Off to Dallas - Have a Great Christmas! December 21, 2007
Posted by Steve in : Family , add a commentEach year we rotate the Christmas/Thanksgiving holidays and this year we spent Thanksgiving in the mountains of North Carolina with Sue’s parents. Now we are headed out for Dallas (McKinney TX to be exact) to my parents and as a bonus, we get to see my nephews, Josh Lavey and Caleb Lavey, play for the Texas state football championship for their school, Celina, who is going for their eighth championship in their school’s history.
Have a wonderful Christmas and slow down a little and reflect on all the blessings that God has provided for you this year.
Coaching Legend Bill Walsh Dead at 75 July 30, 2007
Posted by Steve in : Breaking News, DifferenceMakers , add a comment
One of my heroes died today. I am sad to see that Bill Walsh, the groundbreaking football coach who won three Super Bowls and perfected “the West Coast offense” during a Hall of Fame career with the San Francisco 49ers, has died. He was 75. Walsh died early Monday following a long battle with leukemia, according to Stanford University, where he served as coach and athletic director. This was a man of high integrity who used his position to develop players and coaches. As Walsh overhauled the 49ers from 2-14 in ‘79 into a Super Bowl champion in only three seasons, a remarkable succession of young coaches was spawned from the 49ers’ burgeoning dynasty. Listen to the names. Mike Holmgren. Mike White. Ray Rhodes. Sam Wyche. Bruce Coslet. George Seifert. Dennis Green. All of them were direct hires of Walsh and all of them became NFL head coaches. Most of them went on to develop another generation of coaches. Today, 14 of the NFL’s 32 head coaches are either direct descendants, or second- and-third generation disciples, of Walsh’s investment of time, talent and resources into his coaches.
He will be missed.
Bears Win! $810 Million Productivity Loss… January 22, 2007
Posted by Steve in : Chicago, The Cultural Conversation , add a commentWow! The Bears win and we are off to the Super Bowl after a 21-year drought! Good news for all Bear fans but bad news for employers, or so says a human reource consulting firm. According to consulting firm Challenger Gray & Christmas Inc., football fans pondering the matchup between the Chicago Bears and Indianapolis Colts, or planning Super Bowl XLI parties, or deciding their picks in the office pool, may reduce productivity by $16 million per minute! (that a lot of Tostito’s and dip!).
Chicago could be hit especially hard, the report said. The Super Bowl will be played in Miami on Sunday evening, Feb. 4 and Challenger estimated that 90 million people will tune in to the game. Using figures about the national employment rate and average pay, the analysts calculated that employers around the nation will pay football fans $162 million for every 10 unproductive minutes they spend discussing the game or reading about it online. Multiplied by the five work days between next Monday and the game, that amounts to $810 million — $73 million paid to 3.9 million people in the Windy City alone. And that’s not taking the current week into account.
However, this productivity loss is less than the 16 day run of the NCAA “March Madness” basketball tournament, which annually costs the nation’s employers about $3.8 billion, while they were focused on last year’s tournament instead of their jobs. Read the article here.
