Zac Parsons

In case you missed the breakfast in Birmingham a couple of weeks ago, TPI’s own Ron Medved presented the Leadership Innovation Award to Alabama football coach Nick Saban for his team’s incredible championship season this year.  This nine minute clip below shows some of the highlights from the event.

If you are a coach, athletic director, or even an athlete looking for a every ethical edge you can get, maybe you should check out our PX2 program and see if The Pacific Institute can help you and your team to do more of the things you know you are capable of.

Congratulations again coach.  You definitely deserve it.

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After a disappointing end to last year’s nearly perfect football campaign, the University of Alabama football team completed their perfect season last night with a win over the University of Texas in the BCS National Championship game.

A lot has been said about the reasons for Alabama’s resurgence to national prominence as a football powerhouse.  Most of these articles and discussions start with head coach Nick Saban, and they should.  His leadership has set the tone for every aspect of the football program.  While having the best college football program in the country is the goal of the University, producing fine, responsible, and productive young men is the ultimate aim of the program.  With each player understanding their responsibilities to the team and taking responsibility for reaching their potential, both the team and the players succeeded.

Check out this article from ESPN.

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If you are a college football fan, you know that the Bowl game match-ups were decided this week, and that the BCS title game will feature the University of Alabama and the University of Texas.  Both teams are undefeated, and there is little debate that both teams deserve to be there.  What you may not know is that the University of Alabama is a client of The Pacific Institute.

There is an entire section of this website dedicated to the implementation of TPI’s program for youth “PX2″.  There is also a subsection for the implementation of this program in sports, featuring an video introduction by Pete Carroll.  Within that, there is a page dedicated to our clients on the football field.  Alabama’s participation in the PX2 program is chronicled there, with some links to outside news and sports agencies regarding our partnership.

Former NFL players Antowaine Richardson and Nesby Glasgow, who are trained as PX2 facilitators, took the players through each of the 12 units during training camp for the last two years.  Tailoring the program for application on the football field, the players identified areas in their own skill sets and roles on the team where their were underperforming to their potential.

One of the first questions asked of PX2 participants is “Who’s in control?”.  Basically, the question is trying to discover whether it is external or internal forces that drive our behaviors.  Truly, it is a mix of both.  But, in order for us to be responsible for our behavior, we have to acknowledge that we are in control of our lives.  If this is true, then as a result, we ourselves are the biggest limiters of our effectiveness and performance.

If at times you feel like a victim, then you may be able to alter this belief with a greater understanding of how much control you really have.  While we can’t control everything that happens to us, we can often control how we respond and react.  By removing the victim-mentality, we can see outside influence in a different light.  Either it is imagined, or we cannot change it.  Either way, our focus should remain on that which we can effect.

Alabama set a goal to win the SEC championship this year.  Why not the BCS national championship?  Maybe because the last three SEC championship winners have gone on to win the BCS national championship.  It’s clear that the next goal is to win the game against Texas in January.  No one for Alabama is hoping for referees, weather, luck, fate, or anything else outside of them to work in their favor.  When it’s time to play, these guys know “Who’s in control.”

Send me an email if you are interesting in hearing Lou Tice and Nick Saban speak in Alabama on January 25.

Roll Tide.

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Last month, ESPN produced a nice 8-minute piece on Marie Tillman, the widow of Pat Tillman.

While speaking to a group of high school students last month after the Ft. Hood shooting, our discussion touched on the volunteer nature of American armed forces.  When someone mentioned how much soldiers have to sacrifice in order to join up, I brought up the professional sacrifice of Pat Tillman.  To my shock and amazement, none of the students had ever heard of him.

While sharing Pat’s story with this group, my own personal emotions regarding Pat’s decision and death came surging back to me.  While I’m definitely more of a pacifist now than at any other time in my life, I can still draw strength and inspiration from his decision to give up his high paying and high profile position as an NFL player.  The act of temporary sacrifice for the sake of a greater good has not been exactly been a hallmark of my own life.

Trying to find a balance between striving for what I want, and denying myself those same desires has been the unresolved theme of my life.  In an effort to “die to self” in an aim toward virtue, I often times sabotaged myself (and my family, as a result) as I came too close to reaching my desires.  I began to expect failure like a musical virtuoso expects applause. I couldn’t believe Gene Wilder’s Willy Wonka when he remarked that the man who suddenly got all that he wanted, lived happily ever after.

