The Cowboys unveiled “The Derek Jeter Challenge” this week not just as an exercise in team building. The coach believes that the best competitors find competition in anything.
“We compete for everything,” Garrett said this week, via Clarence E. Hill Jr. of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. “Whether you’re playing checkers or chess, the best players are the best competitors. So we put them in those kinds of environments. You set up some teams where guys are working together in a competitive situation and it’s something that I think our players enjoy. I think it’s something they benefit from.”
It’s true; the best performers find competition in anything and everything, with that constant desire to win and win and win pushing them to apply more focus and provide more effort and, ultimately, to generate better results.
At the highest levels of sport, a high degree of competitiveness should be a given. But it doesn’t hurt to stoke that fire in every way possible, wiring guys to always strive for a win wherever and however they can. It’s the kind of attitude that helps not just on game day but every other day, when all the little things that put a player in the best position to thrive are accomplished. Or something.
Some would say professional athletes don’t get to that level without a burning desire to win. But not everyone has it, and maybe Garrett’s ulterior motive in creating these alternative competitions is to see who truly does, and doesn’t, have that it’s-only-a-game-Focker motivation to win in all settings, at all costs.