Author Note: When I first came up with the idea for naming this publication “Pressure Point”, I wanted to write about moments, stories, and the people behind them. I have always loved reading profiles, articles or pieces of writing telling another person’s story or providing a snapshot of a moment in time. I could write about well-known people, including athletes and coaches, or maybe even performers or executives. However, the idea of writing about someone who isn’t widely known, but still has a great story, appealed to me. I connected with , and once I learned about his journey, it resonated with me and felt like the perfect first profile to feature here. Kevin writes his own Substack , which you should check out for much detail on his journey and his current adventure.

The sunlight reflecting off the snow-covered hills, the sharp cuts audible across the Telluride mountains from skiers and snowboarders making the most of the beautiful landscape. Many come here looking for fun and enjoyment with family and friends, a bright winter oasis centered on the outdoors and connection. As far as places to spend a weekend with your girlfriend’s family --- this was a great one. Kevin Martin, now over a decade into his career at Apple in their supply chain logistics department, was working remotely for the week. It would be the perfect break to recharge, get outdoors, and spend some quality time with loved ones.

At least that’s how it was supposed to go. The notifications started to build up slowly, and by Friday they were an avalanche rumbling down the mountains. Apple was scrambling from the impact of tariffs enacted by the Trump administration. While the family and friends were enjoying the holiday weekend, Kevin toiled away on his laptop. He hopped on call after call, trying to put out one fire after another. Things grew worse as the week went on; he fell back into the familiar cycle: available, on-call, wherever, whenever. In the worst moments Kevin saw another few years, more life moments missed, more difficult conversations with loved ones about why he was never really “present”.

The first holiday Kevin spent with his girlfriend’s family, the questions flooded in --- ‘Don’t they know it’s a holiday?’ ‘Can’t it wait until after dinner?’” Now, thirteen years later, there were no questions. This was how it was. The rest of the family connecting and enjoying the holiday, Kevin working.

My days at Apple are numbered, he thought, I just have to get through this, I am almost there.

The plan had been set in motion years earlier, but he still had to wait until he was 40. That was almost three years away. Another thirty-six months of constant stress and anxiety, of nonstop notifications pinging his iPhone. More internal meetings.

As he poured himself a cup of coffee, trying to rouse himself for another day, he watched the others head out to enjoy the mountain. The joy on their faces, their breath visible in the air from the laughter. Kevin had come to Telluride to connect with his partner, her family, and ultimately himself. Instead of being out there, in the place where he felt the most clear and at ease, with people he loved, he once again was stressed, angry, anxious. As someone so intently focused on planning and systems, Kevin knew his own system needed improvement.

The Telluride weekend wasn’t an unfortunate inconvenience; seemingly every day over the following weeks panic ensued, a new catastrophic problem identified. The COVID work craziness had been one thing, everyone was struggling to navigate the uncertainty of a new global pandemic, and honestly Kevin had just been happy to have a job. Now though, almost five years later, the rollercoaster ride was exhausting.

The decision that set Kevin Martin down his path toward the biggest moment of his life started nearly ten years before the Telluride weekend. It took place on a different mountain weekend, in the hills of Blue Ridge, Georgia.

In his words: “I was living for the weekends, and the weekends were mostly just recovery from how much I hated the week. Counting down to five o’clock, drinking until Sunday, repeat. A pretty hollow cycle.”

Like all great plans, it came together in the best or worst way imaginable depending on who you ask. A few too many beers deep, with some friends, in front of a burning fire pit. Maybe it was the alcohol talking (it most definitely was), but Kevin felt instantly compelled to answer the call to action his fellow inebriated compatriot was proposing to him.

You want to climb this?

The friend threw his iPhone in Kevin’s face, a picture of a massive mountain on the screen.

“Hell yeah, let’s do it”, Kevin responded.

The “this” in question was a mountain peak reaching fourteen thousand feet in elevation, one of the most challenging climbs in the United States. Sitting about sixty miles southeast of Seattle, Mt. Rainier represents a challenge for even the most experienced climbers. The decision to take this journey is not made under the most steadfast of mindsets, let alone mid drunken weekend. Kevin ignored all sense of logic and practicality and followed his intuition.

First though, he had to figure out how to not embarrass himself, and also not die.

We’ll probably forget about this tomorrow anyway.

Fighting the urge to back away from his drunken commitment, Kevin remained all-in, his heart racing as he submitted the $1,500 non-refundable deposit to the guide group who would lead his group up the mountain.

“My buddy had attempted something similar the year before with the same guiding company, hadn’t trained, and his whole group had to turn back because of him. I knew I didn’t want to be that guy. So I trained seriously for the first time --- bought the training bible for high-altitude mountaineering, built a plan, scared myself into shape.”

His passion reignited, the frustration and aimlessness gone. It was hard to dwell on his career path or frustrations with work when he was spending weekends building his physical and mental capacity. Those weekends filled with Bud Lights and hangovers? A distant memory.

“All of a sudden I had a reason to be awake that had nothing to do with Apple.”

Eight months after committing, Kevin traveled to Washington, proud of his consistency but apprehensive about the journey in front of him. Thirty pounds lighter, the by-product of thirty-two weeks of training, and clear-eyed about his purpose. None of which would help him much on a fourteen-thousand-foot climb in sub-zero temperatures and skin-tearing winds.

Why couldn’t I have taken up golf instead?

Steam coming off the coffee of his fellow climbers, getting ready to ascend to the summit --- Kevin found himself wishing he had been attracted to more easy-going hobbies. “Remember why you are doing this. Every part of you is going to want to quit, my job is to make sure you don’t,” the mountain guide reminded him. The climb to the top was excruciatingly difficult, his legs and back screaming out in pain. Kevin found himself constantly waiting for the guide to check in so he could ask to stop, but they soldiered on.

He thought about the months of training and reflected on how far he’d come to power him through the trip to the peak. His legs ached from the climb. One step at a time, the fear of falling or making a misstep kept him focused. “Here we are,” the guide finally said. Reaching the summit, exhausted and altitude-drunk, was euphoric. Looking out with mountains appearing above the clouds the realization hit Kevin:

I can’t believe I’ve worried about so many things that don’t matter. No one is going to care if their iPhone is a day late.