I’m not sure that I can say that I completely understand Pat’s decision, but recently, it has taken on new meaning for me.  From everything that Pat accomplished (3.84 GPA in 3 1/2 years at Arizona State University, while being named Pac-10 Player of the Year, as a 5 foot 11 inch linebacker) to what those close to him said about his drive, it seems clear that he didn’t do very many things half-assed.  So how does someone with that kind of focus and resolve just change his path so drastically mid-course?

What if he didn’t change his mind?  What if his decision to enlist was completely in line with his personal goals and desires?  If becoming a successful professional athlete was Pat’s supreme goal, then yes, he did make a wholesale change to his values and desires.  But if his desire was to be a great man, then it was just his definition of what makes a man great that changed.

It’s another variation of the discussion on life as more of a journey than a destination.

I now understand desire as a virtue.  As long as that desire aligns with the ultimate principles that govern life. A desire that leads to a full stomach, an escape from reality, or an orgasm is not one to embrace as life-giving or virtuous.  But a desire that leads to a peaceful resolution, a restored relationship, or the benefit of others may be.

Desires and choices come from our goals.  When we are immature, we can only see a short distance into the future.  As we grow, we can see farther and our goals reflect longer term aims.

Pat’s goal was to be a great man.  My goal is the same.  But how I’m defining great has changed.  A great man doesn’t deny fulfilling his desires for the virtue of denial itself.  A great man aligns his goals with the most virtuous truths on the highest level of abstraction that he can reasonably comprehend.  Now, if I miss a meal, miss a nap, or avoid romance with other women, it may seem seem like some sort of denial of desire, but it is what I want.  And I’m finally OK with getting what I want.

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I felt a number of different emotions when I first saw the video of Elizabeth Lambert from the University of New Mexico soccer match vs. BYU on November 5, 2009.  If you have not seen it yet and you want to dial up your own emotional response to it, here you go:

I had a few people tease me in high school for playing “girls” sports like soccer and volleyball.  While I haven’t seen a volleyball video quite like this before, perhaps the idea of soccer being a “soft” game, even for girls, may be closer to being exposed as quite false.  While mostly tongue in cheek, it is a startlingly violent video.

Like many people, I was shocked and disgusted by how intentional Lambert’s actions were.  Even though the video just shows highlights (lowlights?) from the match, and the tension of the game cannot be discerned from snippets of film out of context, it’s impossible to justify what she did as an acceptable part of the game.  She has been suspended indefinitely, and many believe that she will not be considered for reinstatement to the team until she undergoes serious psychiatric analysis and treatment.  In addition to her reputation as a soccer player, he may also lose her scholarship, and any hopes she had of playing professionally at another level.

Many people can relate to losing their cool and doing something regrettable in the heat of the moment.  Unfortunately, many of us forget what we ourselves are capable of when we see such egregious acts of violence while personally being in a calm state of mind.  Some people have called for Lambert to be expelled from school.  Even others have wanted the police to investigate the hair pulling incident as an assault.  She has even received an alarming number of date proposals from men who would like her to treat them as rough as she does her opponents on the pitch.

After two weeks of dealing with a cacophony of media pundits and Youtube commenters, Elizabeth finally granted an interview to the New York times today.  Her tone varies from one of genuine remorse to explanatory pleading. The accompanying picture doesn’t exactly fit the thuggish girl from the video above.  Although her video seems to show a pattern of dirty play, she has only received 2 yellow cards in her career at New Mexico, which has spanned over 2,500 minutes on the field.  Maybe she did just have a bit of temporary insanity.  Perhaps she should be given more benefit of the doubt.

In fact, the two weeks of time that have passed since this episode and today’s interview have given me a lot of time to think about my own screw ups and shortcomings.  If I were defined by my weakest moments or known around the world by my greatest failures, I’m not sure if I would still be allowed my own web domain www.zacparsons.com.  As it is, people know me by some mix of what I have shared with them, or what they have heard or seen themselves or second hand from others.  Although I make sincere attempts to be transparent, I’m sure that many of my behavioral warts would lose me some friends and comrades if every detail of my life was known.

If what we know about someone is bad, is it fair to label him/her as a bad person?  Do stories of shocking behavior expose someone’s true nature, or is it just a moment of weakness that happened to catch our attention?  Do we poo-poo away our own moral failures as circumstantial, heat of the moment, “you would understand if you were in my shoes” types of events?  Or even if we take responsibility for our actions, do we feel that we need to saddle ourselves with that burden on a daily or hourly basis to remind ourselves of how evil we really are?

Maybe the question I’m asking is: are we all really bad people who happen to do good things from time to time?  Or are we all good people, who happen to do bad things from time to time?  Or are some of us more inclined to be good and others of us to be bad?  I believe that your answer to those questions has a lot do to with how you deal with others on a daily basis.

