MUST SEE Motivation video to get the season of r

Damn, that was a great video.

Dub Maddox put this together...he is the video editing guru! Hope it inspires your boys for what we all hope will be a great season for everyone on the board.

I just see a blank box... is there a link

Coach,
The word is "passio." The latin root of passion.

In context, most young men today understand passion in terms of its modern definition - ardent desire, strong emotion, or feeling.

The original meaning of the word comes from the latin root - "passio", or "pati-" which means, "to suffer". The context was associated with the sufferings of Christ - hence the term, "The Passion of the Christ." This association was the first time the concept of love was identified with the word, because Christ loved his followers and suffered deeply on their behalf. So passion, in its original meaning, is a more substantive word than what we are using today, or what is generally more used. This is yet another example of the standard of something, in this case, a word, being defined down to levels that don't carry their original depth or meaning. Unfortunately, this redefining of the meaning of this word, dovetails with the ever increasing "softness" we are observing in our athletes, as they become more emotional, rather than resolute in their performance.

This original mixture of suffering driven by love creates a better, more solid definition of passion, that transcends the idea of simple transient emotion, or feeling in a moment - this goes to the will of a man. That reality that exists deeper than his emotions.

It operates in what I call the "non-negotiables" of his will. These are decisions made outside of emotion that govern his willingness to serve others.

So, simply put, "passio" is best understood in football terms, in the following question:

"What are you willing to suffer for those you claim to love on your team?"

ie. What changes are you willing to endure? What drills are you willing to do that drive you to boredom? How deep does your willingness to serve, and suffer while doing so, go - as it relates to your friends? Are you willing to do what others are not?, not because you love football, but because of who you play with, and for?

If you love the game, your "passio" will be vulnerable to the influence of a game's distractions - the scoreboard, the ref calls, the weather, the situations....

Conversely, If you truly love the guys you are playing with, your "passio" will tend to be unshakeable in this regard. Why? Because, the "decision" has already been made to do what others are not willing to do, and that includes the possibility of real pain, sacrifice, and suffering, on behalf of those around you.

The game may be one aspect of that sacrifice, but the player's determination to serve his teammates on a much deeper level, even to the point of personal suffering, makes them very difficult to rattle. This "determinant will" to serve to the point of personal suffering has been lost to a large degree in the kids we work with, basically to this entire generation.

More importantly, if an athlete can embrace the concept of "passio", their ability to sustain "the fight" under greater distress becomes a reality. Why? They are fighting for something bigger than the game, or the outcome. They are playing with a self imposed accountability to their teammates and coaches.

Essentially, they mature in their commitment and manhood sooner, because they are learning operate at the level of the will and not by their emotions - like a "real" man must do every day of his life.

So, when a "real" man pursues this kind of "suffering," intentionally, or purposefully seeks the inevitable requirement of denying himself to serve someone else, even if he doesn't get paid back, this is what you can say is his "passio", or passion.

Said another way, and one that every coach here will appreciate, to suggest that a coach "has a passion for coaching football," only because he loves the game, falls painfully short in quantifying what is really going on in the man.

To cheapen this profession's core competency by suggesting that their passion for it is merely an "ardent desire, or strong emotion" that they have, and therefore could easily discard, is brutally inane.

It goes infinitely deeper than that for the genuine coach, and "real" man, who must make a daily, sometimes hourly, decision to suffer deep internal pain and humiliation choosing to serve young men who neither understand, nor appreciate, on ANY level, the amount of time, patience, and self-control it takes to lead them on one day, much less, help them navigate an entire high school career!

"Passio" as it was originally meant, gives us a better definition to consider our role. It captures that internal, highly combustive, process in the coach, and creates a context for it to be talked about, appropriated when challenged, and improved in the man who possesses it.

More humorously, it is better characterized by that great philosopher, Jerry Maguire in the bathroom with Cuba Gooding in the movie, Jerry Maguire, when he said something to the effect, "Help me, help you, HELP ME, HELP YOU, I am out here FOR YOU, and that is an up at dawn, pride swallowing siege, that I will never fully tell you about!"

I just use this speaking forum at the camp to position the concept, and make a simple statement, "We know what this "passio" looks like in mature men, who are out there everyday laying it on the line, but what are the possibilities of impact on a program, a community, a city, if the "men" who are being built at this time, got this concept into their hearts, NOW, rather than later?"

That "possibility of passio" in our players is when things really start to get interesting in a football program and for a coach...

You are welcome.

Here is the link...

you are welcome, it keeps me fired up as well, now that I am home and back doing the 85%!!!!

LOL

What do I do about all these red x's?