The years after Rainier were the best of Kevin’s life. He found meaning outside of work --- embracing yearly challenges that pushed and developed him mentally and physically. With the pressure of finding meaning eased, he actually excelled at work, steadily rising in stature and earning more responsibility. He became infatuated with the idea of financial independence, and the ability to live life on his own terms. The plan worked, almost too well. Money, as Kevin describes it, became a mental cage. Dramatic personal cost cutting, constant checking of Apple stock price and brokerage accounts, living and dying by the day’s market moves. The number Kevin started with that he would need to retire, replaced with constantly changing targets. He wondered about the people around him, and why everyone else wasn’t doing the same:

Kevin watched his colleagues and wondered why no one else was getting out. The answer, he says, surprised him: “slowly you find out --- no one had millions. They’d spent it all“. For Kevin, the rapidly appreciating stock price was his exit lever, but for others it was justification to themselves. “You walk through the Apple parking garage and it’s Porsches, Rivians, BMWs. The lifestyle creep is total and invisible from the inside. I don’t judge it --- there are real reasons people spend that way. But I just kept my life simple.”

Almost five years after looking out from the summit of Rainier, Kevin was back in a dark bar.

PING

The notifications kept hitting his phone, but Kevin left it in his pocket. His eyes glazed over, the neon haze of dive bars in Central Pennsylvania. Few more years, Kevin thought. Almost there. He checked his phone, ignoring the notifications, but scrolling to his financial accounts. The numbers stopped really having much meaning to him. The goalposts always felt like they were moving anyway.

Pennsylvania was supposed to be a promotion. The elevation in responsibility, the sheer amount of attention, the massive number of moving parts in the warehouse created pressure that was agonizing.

In 2018, with life trending in his direction, he agreed to an opportunity to lead a warehouse build-out in Pennsylvania. Leading the operations, being the self-described ‘boots on the ground’, he was ready to bring everything he’d learned on the mountains and the trails to the job.

Two years of missed deadlines, finger-pointing, and budget overruns followed. The project failed. Kevin’s professional identity had been built around solving and optimizing systems. Being flown up to Pennsylvania to lead a major effort, and then have it fail, was shattering to his self-image. The culture in the group became extremely negative, with stress and resentment surging. Burnout ran rampant; most people were either fired or quit. Kevin shouldered a lot of it internally, struggling to bear the responsibility of such a high-profile internal mess. Far from his home in Nashville, Kevin fell back into old habits.

After the trip with his girlfriend’s family to Telluride, Kevin drowned in work from January to April as Apple figured out how to navigate the impact of the Trump tariffs. Kevin, his girlfriend, and their dog loaded the car in Nashville and drove to Utah. Three weeks in a Park City Airbnb. No phone, no constant pings, just the three of them. Testing out what life post-Apple could actually feel like. Kevin’s head was clearer than it had been in years. On April 19th, 2025, he wrote himself a note he can still pull up: I AM LEAVING APPLE.

He told his plans to his parents, and expected at least one of them --- probably his dad --- to tell him he was crazy. Everyone agreed: he needed to leave. His dad told him to wait for the the last stock grant in a few months, then go.

October 15th - the day Kevin received his final Apple stock grant and the day he turned in his resignation to Apple. That afternoon, he finally communicated his decision in a one-on-one with his boss. When Kevin had quit previous jobs, superiors had been confrontational. This time was different. His boss was blindsided --- Kevin was ‘the one guy always kind of positive’ on a team where everyone hated their lives --- but supportive. In the weeks that followed, leaders Kevin barely knew opened up to him. Senior people making millions confided they were jealous, that they wished they could do the same. They just needed three more years.

Three more years. The same number Kevin had been telling himself before Telluride.

Kevin gave Apple a few more months, wanting to help his team manage the holiday rush before departing. His last official day was December 23rd, the Christmas holiday providing the first few days to enjoy his life without Apple for the first time in thirteen years. No more 4:30 AM wake ups, rushing from the gym to the office; getting pinged for calls after work.

Subscribe now

A few weeks later, Kevin was sitting at home on a Sunday night. He didn’t know what day it was at first. Then he realized --- it was Sunday. For thirteen years, Sunday nights had meant dread, the countdown to Monday morning already ticking. This time, nothing. Just a quiet evening. If anything, he was excited about the week ahead.

Kevin woke up without an alarm for the first time in years. He and his girlfriend developed a morning routine, walking trails together without their phones. Never thinking of himself as a creative type, suddenly with time and space to think, Kevin realized he had a lot of things he wanted to write about. Days now starting with creative thinking, writing, and leaving his phone at home.

“When I left, I was swarmed with people asking how and why, some told me I needed to document my travels on YouTube etc., but I hate social media. It’s really bad for me. Writing on Substack seemed like a better way, and it’s grown rapidly and has been a way for me to connect with new and interesting people.”

Kevin says he doesn’t know what comes next professionally. Every time the question comes up, he circles back to the same frame: one chunk at a time. He named his publication ‘Unmapped’, because it’s how the rest of his life feels.

“I’m hoping the trails surface what’s next”.

After Colorado, he realized that “I don’t have the time to do that” was an excuse. The dream, the one he’d shared with friends and family for years, didn’t have to die just because he was older.

It’s the same approach he’s taking to the Appalachian Trail. He started 2026 aiming to hike a thousand miles --- a dream he’d buried, thinking he’d missed his window. Now he’s doing it 150 miles at a time.

Last month he met a seventy-five-year-old man, BT, who hands out snacks to hikers on the trail, “the least I can do is make sure they get a cold drink and treat along the way”. Then there was James, a twenty-year-old junior at Kevin’s alma mater who was considering opting out of the entry level business career path for working in a national park. The people he’s met are just as important as the miles he’s traveling.

A forty-seven-mile stretch of solitude forces him to step back, take a breath, and work through everything in his head.

He’s prepping for the next stretch --- 300 miles, three weeks, the longest consecutive section he’s done. Kevin is heading into the first stretch, a twelve day trail of solitude, carrying everything on him that survival will require. It’s hard to reconcile the man he describes himself as before Rainier with the one speaking now.

A few weeks into his new life, Kevin and his girlfriend went back to Telluride. One morning, Kevin awoke and looked at the clock: just before 7:00 AM. He got up and made coffee, the aroma filling the room of their small Airbnb. There weren’t any skiers out and about this time, but Kevin took in the scenery, thinking about how different his life was now from four months ago. When asked, the contrast is stark:

“The previous year was like being waterboarded in front of family members. This year felt like unlimited creative abundance.”

His girlfriend woke up, they shared coffee, and headed out for a hike with the dog. Kevin didn’t even check his phone before leaving the house. It was still plugged into the wall charging beside his bed.

When asked what comes after this 300 mile section he’s about to hike, Kevin answers:

“I’m not sure, I guess I’ll take it 150 miles at a time and figure it out”

Unmapped

Left Apple after ~13 years to backpack 1,000 miles. What happens when you stop optimizing and let the trail shape what’s next?

