Article of the Day, from Scott Brooks
I thought this was an interesting article on how young people learn:
Snead's conundrum was obvious: You are, he said, taking young people who in most fields would be entering an entry-level job with little pressure and putting them in a job where they have to perform at a high level under often intense public scrutiny.
"The next frontier in football is understanding the mind and figuring out how you can test and teach," he said.
The first step? Like most workplaces that seek company-wide change, they needed consultants. The Rams brought in a group of academics who run a research firm to evaluate the Rams' football teaching methods. (The Rams did not identify the firm for competitive reasons with other NFL teams.) Those consultants observed portions of off-season training and training camp. They also put rookies through a standardized test, Snead said, aimed to determine how their players absorbed information. The test is supposed to mirror exams like the GRE or LSAT—which are trying to gauge future performance, not how much you've already learned. It also, Snead suggests, gauges some intangibles such as "grit, perseverance and mental toughness."