Another Magic Word

“I thought you said that Attitude is the magic word.”

I did and it is. This is about another word that worked wonders for a football team. Now that you mention it, I guess this word, in order to work its magic, has to trigger an attitude, so Attitude is still the magic word.

Do you know which football team won the first Rose Bowl game?

In 1902, the University of Michigan won the first Rose Bowl game by beating Stanford 49 to 0.

Michigan had a new coach, Fielding Yost. In his first interview with a local newspaper, Coach Yost announced that in the upcoming season the Wolverines would be undefeated and that the combined scores of all the opposing teams would be 49 points max. The players on the team did not know or believe that they were that good. They thought the new coach was going to make them look bad by making such outlandish claims. Yost inspired the team with one word—by helping them understand the meaning of that word.

Here’s the whole article, written by Laurie Grimes of Lorain County Community College in Elyria, Ohio.

Before you read Laurie’s article, just for fun, can you guess the word/attitude that Yost used to inspire the players? Make 5 guesses. Make 10. I bet you won’t get it, but it will make sense to you when you read what it is.