By Kevin

The first beautiful day of spring is a momentous occasion; a time to celebrate the transition from winter, especially in New York City. I spent the first 70+ degree day after a long cold winter doing what anyone would hope to be doing on a sun-filled spring day: serving jury duty. While sitting in the drab, soulless federal building - wishing I was enjoying the first beautiful spring day, the fact struck me that it had been roughly a year since I published my first post on Substack. Sitting bored on an anniversary, waiting to find out if I would be required to report to court for multiple weeks is a great time for reflection on a year of writing.

• First, and the most important - I found something that scratches my “creative” itch, and I was able to stay consistent with it. For the last several years I found myself interested in finding a creative outlet, but always would fail to sustain any prolonged interest. I took the leap of not only writing, but actually sharing online. I came to the realization that I love writing, and stuck with it somewhat consistently for a full year. That is something I am proud of and excited about. Sometimes just finding something you are excited to keep doing is a win in and of itself.

• One area that anyone who creates anything will tell you is that consistency and repetition are a massive part of improvement. While proud I stayed with it for a year, my output could be described as “scattered”. I averaged about a post a month, but the gaps between writing could be weeks, sometimes stretching to a month or longer. A few months had multiple essays, some had none. A big focus for year two is being more consistent with writing and sharing, because the only way to become a better writer is to write more.

• I have a desire to improve, and to keep writing. A reliable signal that I can stay consistent with any endeavor is if I have a genuine interest in the process of improvement. From constantly thinking about different topics to write about, to reviewing ways I could have improved pieces I had already published, to formulating new experiments or formats to try – I felt a drive to push myself. Seeking constant improvement and development is usually a high-quality signal you will be able to stay with an activity for the long haul.

• Writing consistently has changed the way I read. As a voracious reader since childhood, I’ve found writing on my own has allowed me to approach the material from a more analytical perspective. While I will always read for enjoyment and leisure, I find my mind now filled with questions like “Why did the author structure this sentence in this way?” “Why are scenes constructed in this manner?” “How do they develop their writing from beginning to middle to end?” Writing has cultivated a greater appreciation for how words come together and has expanded my admiration for talented authors, and made me want to read not only for enjoyment, but for skill development as well.

• I’ve written on this before here and here, but one of the largest benefits of writing for me has been forced clarity of thought. In the age of relentless stimulation, clarifying my own thoughts in a cogent manner is a constant struggle. Writing forces me to organize and outline points, and when I know I am going to be publishing words into the world to be read, I’ve had to become direct, clear, and concise – resulting in becoming a stronger communicator overall.

• Creating something that other people enjoy is incredibly rewarding. Pouring my heart, soul, and scars of a decade-plus of fandom into an essay about Penn State football resulted in a piece of work I am proud of. It was the “thing” I had craved to write, and when friends or family told me how much they enjoyed it, I felt a flow of gratitude. All the time I spent revising and editing felt worth it when genuine support came in and I could see people choosing to share it with others. You ultimately need your own guiding light in any pursuit, rather than creating to please someone else, but anyone who tells you they are immune to the reception their work receives is lying.

• Constraints direct focus and expand creativity. When first starting this, I was not sure what to write about. I experimented with different topics from sports, to my own personal endeavors, to broader cultural insights. This goes against the grain of modern media or content which rewards hyper “niche’ing” – i.e. picking one thing and sticking to it. One of my biggest inspirations in writing and media at large is Bill Simmons, and his ability to paint different topics together through sports, movies, and culture. I want to create my own version of that, where I won’t be constrained to writing about one thing. This is not a job, so I crave the freedom to chase the sources of inspiration. Sometimes that feels too broad, and like Thor needing his magic hammer Mjolnir to channel his lightning powers, I needed a throughline instrument to tie everything together. Suddenly a new name not only brought a cohesive vision, but a clear direction on where I want to explore further.

• Experimentation is necessary for evolution and passion. I’ve played around with numerous types of posts, mainly in an effort to see what types I enjoy writing. These varied from classic “lessons from” essays, to post-game recaps during the Stanley Cup Final, to massive narrative journeys through a decade of a Penn State football program. It helped reveal the types I like to create and spend time on, and more importantly the types I do not. There will be more experiments in the future, but I have a much more solid idea than I did a year ago about what kinds of things I want to write about.

• Metric tracking is a double-edged sword. On one hand, it is helpful to have tools and data to measure and track “improvement” over time, but therein lies the problem: What constitutes “improvement”? I found myself struggling with this battle often. If I feel I wrote something strong, but it didn’t get as many “opens” or “shares” as previous posts - was it worse? If I purposefully aimed for something that was more “engaging” or “viral”, but I wasn’t proud of the quality, or didn’t enjoy the process of writing it - was that really an improvement? It can be difficult to not focus on chasing these metrics - more followers, subscribers, clicks, views, shares. These are data points of “growth”, and the conditions that equal success today. Letting that focus become too central, however, I found myself shifting away from “I want to write about and explore this topic” to “this is really topical right now I should write about it because people will engage with it and share it”. Swimming in the waters on X/Twitter, I learned after a few nasty comments and DMs that engagement for engagement’s sake was a game I had no interest in playing.

• As I enter the second year of this publication, the focus will continue to remain on quality over quantity. I will aim to write in a more consistent manner, but never at the expense of quality. There will be more depth into the “pressure point” theme - the nexus of important and interesting stories, and the people involved in them. I want to meet and spotlight interesting people doing cool things. Some new experiments will be coming, but I will continue to write about topics that I am passionate about, and share some more personal stories. I believe now, more than ever, authenticity is valuable.

I don’t really know where this is going, or where year two will bring me, but I am committed to staying the course and writing one word at a time. The last year has been filled with breakthroughs, frustration, bursts of creativity, fits of writer’s block – but ultimately joy, clarity and excitement for what is yet to come.

Thank you for reading!

Leave a comment

For whatever reason, whether quality, tone, cast – these films immediately get added to an internal watchlist that I keep that revolves around the fact that I will one day watch said movies on an airplane. I call these movies: plane movies (this is the high level writing you come here for – I know).

These movies usually sit between 90-120 minutes in length, are of middling quality, but crucially not bad enough that I wouldn’t want to watch them. They also aren’t good enough to either: A) go and see them in a theater or B) command my undivided attention while sitting at home.

All this to say, I found myself on an airplane recently scrolling through the list of available movies on Delta’s seat-back entertainment screen – and landed on a recent entry to the “plane movies” list; 2025’s musical biopic Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere.

The film is not particularly good; it’s a fairly cliché rags-to-riches biopic journey. However, I want to be upfront: this is not a piece of writing about the film, Springsteen’s music, or one of the relevant things a viewer usually considers when watching a two hour music biopic about one of the most famous rock-stars of all-time.

