Hope everyone is having a good week! First lesson learned from Super Bowl Sunday: If your team isn’t in it, it’s a lot less entertaining. I am pretty sure I had near heart attacks last year watching the Giants’ unbelievable playoff run and Super Bowl win.

 The other day Corey (Winkoff) had mentioned something interesting to me that he had heard on ESPN radio on his morning commute to the office. Trent Dilfer had said that he believed the Ravens played “beyond the Xs and Os” during their Super Bowl run.

I couldn’t agree more with Dilfer, mainly because this is a concept that applies to all sports, not just football. The Ravens had two main things going for them, in my opinion: Emotions and Confidence. Obviously, it was important for everyone on the team to send Ray Lewis out with a Super Bowl win to end his incredible 17 year career with the Ravens (say what you want about the guy but he is easily in the top 3 linebackers to ever play the game). But the overwhelmingly apparent difference between the Ravens and the 49ers in that game was the level of confidence. While the niners were lining up in illegal formations on the very first play of the game, the Ravens were calling fake field goals on 4^th and 9’s and being extremely aggressive in their play calling. Even when the 49ers scored 24 un answered points, the Ravens kept their cool, relied on their fundamentals, and got the win in the end.

All great athletes, both past and current, play well beyond what they are taught by their coaches (the Xs and Os). They fully invest themselves and their emotion in the team and allow the passion that they feel for the sport that they play to guide them to success on game day. All athletes also seem to have an un-shakable high level of confidence. They don’t let one bad play or one bad game to make them question themselves as individuals. They have full confidence in themselves and their abilities to produce on game day and help their team win. Without confidence, you’re not going to be able to take your game to the next level, period.

Go Giants,

If anyone has any good ways to stay warm with this weather, feel free to share, because I am still trying to de-frost from the whole cold thing going on outside. I thought I would use this week’s blog to talk about something interesting I heard on ESPN radio this morning. Mike Greenberg said, “football as we know it is on the brink” referring to the latest concussion issues and rule changes.

Personally, I understand the need for concussion awareness (after all, I have worn a Riddell for the past 6 years!) but football seems to be suffering because of it. Sure, its interesting to read the news about players (most of the time James Harrison) getting fined for those bone crushing hits to the head that makes us all cringe, but now it seems like all hits are becoming illegal. Time and time again this season we saw clean hits get called for 15 yarders. While player safety is and should be held to the highest standard, it seems like the sentiment among fans is that, eventually, all hitting in football is going to be illegal.

Could this be the opening lacrosse needs? Think about it. Lacrosse is one of the only sports that doesn’t discriminate against small players, like football seems to do. It has enough contact and big hits to keep people engaged but not enough hitting to raise as many concussion concerns for people to not allow their kids to play because of those concerns. It has boy and girl teams, where football doesn’t, and the pace of play is unrivaled on the field by any other sport. While I’m sad to see the change occurring in football, I’m excited for the growth of lacrosse. In the next 5 – 10 years I think the game will be as big in the Midwest and central areas of the US as it is currently in California.

Who knows, by the time some of you get to college, maybe the MLL draft will have better ratings than the NFL draft.

Just something to think about 

They are more fundamentally sound. That’s what it boils down to. When I ask people out here, coaches and players alike, how they view their east coast counterparts, the big difference they notice is that the players and teams do the little things right. They seem to move the ball around effortlessly and are able to work better as a unit.

But people recognize that there is indeed top talent out here, both individually and at the team level. West coast players can go to the east coast recruiting camps and rise to the top, surprising hotbed players and breaking stereotypes. And the premier teams from the west can go head to head with the top teams from the east, but beyond those top 3 or 4 teams per state, the depth simply isn’t there. In the conferences on the east coast, a #15 team could upset a #3 team on any given day, certainly a big win for the underdogs but not the first of its kind. This type of upset never happens on the west coast.

What kids out here lack is the exposure to the game at an early age from good coaches. While the game is exploding in places like Colorado and California and has become more and more available to young kids eager to feel the stick in their palms, it’s just not the same level of game. High school coaches continuously show frustration with incoming freshman that have terrible habits and lack a fundamental knowledge. They’ve played 3-5 years of youth lacrosse under dedicated and well-meaning fathers who have unfortunately never played the sport at a high level, if at all. Growing up in suburban Philadelphia, I had former D1 players coaching me at the youth level.

Elite brands of the game can be found in pockets out west, but there is still a long way to go before we can match the depth of the east, and people tend to recognize that pretty readily.