Category Archives: Sports

Photo from SI.com’s photo gallery of ping pong champions, sent by loyal reader Tim. Through that page I also discovered the movie Balls of Fury coming out August 31st, a comedy about "the unsanctioned, underground, and unhinged world of extreme Ping-Pong."

Ping-Pong may well be the last great sport that remains free of scandal. MLB and steroids, cycling and doping, NBA and refs, NFL and dog fighting….Ping-Pong and pure passion.

For those keeping score at home, I made it to the finals of the First Annual Ben Casnocha Ping Pong Invitational in Boulder, CO last week.

I plan on improving quite a bit in college. Right now I’m all muscle; I need more finesse. I need more spin in my game.

The other week I was talking to a family friend who just completed an Ironman Triathlon. It’s very inspiring for me to hear about unthinkable athletic accomplishments — as a former (somewhat) competitive athlete, I know firsthand how much work and preparation goes into allowing your body to perform at peak levels.

In this vein, I recently watched two awesome Nike TV ads. The first is called "Move". Great acoustic soundtrack ("Move" by Jonathan Elias). The second is about football (probably high school football in Texas).

Worth a minute and a half on YouTube if you were or are an athlete…

(hat tip: Kevin Cherrick)

GQ has an interesting article about "the most powerful man in sports," William Wesley. He’s the guy nobody has heard of, yet he wields enormous influence. He’s not an agent, not a player, not a rapper, not a shoe company exec. He’s just Wes. And all roads in the NBA lead to him.

The story of the no-name mover and shaker is intriguing in any industry. The problem, of course, is getting access to the influencer since a good deal of his power stems from his mystique. In this case, Wes refused to talk to the journalist. Excerpt:

Chicago Sun-Times writer Lacy Banks recalls his confusion upon meeting Wes twenty years ago: "I thought he worked for the Secret Service or the FBI or the CIA. Then I thought he was a pimp, providing players with chicks, or a loan shark or a bodyguard or a vice commissioner to the league."

Legendary basketball coach Jim Valvano delivered a nine minute speech (YouTube) at the ESPN sports awards in 1993 just two months before dying of cancer. It’s very inspirational. He says:

To me, there are three things we all should do every day. We should do this every day of our lives. No. 1 is laugh. You should laugh every day. No. 2 is think. You should spend some time in thought. And No. 3 is, you should have your emotions moved to tears, could be happiness or joy. But think about it. If you laugh, you think, and you cry, that’s a full day. That’s a heck of a day. You do that seven days a week, you’re going to have something special.

When the producers say he has only 30 seconds left, he says, "Like I care about that screen. I got tumors all over my body and I’m supposed to be worried about some screen flashing 30 seconds."

Well worth a watch.

MarketingProfs writes about what we can learn about personal branding from boxing champ Mohammad Ali. They call him "the world’s greatest personal brand". Excerpts below. Here’s my earlier post on the importance of creating and projecting a personal brand.

• Think international: At a time when most Americans could not find Canada on a map, Ali had fights in Toronto, London, Zurich, London, Jakarta, Kinshasa, Munich, Kuala Lumpur, Dublin, Manila, and elsewhere. Whatever you are doing now, think about doing it internationally, especially since globalization makes it not only easier but also crucial.
• Live your principles: At a time the powers-that-be were saying we had to fight the enemy abroad so we wouldn’t have to fight them at home, Ali said, "I got nothin’ against them Vietcong." Because of his beliefs, he was indicted for refusing induction into the Army during Vietnam, and lost his heavyweight title for almost four years. That was when he was at his peak as a fighter, and it meant the loss of millions of dollars. After winning a gold medal for his country, he came back to his hometown of Louisville, Kentucky; and after being refused service in a restaurant because of his color, he went outside and threw his gold medal into the Ohio River. Contrast him to Tiger Woods, who did not boycott the Masters because of its gender- and race-based exclusion, and Michael Jordan, who did not support the black opponent to segregationist Jesse Helms because "Republicans buy sneakers too."
• Feed the media: The best PR strategy boils down to this: "Feed the media." Ali actively courted reporters, symbolized by his long-time friendship with Howard Cosell. He knew the value of promotion. He once locked up his gloves in a Malaysian jail before a bout, and wore T-shirts that read "Manila guerrilla." He gave copy that wrote stories by themselves:
  • "It will be a killer, and a chiller, and a thriller, when I get the gorilla in Manila."
  • "Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee."
  • "Joe Frazier is so ugly that when he cries, the tears turn around and go down the back of his head."
  • "I’m so fast that last night I turned off the light switch in my hotel room and was in bed before the room was dark."
• Train hard for your moment in the sun: …George Foreman had won 37 of his previous 40 fights by knockout, almost all within three rounds. So Ali came up with his rope-a-dope strategy, training his body to take the worst punishment Foreman could throw. By the seventh round, Foreman was exhausted, and Ali took him out. To toughen his stomach for the bout, Ali did a thousand sit-ups a day even though he "hated every minute" of training.

• Do good: Ali has delivered food and medical supplies to children in Cote D’Ivoire, Indonesia, Mexico, Morocco, and many other countries. His Web site claims Ali has helped provide more than 232 million meals to feed the hungry. He has helped free US hostages from Iraq and delivered food and medicine to Cuba, Afghanistan, and North Korea.
• Rise above your difficulties: Ali has Parkinson’s syndrome, a debilitating disease that likely resulted from fighting long after he should have stopped. But he just celebrated his 65th birthday, and still travels more than 200 days a year in support of the causes he believes in.