This is about how this seemingly mundane airplane entertainment helped me come to grips with the ever-increasing omnipotence of artificial intelligence in our daily lives.

Yes, you read that right. I just provided a 273 word intro about a mediocre music biopic to relate it to my feelings on the artificial intelligence wave.

Subscribe now

Unless you have been living under a rock for the last few years, the rapid development of artificial intelligence and its impact on the economy, jobs, career paths – basically life – has been impossible to ignore. Every day a new deluge of headlines “AI is going to replace [this field]”, “If you are not learning how to automate your job, someone else will”. The hysteria can border on overdramatic, but the impact from this technology is starting to take real shape in reality. Last week, Jack Dorsey’s company Block laid off approximately 40% of its workforce, citing AI’s ability to increase productivity without human expense (paraphrasing mine). Its stock shot up 25% on the news – the voting mechanism that is the stock market effectively applauding 4,000 people being suddenly unemployed.

Being a part of the generation that has spent the first decade of our careers looking to find some place in the world, we’re now experiencing that everything we learned or have been trained on is about to be ripped out from under us. Perfect timing as late stage millennials or early Gen Z approach the time in our lives we should be starting families, buying a house, reaching peak earnings power – you could forgive one for experiencing a little stress about the outlook of things.

There is one specific scene within the first hour of Deliver Me From Nowhere – Bruce is taking his new-found love interest out for a late-night joy ride, basking in the euphoria and excitement of new found love, driving in a new sports car (a symbol of his new found fame and success post The River album). Immediately the scene and the actors’ performances helped me make peace with humanity’s place in the world on the cusp of a new technological revolution.

As “The Boss” and his newfound love interest speed down the late night New Jersey streets with the windows down, the radio blasts some classic 80s rock music. Bruce and our female lead exchange momentary glances at each other, streetlights reflecting in their eyes illuminating their profound infatuation and attraction to one another. Incredible lighting and emotive performances from Jeremy Allen White (Springsteen) and actress Odessa Young communicate everything without a single word of dialogue. Their facial expressions, sly smirks, the look in their eyes saying “God, what did I get myself into here”. The full gamut of emotion in four quick cuts. The scene evokes the rush of promise, hope, longing and feeling you have at the beginning of a courtship where you think to yourself: “I am completely raptured by this person”. The rush of “butterflies” in your stomach, your mind starting to plot out a future with this person you barely know, but quickly found yourself falling for.

The scene immediately transports the audience to that moment in time when they themselves felt that way about someone or something.

How is this possibly related to artificial intelligence? The reason the moment was effective, the reason the audience can buy into the look and feeling of the love between the two characters, is because it is a distinctly human experience. Watching two people, experience and take part in that moment, only works because the viewer sees and relates to two other humans operating in a distinctly human fashion. Even me writing these words now renders them less effective, but a machine literally can’t comprehend or create that moment because it will never know that moment or have the ability to experience emotional depth. It will never find itself falling stupidly, deeply, irrationally in love with another human being while a Little Richard record blares out of the stereo, cruising down the late night backroads with wind in your hair.

Artificial intelligence can write a scene in the sense of putting the correct series of words together based on past iterations. It can describe it in detail, producing a sterilized output portraying the activity. There will be a point where the models or tools create video and image aimed at driving the same outcome. No matter the technical quality, an audience can’t resonate with it because we inherently know it’s not the creation of a human being. AI can create words and output - but it can’t fall or be in love. The machines will never have that feeling of early relationship euphoria. ChatGPT or Claude or Grok will never have its heart broken, or look at someone and against all better judgement allow itself to fall for them.

Because of this, no matter how good it is delivering a structured output, what will hold AI back is what will continue to save humanity. It can’t experience human emotion.The end consumer or viewer inherently knows this, it’s in our DNA, so we inherently reject it.

Does this matter? Shareholders, corporations, and global powers aren’t going to slow the development of new technology because it can’t feel or generate emotional pathos.

It’s ultimately up to us, as society, as individuals, to determine how much it matters.

As good as Artificial Intelligence has and will continue to get, there is a natural paradox. It’ll always be artificial. That’s fine when you’re automating spreadsheets and purchase orders, or reviewing legal documents. It doesn’t work when you are trying to make someone feel something. When you are trying to drive connection and meaning. When you are trying to make something human.

I am not sure why a scene in an otherwise middling Bruce Springsteen biopic made me feel a little better about humanity’s outlook, but it did.

We all could use a few reminders that what makes us valuable and human are the same things that OpenAI, Google, Anthropic and even Elon Musk can’t recreate. No matter how much money they are going to throw towards it.

One great scene made me feel something, it made me come to grips with our place in the world, and maybe, just maybe, we’re going to be alright. I just wish the rest of the movie had been as effective.

But hey – it was a plane movie for a reason after all.

Subscribe now

Winter in New York City can be unforgiving. Freezing temperatures forcing you inside cramped dwellings. The minimal sunlight you do get, unable to be enjoyed because of the frostbitten climate. While most of the northeast was engulfed last weekend in negative temperatures, trying to find the will to survive through winter, I, like many others, thought through ways to pass the time inside.

Figuring out ways to keep yourself busy, or entertain yourself, is a problem few people spend much energy on these days. I myself have spent countless hours scrolling, streaming, binging, gaming – all in an effort to cognitively disassociate after long days.

Apps, social media, iPhones - a never ending buffet of dopamine that masks passive consumption for activity.

The end results of which leaves you feeling more tired and stressed than before. Cortisol spiked and dopamine depleted.

Alas, with the benefit of an empty apartment (my fiancée was traveling for work), and after my two-year-old golden retriever and I survived a jaunt into the polar vortex; I did something I had been avoiding. I did something I too often use the aforementioned distractions to avoid.

I actually sat down, with a pen and a piece of paper, turned my phone off – and spent time writing by hand.

Now my personal impetus was of the self improvement variety (I found a simple pdf “workbook” aimed at pushing you to reflect and clarify your own intentions, limitations, and goals) – but any version would have sufficed. Journaling, coloring, note taking, doodling.

Now why did I do this? Was I struck by some sort of inspiration for self improvement? Did being locked in an apartment, unable to leave because of negative temperatures, drive me to look inward? Was I struck by a need to confront my deep rooted issues so strongly I couldn’t help but write thoughts out by hand?

Hardly. I, like many a modern person, had a backlog of articles, videos, activities, tasks saved “for some later time”. A growing pile of mental loose ends that in the moment I deemed important, but not important enough to stop whatever I was doing.

I finally decided enough was enough, and freezing temperatures, an empty apartment (aside from a snoozing puppy) was enough impetus to say ‘you know what – I’m actually going to do one of these things’. I didn’t have anywhere to be, and instead of snacking on attention junk food, I was going to write with a pen and paper.

