301.
Week 301 in Detroit. One joke I’ve heard a few times lately is with longtime Detroit Lions QB in the Super Bowl and Eminem performing at halftime, this is the closest Detroit will get to a Super Bowl. I believe that after the Red Sox, Cubs and Cleveland Cavs pulled it off, the Detroit Lions will too. Optimism, eternally.
Super Bowl prediction: Rams by 10+. I’m betting Rams 31–21. Keep in mind I went against Tom Brady last year, much to my regret. I knew the first drive of the game that I was wrong. So, consider my predictions as valuable as what you paid for them.
Inspiration from the week has come from the Winter Olympics. I thought a lot about why I always get so into the Olympics. World class competition is one reason, for sure. I love seeing extraordinary performances. The patience and discipline to commit to the time and work required to get there is another reason. I think the intensity of the international stage is the other reason. I’ve always envied the biggest stages.
Take alpine skiing. At one point during the downhill, NBC showed a training video of a skier jumping a homemade obstacle course that included jumping from dumbbell sitting vertically on the ground to another dumbbell to another all on their toes immediately (and without touching the ground) jumping on and off a series (a series!) of air-filled exercised balls balancing on top and finally jumping over knee high bars while taking off and landing on a wheeled platform. Never touched the gym floor. That was probably a hard paragraph to read, my apologies, but seeing the video was even more bonkers. Then, all the work and all the World Cup races lead up to the Olympics every four years and the run is approximately 80 seconds long. Boom. 80 seconds at 80 miles an hour and it’s over. The difference between these world class athletes is approximately two to four hundredths of a second. A mile and a half in 80 seconds at separated by fractions of a second. What?!?!?!
The two lessons I learned from the Olympics this year (so far) have been 1). Go for the Gold and 2). Power of storytelling.
