he explained that it is all hype. Because the balls cost more, people believe that they will help them to play better.

The new hybrid ironwoods are available now. Will they really change your game or is it all marketing hype?

One marketer was heard to say that since the golf club market was so full of clubs, he priced his clubs three times what others' cost. He sold hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of them. The golf clubs were not any more expensive to make than other clubs. It was a "marketing test" and people bought them like crazy! .........

Posted by: Jim      Permalink

April 9, 2006, 6:09 PM CT

Junkyard Golf Course and Community Building Event with Potluck

For some bizarre reason, I found myself working on a lovely little pamphlet describing how perfectly suited the whole Junkyard Golf experience would be to the challenge and goals of a community-building event.

Everybody can play.

There are calls to creativity and collaboration, invitations to inclusion, incentives for sharing, and it all somehow connects people to each other and to the world they are creating together.

And when it was finished, it felt really good. I mean, I liked it. A lot. It was clear. Fun. Accessible.

So I decided to give it away.........

Posted by: Tom      Permalink         Source

April 9, 2006, 6:02 PM CT

Bonds' steroid use detailed

SFGate: Two San Francisco Chronicle reporters have chronicled what almost all of us pretty much knew all along: Barry Bonds has been using steroids for a number of years. The report says Bonds began using steroids after the 1998 season.

Podcast: Chronicle reporters Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams talk about their new book. Plus, how Bonds' stats improved.

When Bonds breaks Babe Ruth's 714 home-run mark this year, it will not just warrant an asterisk. It will be irrelevant. He cheated -- big-time. No wonder he's been so surly with the press and with the fans.........

Posted by: Tom      Permalink         Source

April 9, 2006, 6:00 PM CT

Oh, Lindsey!

Oh, Lindsey!

Photo by Getty Images........

Posted by: Tom      Permalink         Source

April 9, 2006, 5:40 PM CT

Highfield Drive In

We all kind of lost interest in the golf in the U.S. when our native stalwarts fell by the wayside and that awesome leftie Mickelson left the rest of the field floundering. The weather forecast was so bad on Sunday morning that there seemed to be nothing but depression facing golfers for the rest of the day. But God knows that Highfield is special.

Captain Alan Kavanagh with his customary bonhomie performed his smoking rainbanishing dance on the steps leading to the first tee and lo and behold the sun began to peep out. Conditions appeared to be so bad that the President Alan Duggan made a decision to play eleven holes only in the post drive in scramble. But wonder of wonders from the moment Captains Alan and Cecilia (Colgan) performed the time honoured drive-in all the ponderous wet gear became a superfluity.

Most of the large party of scramblers set off to their appointed tee boxes with flushed faces (red from the numerous quaffs of champagne no doubt) and high hopes. It was to be the day of the captains - the two immediate past captains, the two present captains and the two future captains all figured in the prizes with a few morsels thrown to the plebs.........

Posted by: Tom      Permalink         Source