By the end, I felt completely invigorated and refreshed.

I feel little need to go into the specifics here regarding the self improvement stuff, you probably have your own backlog of articles, exercises and activities you can work through.

What blew me away about this specific exercise was the clarity with which it presented, and required you to actually write the words by hand. The magic of holding a pen in your hand, thinking through what you actually want to expend energy putting on a piece of paper sharpens your thoughts and output.

In an age where everything and anything can be created by technology, when your hand is actually sore from writing it forces you to figure out what matters.

In an ever increasing world of speed, optimization, efficiency - the deliberate art of slowing down, and physically grounding yourself in something is a relic of bygone times.

But maybe our boomer parents were on to something - as my hand grew sore from the pen in my hand, writing down ten sentences on “the ideal version of myself” and “what limiting beliefs I tell myself” I realized that, yes, the exercise was stimulating. But the real value was forcing myself to clarify what I actually wanted, what matters to me, and steps I can take to get there.

As the hours passed, I found myself getting deeper and deeper into my answers, approaching views and thoughts I had never sat with before.

The exercise also helped me anchor to the present moment, and ultimately to myself. I wasn’t rotting away on the couch watching someone else do something, I was actively using my own mind and skillset.

It brought me back to why I enjoy writing in the first place. It’s great to create something sure, and my mom gets a lot of enjoyment out of these articles, however ultimately it’s a way for me to take unlimited external stimuli and make them into something of my own.

Maybe it has been the artificial intelligence boom, or just my own inability to stay offline, but I increasingly find myself stressed, exhausted and overwhelmed with external stimuli. The latest viral thread, trending topic, hot tea, controversial sports take. Not even to broach things like political scandals, economic concerns. All of it creates a constant sense of mental nausea, your brain sick from constant stimulants and overindulgence.

Find something that allows you to unplug from the matrix–to use a cliche analogy.

Maybe for you it’s listening to music, exercising, catching up with friends, it can literally be anything. We all need something that allows us to disconnect from the attention machines, telling us what to think and what to do.

I now grasp why people got into gardening, or why my dad liked using tools and fixing things.

Maybe it can be something as simple as going for a walk (except when it’s -15 degrees out but you get my point), and not listening to a podcast at 1.5x speed or anything at all.

Because that’s the thing - when you’re constantly being stimulated and force fed inputs externally, it’s impossible to generate thoughts of your own. Your internal operating system can’t come up with outputs if it’s expending all its energy on processing inputs.

After about three hours, my puppy woke up, and it was almost time for a second bathroom break.

It felt great to finally sit down and work through something I had saved in the “do later” digital pile.

The real benefit was sitting down and writing by hand, and clarifying my own thoughts.

Back out into the frostbitten wind we went, but I felt mentally a thousand pounds lighter. I didn’t know how long the dog and I were going to be out, but I felt closer to knowing where we were going.

Photo: CBS Sports, Getty Images

In the middle of a quiet Saturday, while most of the east coast braced for a historic blizzard, the Pittsburgh Steelers announced they were hiring Mike McCarthy. A sixty-two-year-old, currently unemployed, and not seriously on any other teams’ radar (despite the Titans interviewing him as well).

Since his father, legendary owner Dan Rooney, passed, current Pittsburgh owner Art Rooney II has made decision after decision with one priority: what increases the likelihood of not losing more games than winning.

The Pittsburgh Steelers have been a beacon of consistency in the NFL, bucking every conceivable trend. Three head coaches in 56 years. Six Super Bowl championships. Chuck Noll won four. Bill Cowher added a fifth. Mike Tomlin, a relatively unknown defensive assistant when hired, delivered a sixth by 2008.

Tomlin went on to become the symbol of modern coaching excellence. Nineteen consecutive seasons without a losing record—a mark that will likely stand untouched. Even after Ben Roethlisberger retired, Tomlin kept the ship above .500, something not even Belichick managed post-Brady.

But excellence and winning championships are not the same thing. Somewhere along the way, the standard shifted. Super Bowl or Bust became “make the playoffs and hope for the best.” Seven consecutive postseason losses. Blowouts at home against Mahomes and Allen. A franchise that never misses an opportunity to trot out its Super Bowl past was becoming defined by January humiliations.

When Tomlin shocked the sports world by resigning the Monday after the latest playoff exit, the reaction was twofold: surprise that one of the longest-tenured coaches walked away on his own terms, and relief that change was finally coming.

Tomlin’s resignation provided an opportunity for a much-needed reset. The operation had grown stale—you could take it to the bank the team would finish slightly above .500 and lose in the playoffs in non-competitive fashion.

Playoff loss after playoff loss built mounting frustration for everyone who cares about the team. So much so that during a home loss to Buffalo late in the season, fans began chanting to fire a coach who had never had a losing season.

Finally it seemed there would be a catalyst for change. A new coaching staff, possibly filled with young and bright minds seemingly elevating teams across the league to new heights. As much as Tomlin was beloved by players, schematic excellence and strong coordinator hires were never highlights on his résumé.

Young schematic geniuses like Sean McVay, Kyle Shanahan, and Mike McDonald were becoming the faces of their franchises and elevating them to elite status. The Mike Vrabel type could create an inspired culture while assembling strong staffs. Steelers fans couldn’t help but get excited about the possibilities.

When the interview candidates started trickling out, the thesis was validated. Chris Shula, the fast-rising Rams defensive coordinator. Nathan Scheelhaase, an elite offensive mind under McVay. Brian Flores, who had rebuilt his reputation as Minnesota’s DC. This was still one of the best jobs in the league—a position that comes open once every twenty years.

Everything was lining up. It legitimately seemed as if the path back to contention would start here.

Subscribe now

Mike McCarthy is not a bad coach. He won a Super Bowl in Green Bay and made the playoffs twelve times. He was also fired by two historic franchises—Green Bay and Dallas—for the same reason: failing to win in the playoffs with MVP-caliber quarterbacks.

McCarthy took last year off. Nine of the ten teams with head coaching openings this offseason passed on him. His only confirmed interview was with the Steelers—apparently because he worked with GM Omar Khan in New Orleans twenty-five years ago, and because he grew up in Pittsburgh.

The official announcement of his hiring sent shockwaves through sports circles, and has almost immediately been met with frustration and anger from Steelers fans.

After a decade without a playoff win—frustration and resentment finally boiling over—the Steelers decided to hire a coach who (checks notes) was fired from his last two jobs at historic franchises for being unable to win in the playoffs.

The Steelers could have hired a young architect—someone to tear down the walls and rebuild from the foundation. Instead, they hired a contractor to patch the drywall.