If you know that you need slack cut to you in order to enjoy life and the relationships around you, take a good look at how much slack you are cutting for others.  Since our country doesn’t even trust Elizabeth Lambert to make the decision to imbibe alcohol (she’s only 20), maybe we should all help her to learn from this and work towards changing her nickname to something more fitting of a human being.

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90 minutes was not enough time to decide the semifinal match between the L.A. Galaxy and the Houston Dynamo last night.  My childhood friend Alan Gordon came on as a substitute late in the game.  During the overtime period, Alan drew a penalty kick that would ultimately be taken by team captain Landon Donovan.

Here is a video of Landon Donovan’s goal from across the stadium with the shooter’s point of view in frame:

Here is another angle on that same goal, with the goalkeeper’ point of view:

From a physical perspective, it’s not really an impressive goal at all.  Most 12 year old soccer players could put the ball where he put it.  If the goalkeeper were to dive to his right, he surely would have blocked the shot with some part of his body.  But he didn’t dive to his right.  He was fooled.  Donovan has become one of the best penalty kick takers in the country.  What’s more impressive is that he has done this with one of the least powerful shots in professional soccer.  A little glance of the eye, twist of the hip, and a fountain of confidence gives Donovan the mental edge in nearly every duel from the penalty kick marker.

Speaking of mental edges, David Beckham is now one win away from making good on his promise to lead the Galaxy to an MLS cup championship.  As you may remember, Beckham was banged up when he first signed his MLS contract in 2007.  Most of his appearances that season were with him battling some sort of injury or another.  Now, he’s 100% and his fingerprints are all over the team.  Even if the Galaxy do not win, it makes you wonder if Grant Wahl want’s to add an addendum to his June 2009 book “The Beckham Experiment”.  With this excerpt entitled “How Beckham blew it“, it’s obvious that he considered the experiment to be a failure.

But Beckham paid no attention to charges level at him in the book.  At least, he did not allow them to disrupt his objectives this season.  His focus was consistent even in the face of loud fan objections, as I wrote about earlier this year.  The guy is nothing if he is not resilient.  Maybe more people will start believing that Beckham’s success has come more from his mental discipline than from his pretty face.  We’ll find out after the final on November 22, 2009.

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Even if you consider yourself a soccer fan, unless you live in Germany, there’s a decent chance that you have never heard of Robert Enke.  That might have changed during the summer of 2010, with the expectation that South Africa’s World Cup will be the most watch soccer tournament in history.  You see, Enke was rising to the top of the German goalkeeper depth chart.  There was a great chance that he would have started a match or two, if not all of them.

With such a high profile tournament, television production companies often highlight stories of human interest among teams, players, fans, or locations.  ESPN might have chosen to profile Enke and the tragedy of losing his 2-year-old daughter in 2006.  Her rare heart condition ended up taking her life, and breaking Robert’s heart as well.  Even with an outpouring of support from friends and fans all around him, Robert became mired in a deep depression.

While you can never replace an individual human’s life with another, Robert and his wife Theresa began the process of adopting a new daughter in 2008.  But even caring for his new daughter, Leila, could not replace the growing hole in his heart as he replayed the death of his first daughter, Lara, over and over again in his mind.

On Tuesday, November 10, Robert stepped in front of a train with the intention of ending his life.  Tragically, he was successful.  Through his suicide note, his wife, and his psychiatrist, we now know that it was a fear of losing Leila that motivated his act.

If you believe that we move toward and become like that which we think about, then it may make sense to you that Robert Enke could not shake his daughter’s death from his life.  Even if it seems incomprehensible that someone could take himself away from his daughter by suicide, in an attempt to prevent his daughter from being taken away from him, that was likely a part of his thought process.

His depression was deep, but it was a secret.  Enke believed that It was keeping this secret that kept his new daughter from being taken from him.  If the adoption organization were to know about his depression, perhaps they would take Leila away.  Knowing the thread he hung on by after Lara’s death, another lost child would do him in.  So even on the precipice of his greatest soccer glory, his future seemed uncertain and dreadful.

Perhaps that is why he traded in his tomorrows for the relief of no longer thinking about the pain of loss.  It’s a shame.  Hopefully his story will reach those living with depression and encourage them to reach out, even at the risk of social or professional peril.

For now, it is time to heal.

