{"id":31759,"date":"2009-02-23T01:01:01","date_gmt":"2011-05-19T02:45:04","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2011-05-19T02:45:04","modified_gmt":"2011-05-19T02:45:04","slug":"life_lessons_from_the_new_england_patriots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2009\/02\/23\/life_lessons_from_the_new_england_patriots\/","title":{"rendered":"Life Lessons from the New England Patriots"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

RUSH: Now, I want to read some excerpts from this book. In the National Football League right now there are two teams that all the other teams want to be like. One team is the Pittsburgh Steelers; the other is the New England Patriots. Because they never, very rarely enter the free agent market — Patriots do sometimes, they\u2019ll pick up some people everybody thinks are beyond the peak, beyond their prime, but somehow they end up — Corey Dillon is an example, Junior Seau, linebacker. But those two teams are the model franchises. The Kansas City Chiefs just hired Scott Pioli, who was the general manager of the Patriots, to come in and run the chiefs. The Hunt family loves Pioli. Pioli, by the way, is the son-in-law of Bill Parcells of the New York Giants, New York Jets, Dallas Cowboys, and the Miami Dolphins. ‘In the Jabari Holloway case, Pioli says he should have trusted his instincts. The tight end from Notre Dame made him nervous as soon as Pioli found out why he was late for practice — chemistry class.\u2019 <\/p>\n

<\/a>Now, listen to this, moms. ”By your senior year, football had better be a priority if you\u2019re going to be a NFL player,\u2019 he says. ‘And I don\u2019t care about chemistry labs. You know what? You can come back and get your grades. To me that explained that something larger was going on. That there were other things in life clearly more important than football. He could have done it some other way where it didn\u2019t interfere with football. That bothered me.\u2019 But he drafted him anyway with their second fourth-round pick of the spring of 2001. He didn\u2019t last long. They drafted a tight end Daniel Graham in the first round of \u201902, released Holloway, he signs on with the Houston Texans. ‘This is how a segment of the patriots program works. It\u2019s driven by a concept that is rare not only in sports but in America society. The idea in a country full of social and entertainment options is that the obligations of the job and the devotion to and mastery of the job are an employee\u2019s top priority. The Patriots are attempting to stack their roster with productive players who either think that way now or are on the cusp of a conversion. They don\u2019t want to be paternalistic figures asking the players, ‘Did you put in extra film time?\u2019 They want the players to do it without being asked.\u2019 <\/p>\n

Now, as I read through this, remember that story from the top of the program today about these newly happy unemployed people, and think about whether you\u2019d like to hire \u2019em once the time comes to start hiring back. Here\u2019s more: ‘That is how a segment of the Patriots program works. It\u2019s driven by a concept that\u2019s rare not only in sports, but in American society. You do what you\u2019re expected to do without being asked. Pioli says, ‘I\u2019m looking at it from an employer standpoint. What else is this player going to have in his life that\u2019s more important than football, other than the chemistry lab? I can\u2019t always put my values on to people, but here\u2019s what I know. My job is to find players for a head coach who wants football to be the most important thing in their worlds, and I believe in it.\u2019 Pioli\u2019s opinions, like Belichick\u2019s, the coach, are so clear and blunt that there\u2019s little, if any, room for misunderstandingings. In fact, it is written in the Patriots\u2019 manual that all scouts must have a clear opinion on prospects. Neutrality or passive aggressiveness can get you fired. You actually get credit when you logically disagree with the boss. ‘I want \u2019em to know their opinion is important,\u2019 says Pioli. ‘As a matter of fact it\u2019s so important that part of the evaluation of you is going to be whether you have one.” Now, this is one of the greatest indictments and this is a book, by the way, about the Patriots called ‘Patriot Reign.\u2019 I\u2019m reading from chapter 9 called ‘Finding the Missing Pieces.\u2019 And this is all about people and the most important thing in their life is the job, and the people who work there had better have opinions about things, no moderate squishy-squashiness, or you don\u2019t last.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RUSH: Now, I want to read some excerpts from this book. In the National Football League right now there are two teams that all the other teams want to be like. One team is the Pittsburgh Steelers; the other is the New England Patriots. Because they never, very rarely enter the free agent market — […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nLife Lessons from the New England Patriots - The Rush Limbaugh Show<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2009\/02\/23\/life_lessons_from_the_new_england_patriots\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"Life Lessons from the New England Patriots - The Rush Limbaugh Show\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:description\" content=\"RUSH: Now, I want to read some excerpts from this book. 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