The Steelers apparently have no interest in doing anything but operation business as usual. McCarthy certainly gives them the highest floor in 2026, but at 62 and with a less than inspiring postseason record, how is this hire supposed to meaningfully inspire any confidence the organization is any closer to a Super Bowl than it was when getting blown out in the wild card playoff round by the Houston Texans?

For some reason, despite initial reports the team was “going to take their time with this search” the Steelers rushed to hire McCarthy before they could even speak with the Rams coordinators in person — when literally no other team was interested in McCarthy.

It’s hard to take this as anything other than organizational malpractice and laziness—opting for a safe retread with ties to the city, as if being from Pittsburgh is a qualification for running a football team.

Maybe this was done to convince forty-two-year-old Aaron Rodgers to return for another season. If so, that’s its own problem. Rodgers elevated the Steelers offense this year, but against elite defenses the former MVP looked like Superman plagued with Kryptonite—his signature escapability and arm strength finally surrendering to Father Time.

In what world does it make sense to let your biggest organizational decision be driven by a player who might play one more season? Because it might help them win two more regular season games.

Setting aside best-case scenarios, Rooney, Khan, and everyone running the team had a unique opportunity to re-engineer the direction of the organization. They were let off the hook not having to fire a Hall of Fame coach. Fans would have been rejuvenated by a new voice and perspective, paving a path for the team to climb back to the top of the NFL, even if there were some short-term pain.

Gone are the days of focusing solely on winning Super Bowls. Rooney II, despite his script in press conferences, is running the Pittsburgh Steelers as if they are a low-margin small business. Keep the bottom line in the green (win more games than you lose, make the playoffs), with the lowest possible costs (the Steelers have had some of the smallest staffs in the league, along with the worst-rated facilities).

Photo: NFL.com

I mean we are talking about a franchise that has won as many Super Bowls as any team in the league, but inexplicably still shares a practice facility with a middling ACC collegiate team.

An opportunity to go from just being invited to the table, to sitting at the head of it.

Instead, they took the same course of action they have for the last decade. A low risk, high floor decision — wasting any optimism and excitement generated with the possibility of change back towards that Super Bowl standard.

It also can’t be ignored: a sixty-two-year-old coming off a year on the couch costs less and demands less change than a thirty-five-year-old with a vision. Shula, Scheelhaase, Flores—they would have wanted to rebuild. McCarthy just needs to keep the lights on.

There was a dream of a new innovative voice coming in to revamp the entire coaching paradigm, installing diverse schemes and bringing in young talent, setting up the Steelers to finally rise from purgatory and get back into Super Bowl contention.

But hey, at least he is from Pittsburgh, and worked with the GM twenty years ago.

“The Standard is The Standard.” One of Tomlin’s favorite sayings, plastered everywhere in the building.

Once again Art Rooney II has shown that Standard doesn’t exist any longer.

“The Standard” is now mediocrity.

Share

Photo: USA Today

I read something long ago, along the lines of “sports fandom isn’t about shared joy; it’s mostly about shared suffering” - and I’ve never been able to get that out of my head.

Surrounding yourself with the fan bases of the final two teams standing as they prepare to face off in the National Championship (while you’re trying to enjoy a relaxing vacation in Miami) — can leave you bitter and vindictive.

It’s pretty obvious in 2025, Indiana University had the best collegiate football team in the country. Despite having less talent on paper than roughly 70 other teams (with an all time low % of players who were 4-5 star recruits coming out of high school) they became the first team in the modern era to win 16 games, lose none, and beat multiple top 10 teams on the road to the school’s first national title in history. Curt Cignetti told us “I win — google me”, then he literally went out and rattled off a 27-2 record and won a title in two years at one of the historically weakest programs of all-time. It’s one of the most incredible and unfathomable Cinderella stories in the history of sports; a script that would be deemed too cliche for a movie.

There is plenty of media discussing the game, framing Indiana’s incredible journey and turnaround in its proper history. Celebrating the incredible achievement and story for a new program at the mountain top.

This is not that.

I am tired of pretending this is all fine and good and special.

Indiana, and their fans specifically, do not deserve this happiness.

Dante — are you crazy? Indiana literally had more losses than any other program before this season. Shouldn’t that amount of losing mean celebrating that they won a national championship?

No. No, we should not be.

Indiana fundamentally broke the equation of sports fandom: a prolonged period of suffering, followed by an adversity filled journey, where they overcome battles and demons and rise to the top.

The goal is to go from the bottom to the top — eventually.

The team is really bad. They undergo some change, and slowly but surely turn their fortunes around and rise to the top, and finally achieve their championship dreams, battling adversity along the way and forging a legacy.

Fans, players, the community get to revel in the fruits of the journey. Pain, heartbreak making the joy and euphoria of victory all the sweeter.

Indiana skipped all that. They quite literally went from awful to complete juggernaut in the span of two years.

Before Curt Cignetti’s hiring in December 2023, Indiana football was college football’s ultimate doormat: the FBS program with the most all-time losses (717 by 2023), a .427 winning percentage overall (.365 in Big Ten play), only two conference titles (1945, 1967), seven final AP rankings in 125+ seasons, and a 3-9 bowl record with no postseason wins since 1991.

The 2000-2023 era was especially dire—102-172 record, just three winning seasons (peak 8-5 in 2019), multiple 0-win conference campaigns, a 28-game skid vs. ranked foes, and institutional neglect prioritizing basketball over football facilities/recruiting. Indiana football was, without a shadow of a doubt, one of the worst programs in division one college football.

So Indiana was historically terrible - and now they’re GREAT. Don’t their fans deserve this after being awful for nearly a century?

No. No matter what any die hard fan will say, the hardest part of being a fan is not when your team is awful. It’s when your team is good — but not quite good enough.

When a team is legitimately terrible, it’s a chore to watch and wholly unenjoyable. However, it becomes much harder to get emotionally invested when said team is terrible.

You never allow yourself the possibility of dreaming because you know your team isn’t very good and is going to lose.

When your team is awful, you emotionally tune out on disappointment. You check out.

There have to be SOME life long Indiana fans, who watched every game and suffered decades of losing and deserve this? You’re telling me there aren’t fans of awful teams?

Sure, I am sure there is a very small cohort who were absolute die-hard Indiana football fans for decades before Curt Cignetti showed up and turned them into “Georgia North”. And I am happy for all 23 of those people.

Back to reality — it was frequently observed how much Indiana dominated attendance during the playoff run. Kudos to them — but their stadium was legitimately empty for Cignetti’s first game (apparently there were ~45,000 people there but see for yourself).

Photo: From X.com (twitter). Apparently this was during warm-ups. I don’t care.

