Japanese One Stroke Dragon Art, The morbid and beautiful denizens of Lake Natron, Pete Carroll and the Inner Game of Tennis, and RSP Post-Draft
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What is Reads Listens Views?
If you’re new to the Rookie Scouting Portfolio blog, welcome. I post links on Fridays to content I’m saving for later consumption or pieces that I found compelling. You may not like everything listed here, but you’re bound to like something.
Download the 2014 Rookie Scouting Portfolio + Post-Draft Update!
Friday’s are also my chance to thank you for reading my work, encourage you to follow the RSP blog, and download the Rookie Scouting Portfolio publication.
The 2014 Rookie Scouting Portfolio Post-Draft Add-On is ready for download. If you’re in a dynasty league, the combination of the 2014 RSP and the RSP Post-Draft will have you prepared for this year and beyond. Want details? Need details? I have ’em right here:
- 84 pages
- How to use the RSP and RSP-Post Draft together
- Overrated/Underrated
- Good/Bad post-draft fits
- UDFAs to watch
- Long-term dynasty waiver wire gems
- Strategic overview of 2014 rookie drafts
- Tiered Value Chart Cheat Sheet across all positions
- Post-Draft rankings analysis and commentary–including notes about impending contracts years of competition on the depth charts
- Average Draft Position (ADP) Data of 19 dynasty drafts
- RSP Ranking-to-ADP Value Data
- Raw Data Worksheets to continue calculating additional ADP data for future drafts
Hell, take a video tour of the 2013 post-draft to see what I mean:
Seriously, this analysis is worth the price of the 2014 RSP package alone, but you get this as a part of your purchase with the 2014 RSP. Remember 10 percent of each sale is donated to Darkness to Light to prevent sexual abuse in communities across the United States. While that alone should get you to download the RSP package, do it because you will be blown away with the detail and insight of the analysis and content. It’s why the RSP has grown so much in the past nine years.
Best yet, 10 percent of each RSP sale is donated to Darkness to Light, a non-profit devoted to preventing and addressing sexual abuse through community training in schools, religious groups, and a variety of civic groups across the U.S.
Download the 2014 RSP and RSP Post-Draft here
In Case You Missed It/Coming Soon
- RSP Sample Report and Analysis: KC TE Travis Kelce – My No.1-ranked TE in the 2013 draft class. See why he comps to Gronkowski and Witten.
- RSO Journal: My Rookie Draft, Auction Prep, and Free Agent Results – 20% discount to start your own RSO league inside.
- Logan Thomas: Look Out Below! – My look at his Virginia Tech tape and why his preseason performance wasn’t that different.
- Applying An Ounce of Skepticism to Practice Reports – Be careful about what you hear from writers, because what they see often lacks context and strong football analysis.
- On Robin Williams’ Passing – And the intoxicating and destructive nature of celebrity shared by athletes and entertainers.
Reads/Views (Football)
- Michael Gervais on The Psychology of Pressure – The information in the videos is brilliant. Listen to the 10-minute summary of “The Inner Game of Tennis,” the book that was a huge influence on Pete Carroll.
- Stephen Hill May Be Running Out of Time to Fulfill Potential – I found this more interesting for Michael Irvin’s analysis of the receiver position. Worth a read for Irvin alone.
- A Look at Logan Thomas’ First Game With The Cardinals – Seth Cox’s analysis.
- Believe it or Not: Preseason Edition – Heath Cummings’ entertaining article.
- Upside Down Draft Update
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No, this is not a Tim Burton film. Photographer Nick Brandt went to Lake Natron in northern Tanzania and found that the 140-degree (Farenheit) temperatures of this lake and its alkalinity akin to ammonia causes the animals to calcify and turn to stone. Makes you wonder about the myth of Medusa, huh?
Reads (Life In General)
- I Got Myself Arrested So I Could Look Inside the Justice System – The one thing you should read today is this account of a former white, suburban prosecutor who fights the law and lets it win.