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It’s official.  After the homecoming beat-down of the number 22 ranked South Carolina Gamecocks, 20-6, the University of Alabama football team is back on top of the AP college football poll.  While this game did not feature the offensive explosion seen in previous games, the discipline on the defensive side showcased the Tide’s hallmark of late:  mental toughness.

As you may or may not know, coach Nick Saban hired The Pacific Institute to take the entire team through the PX2 curriculum last fall before the 2008 football campaign.  This fall, he brought our facilitators back to train the freshmen.  How much of the team’s success can be attributed to the their mental toughness is difficult to measure.  But the tools they used to gain that psychological edge are no secret.  Sports Illustrated noted it last year.  As did the Chattanooga Times Free Press.

PX2 works.  It’s fun to watch the results play out in the national sporting news.  But it’s still accessible for local youth sports teams.  Read more on this site and send me an email for more information.  You can view the first unit of PX2 for free here.

I love my job.

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It was our sophomore year in college and my ex-girlfriend had just started dating my best friend, Jason.  Jessica and I broke up shortly after I traveled over four hours to watch her graduate high school.  She had planned to attend KCU before we started dating, but the added pressure of going to school with me the next year was too much.  She needed “wide open spaces” and room to make “big mistakes.”

If you know why this picture is here... you get 5 cool points.

I found out that Jason was dating her when he kissed her in front of me for the first time.  At that moment I had to choose which person I cared about more.  I chose Jason and we’ve continued to be friends ever since.  The only reason I even mention Jessica is because she was not only a witness to both of the games in which I made the winning goals, but she may have been the reason I made the winning goals.

Intramural Football

No one on our team had ever played football in high school or college, but we did play our share of 2-hand touch in the grass outside of Water’s Hall.  I could throw the ball, but was never really picked to be quarterback.  I would mostly play the linebacker, wide-receiver, and safety positions – guaranteeing that I would be worn out by the end of the game.  It was usually Jason’s idea to play and it was his idea to join the intramural league.

Our team consisted of mostly the same guys who played 2-hand touch and (besides the guitar player) consisted entirely of our band, “Shog”.  Our season did not start out well and we continued to post losses.  By the end of the season we had yet to win a game.  The last game was against an upperclassman team, which also had members from one the other band on campus, “Crummies Church”.  It was literally a battle of the bands.

The game started off as other games had, but this time something was different.  We were putting points on the board and we were staying in the game.  Something else was different too.  Jessica had come to watch us that day.  As the end of the game approached, we were down, but not out. Whoever made the next touchdown would win the game.  I had never played quarterback, but at this moment, the ball was handed to me and the rest of our team ran to the end on the field. I through a Hail Mary pass above the heads of the opposing team.  Heath jumped to catch the ball – and he came down with it in the end zone. We had won the game!

Intramural Floor Hockey

Later on that year, the same team decided to play intramural floor hockey.  We thought we would have some advantages as we had been playing street hockey in rollerblades behind Ralph’s Supermarket all year.  We would lay shopping carts down as a hockey nets.

When the games began, the story that unfolded was somewhat different than what we imagined.  Because floor hockey is more like basketball than street hockey, requiring more running than skating, the basketball players who decided to join dominated the league. At least, they did until that fateful night when Jessica decided to watch our game.

Again, the game was back and forth, but then I felt it, that feeling.  It was the same feeling I had on the football feeling, the feeling when you know something is going to happen – and then it does.  I was at half-court and there were three guys between me and the net, but I cocked back and swung.  The ball went straight through all three guys, past the goalie, and into the net, winning the game.

The Muse

Jason and Jessica broke up shortly after field hockey season and all five members of Shog left KCU at the end of that year.  Jessica graduated from KCU and is now married.  Jason and I are as well, although not to each other.

The first movie we see together with another person in a new relationship tends to stick with us in our memory.  Jessica and I went to see the movie “She’s All That”.  Jason and Jessica went to see “The Muse”.

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I love David Beckham.  In the midst of somewhat inferior talent, his feel for the game is some times thrilling, and at other times, sublime.  This goal has both.  You can’t put a ball in a much better place than that.  Oh so pretty.

It reminded me a bit of this goal by Eric Cantona from a few years back.  I’m a soccer aficionado.

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Tuesday Newsday article will be up by noon tomorrow.  Until then, if you aren’t reading everything he writes anyway, I would recommend the latest article from Bill Simmons from ESPN.com.  He is one of my favorite writers, and he happens to be covering one of my favorite sports subjects:  Team USA soccer.  He shares about his schizophrenic relationship with the sport (one that he didn’t even play growing up) and the staggering importance it has for the country of Mexico.  Great stuff, as always.

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