The absurd ticket prices and travel to multiple playoff games goes down a little easier when you have had nearly a century to save.

Indiana fans do not deserve to be experiencing the joy of winning a national championship because they were able to somehow skip the most traumatic part of being a fan.

The shattering climb where your team endures repeated heartbreak and devastation before finally exorcising demons, conquering foes, and reaching the championship peak.

Ask a Buffalo Bills fan if it’s more painful now with crushing playoff loss after playoff loss — or when they were last place in the AFC East getting dunked on by Tom Brady. Seeing Josh Allen fail to exorcise his playoff demons year after year, either losing to Joe Burrow, Patrick Mahomes, or Lamar Jackson; or turning the ball over in the most crucial moments. Failure to finally deliver the championship moment Buffalo fans have been wishing for.

If the Bills, and Allen, do ever overcome their playoff demons. It will have all been worth it, all the pain and suffering will be forged into tears of joy.

An awful team is a tough watch; a really good, almost great one, rips your heart out from your chest and leaves scars for years to come.

Indiana, somehow, completely avoided being pretty good. They were awful. Then they were an absolute juggernaut.

Hell — even the Georgia Bulldogs had to endure some heartbreak (losing in dramatic fashion in overtime of a national championship game) before their own dynastic run.

So yes — Indiana engineered a storybook rise to incredible highs in rapid succession.

But that’s my whole point — they skipped the very part that makes it all worth it.

The thrill of victory is so strong because of the pain of defeat.

Indiana never lost to Ohio State when leading by double digits in consecutive years, forced to sit with the sting of defeat for 364 days.

They never blew leads at home to rival teams costing them a shot at the playoff, watching rival teams fight it out for immortality and their fanbases celebrating.

They never spent a year believing this was finally the team to get them over the top — only to be crushingly disappointed with a loss to a team they should have beat by double digits. Wondering, how did it all go so wrong when we were so close?

Indiana was simply awful. A school and community who had accepted their position as a basketball powerhouse. Then they increased their investment in football, hired a 62 year old who had never been a Power 4 head coach, signed a bunch of experienced players from smaller schools and then proceeded to absolutely steamroll everyone and win a national championship in 24 months.

Photo: Michael Hickey/Getty Images

So congrats on being the first team in over a century to go 16-0. Heisman quarterback, dream season.

My extremely petty and biased self will always mark it with an asterisk because they (the fandom) didn’t earn it.

The only championships that count are the ones raised with scar tissue.

Epilogue:

It’s absolutely ridiculous to say who “deserves” to win a championship and who doesn’t. However, I stand by my thesis and will embrace being petty and biased as the freaking Indiana Hoosiers celebrate a national championship. At least Cignetti is from Pittsburgh.

He could only watch. After Lamar Jackson hit Isaiah Likely for 26 yards on fourth-and-7 to drag the Baltimore Ravens past midfield, the season—and maybe the franchise’s championship window—came down to the leg of a 24-year-old kicker.

Seconds earlier, it felt over. Jackson kept it alive anyway, the way he has for years: one impossible play, one more chance.

Tyler Loop’s 44-yard attempt sailed wide right. On the other sideline, the Pittsburgh Steelers celebrated a division title. Jackson and the Ravens stood still, watching another season end the same way so many of his have: with the margin thin, the stakes enormous, and the result empty.

It didn’t feel like only a season slipping away. It felt like time—and Lamar’s prime—slipping with it.

The myth, especially in the Tom Brady era, is that quarterbacks can play into their 40s and keep the whole thing going. The reality is simpler: even for elite quarterbacks, the number of truly dominant seasons is finite. In two days, Lamar Jackson turns 29.

He’s already built a generational résumé: Heisman winner, two-time NFL MVP, the youngest quarterback to win a unanimous NFL MVP, and the fastest player to reach 5,000 passing yards and 2,000 rushing yards. Drafted at the end of the first round in 2018, Jackson didn’t just become a franchise quarterback—he redefined what one could be, becoming the first QB in league history to post multiple 1,000-yard rushing seasons.

The regular-season success is unquestionable. But in Jackson’s seven seasons, the Ravens have one AFC Championship Game appearance to show for it. They still haven’t reached a Super Bowl in the Lamar era.

Despite record-breaking regular-season numbers, the playoffs have proved a tougher stage for Jackson.

Lamar’s postseason record sits at 3–5. His efficiency drops in January, and the possession-killers pile up—interceptions, fumbles, the kinds of negative plays that decide playoff games. In his lone AFC Championship appearance, against Kansas City after the 2023 season, he threw for 272 yards with one interception in a 17–10 loss. It wasn’t a total no-show. It was something worse: close enough to make it hurt, not clean enough to win.

The story has repeated in different forms. In the 2019 Titans upset, Derrick Henry ran for 195 yards while Baltimore’s defense caved. Other years, the breakdowns have come from dropped opportunities and mistakes around him. The feeling persists anyway. For all his generational talent, Baltimore hasn’t capitalized when the stakes rise and the field shrinks.

And 2025 stings worse because it feels like the type of season contenders are supposed to cash. The AFC has felt as open as it’s been in years. The Ravens still came up empty. The best shot he’s had ended the same way the season ended—pushed wide right.

The urgency isn’t just narrative. It’s physical. What makes Jackson brilliant also makes the window fragile.

The injuries have added up. An ankle injury cost him the final stretch in 2021. A PCL sprain ended his 2022 season and kept him out of the postseason. This year, he missed four games, including a multi-week absence with a hamstring injury, and late-season back and knee issues have visibly complicated the way he wins. The point isn’t that Lamar is no longer elite. It’s that the margin that separates “elite” from “unstoppable” is getting harder to guarantee year after year.

You can see it in the shape of the season: fewer of the effortless, game-breaking runs; less weekly inevitability; more games where he has to be perfect because the rest of the roster can’t afford a single crack. Every hit matters more. Every small limitation changes the math.

And the precedent is unforgiving. Quarterbacks who rely on mobility don’t usually fall off all at once—they lose a half-step, then a second reaction, then the ability to erase mistakes with one play. Cam Newton is the cautionary tale everyone remembers, but the league is full of versions of this story: dynamic quarterbacks whose prime advantage shrank the moment injuries and mileage started stacking.

The roster math is tightening, too. Jackson’s 2026 cap hit is projected to be massive, and even if Baltimore reshapes it, the pressure doesn’t disappear—it shifts. The Ravens will have to make real decisions on who they can keep, who they can extend, and how deep the supporting cast can stay when the quarterback occupies that much of the budget. In a league where depth wins in January, that matters.