- What I Did After Police Killed My (White) Son – Ten years later, we in Wisconsin passed the nation’s first law calling for outside reviews.
- My Parents Open Carry – “Come join 13-year-old Brenna Strong along w/her mom, Bea, and her dad on a typical Saturday running errands and having fun together. What’s not so typical is that Brenna’s parents lawfully open carry handguns for self-defense.” This is the opening two sentences of the summary of this children’s book. What’s well-worth the read (whether you agree or disagree with open carry) is the reviews on Amazon’s page.
- The Disturbing Messages In Police Recruiting Videos – There are numerous members of my family with law enforcement careers. They say that the training requirements and recruitment have changed dramatically (and often for the worse) in recent decades. If the recruiting ads raise a lot of questions.
- Smart Policing Takes Good Training, Not Just Diversity
- Video of St. Louis Police Shooting Raises Questions – The video is on this page and graphically violent.
- Here’s How Easy It Is To Hack A Traffic Light With A Laptop – Cecil Lammey, Jene Bramel, and I need this for the lights after midnight in Mobile when we need to file stories.
- Turn Small-Talk Into Smart Conversation – Are you young and in a new career or a student? You need to learn a little of this right-quick and in a hurry. Trust me.
- Men Without a Country: Mike Brown, Trayvon Martin, My Father and Me – If you ever wondered why a significant number of college-education men and women of color enter professions with objective, identifiable goals, read this piece from the former Jeopardy! champ, Arthur Chu.
- After A Traffic Stop, Teen Was “Almost Another Dead Black Male’ – “In 2011, Alex was awarded a $795,000 settlement by the City of Denver. Two of the police officers involved have since been fired for uses of excessive force not related to this incident.
Listens
I’m giving you one more chance to listen to the Inner Game of Tennis chapter. One of the significant takeaways I got from listening is the learning process and the contrast between critiquing and modeling. As a person who has routinely scored as equally left brain and right brain on a regular basis throughout my adulthood, I find that my critiquing tendencies are sharpened with my RSP career, but it’s different as a writer. The modeling methodology described here reminds me a lot of what I learned as an aspiring performer.
Views
Hilarious, informative, enraging, and sad.
Listens
2 responses to “Reads Listens Views 8/22/2014”
Um, the overwhelming majority of police officers are good officers, including the officer that shot Michael Brown. Michael Brown was a criminal, who JUST finished committing a robbery and assault, then, proceeded, with his accomplice, to attack Officer Wilson. Reports have come out that Wilson was badly beaten and sustained a broken orbital bone. This completely annihilates the ridiculous narrative that Brown was peacefully surrendering, with his hands up. It’s quite telling that you have apparently taken to the defense of a criminal rather than the people that risk their lives every day to protect ungrateful people like you from such scum.
I agree, there are a lot of good officers out there. Including a significant number of the police I grew up with and that are my family. But as they would also attest, a police force is only as strong as its weakest links.
Developing a good police means being vigilant about the minority that are not. The state of good/bad police is not a simple majority vote analysis.
The reports you mentioned are reports; not anything proven in court at this point. If it’s proven correct then the officer was just in his actions.
However, the behavior of the police in Ferguson during the protests as well as many other places in this country where the unjust police behavior has been proven in court or paid off with settlements to people harassed, beaten, and killed indicates what many police I know have been saying for years: training has declined, recruiting standards are lax, and leadership has widespread corruption.
I believe in the principles that this country is suppose to defend, but it seems to me you’re more bent on defending police forces with weak links rather than looking at opportunities where they fail and need to get better.
If Michael Brown indeed beat the officer and the officer had cause to defend himself with lethal force then that’s fine. However, I’ve witnessed and have spoken with police who have been witness to events that are similar to the narrative that bothers you and has been a common narrative in our country for decades.
So the scrutiny may bother you, but I suggest you consider being grateful that people in this country care enough to question authority — which our country’s laws are supposed to built on doing so we don’t have tyranny.