Jackson is only 29, and maybe this was just bad luck. But between the injuries, the cap squeeze, and an AFC that’s getting younger and hungrier every season, this might have been their best shot—or at least one of the last “clean” ones where the Ravens could count on having every advantage at once.

Sunday night, the kick sailed wide right. And Jackson might have watched another year of his prime disappear the same way.

40 seconds left in the game. Tie score. A spot in the national championship on the line—a chance to reach the title game for the first time in nearly forty years. Fifty yards, two timeouts, and a single swing of a kicker’s leg stand between you and glory.

The chosen one. The prophecy foretold. The missing link to elevate a starving program and community to greatness.

These are things kids dream about in their backyards. Drew Allar, the quarterback of the Penn State Nittany Lions, had surely played this exact scenario out a thousand times in his backyard—game on the line, the chance to orchestrate the drive of a lifetime.

Everything that had come before—a high-profile recruitment, the turbulence of his first year as a starter, and the steady climb of a strong junior campaign—led to this.

Of course it would happen this way.

With their backs against the wall, Allar would lead the Lions into field goal range. He would provide the walk-off winner. He would secure a rematch with the hated rival Ohio State Buckeyes in the national championship.

The most hyped recruit in a decade—the quarterback who stayed loyal to Franklin when the world came calling—was about to have his “Tom Brady” moment. He would orchestrate a historical moment, then finally slay the hometown team that had overlooked him and deliver a championship.

Dreams are fragile. In sports, they usually end in the dirt.

Allar drops back to pass and lets fly a desperate, ill-advised ball across the middle of the field. In the glare of the stadium lights, the “missing piece” melts. A Notre Dame defender steps in front of the route, snatches the ball out of the air, and silences the Penn State sideline.

Notre Dame converts a field goal shortly after, leaving Head Coach James Franklin, the Penn State community, and the college football world at large in a state of collective shock.

Allar slowly trots to the sideline, hands clamped to his helmet, as if trying to hold his world together. Tears stream down his face—a raw, public outpouring of emotion that continues into his post-game press conference.

“I should’ve just thrown it away…we didn’t win the game, I wasn’t good enough” Allar delivers the standard leadership cliches, his eyes darting from side to side in the post-game press-conference. The quarterback avoids eye contact, looking toward the floor. The weight and expectation of a decade’s worth of promise and disappointment become too much to hold back.

A haunting image. The quarterback, the coach, and one of the most storied programs in the sport, left to ponder the same agonizing questions: What happens now? How did we get here?

The image of Allar walking off the field that night in the Orange Bowl—head in hands, emotion pouring out of him—serves as the defining portrait of an era.

No team provides a more stark examination of the binary of success and failure than Penn State. This was a team who came into this season with legitimate national championship expectations – and ended a decade journey with a fired coach, a mass of players leaving having failed to live up to expectations, and a fanbase forced to reconcile how a program on the precipice collapsed into the pit in a single year.

How did a seemingly perfect path to a storybook ending turn into despair? How did a team, so close to the championship game a year ago, fall into the abyss? Why did the relationship between a 104-win coach and his fanbase fracture so severely? And why did the quarterback, whose potential seemed limitless, end his career in tears?

The story is ultimately one of unfulfilled promise, the weight of expectation, and two men.

Quarterback Drew Allar and Coach James Franklin, two figures whose careers and fates would ultimately be defined by the other.

A plot that seemed plagiarized from a Hollywood script by the end resembled a Greek tragedy. But to understand how Penn State’s most promising team in generations ended in despair, you have to go back further.

Back to where the hope began.

A Miracle Worker

Turning the clock back over a decade, nestled in the hills of central Pennsylvania, Penn State Football was a program existing in the shadow of its own survival. Former NFL coordinator Bill O’Brien had spent two years stabilizing a program spiraling from scandal and tragedy, keeping it above .500 despite crippling sanctions—a feat that felt miraculous given the circumstances.

In December of 2013, O’Brien was ready to return to the NFL after a taxing two years, accepting the Houston Texans head coaching job on New Year’s Eve. Penn State—located in State College, Pennsylvania, a place known as Happy Valley—found itself searching for a leader for the second time in four years—a jarring reality for a program that had previously employed one man for nearly five decades.

Enter: James Franklin.

Franklin arrived in State College branded a ‘miracle worker’ from Vanderbilt, a label he was more than happy to wear. Employing a borderline delusional optimism, dynamic personality, and ability to identify under the radar recruits, Franklin led a historically weak program to consecutive nine-win seasons in the famed South Eastern Conference.

Young, high energy, from Pennsylvania – Franklin embodied the type of leader Penn State desperately required as it found itself in the midst of the ramifications from the scandal. A postseason ban and a decimated scholarship count threatened the program’s very ability to compete. On paper, the fit seemed perfect from all sides; however, the promotion to a bigger job, with more recent success, came with pressure. It’s great to build a Cinderella, but can you do it at the highest level? Franklin succeeded at Vanderbilt—a program where success itself seemed miraculous—but in the cutthroat world of major college football, past performance was only proof of concept, never proof of permanence. At Penn State, he would need to prove it against the best of the best, again. And again. And again.

O’Brien had provided the foundation; Franklin was hired to build the house. Emulating the blueprints of Alabama and Ohio State—the gold standards of the era—Penn State sought a CEO-style leader who could weaponize recruiting and drag the program out of the shadows and back into the national elite. At the time, college football had entered the era of the CEO coach—men like Nick Saban and Urban Meyer who controlled every facet of their programs, from recruiting to game planning to media strategy. Franklin embraced the model completely.

The first two years of the new regime were defined by mediocrity: back-to-back 7-6 finishes in lower-tier bowls that suggested a program treading water. And midway through the 2016 season, Franklin’s pivotal third year, things seemed to be stuck in neutral.

Then, in the span of one October night, the trajectory shifted.

The football gods finally looked toward Happy Valley. Hosting the 2nd ranked and undefeated Ohio State Buckeyes, the Nittany Lions rallied as massive underdogs when defensive back Grant Haley scooped a blocked field goal and sprinted not just into the endzone, but into Penn State lore.

It wasn’t just a touchdown; it was a program-defining exorcism. Franklin and the community would finally have their program defining win after the darkness of the last four years.

Students and fans flooded the field of Beaver Stadium against the backdrop of Penn State’s famed “White Out” night game, to celebrate a win over a top-five titan—a moment that announced the Nittany Lions were ready to ascend. Parlaying that momentum into a division championship, the Lions would end up winning the Big 10 conference in dramatic fashion. Despite being left out of the four team playoff that year, the Lions played in the famous and storied Rose Bowl. Against the horizon of the famed Pasadena background, sun setting into the mountains, Penn State and the Trojans of Southern California staged one of the most entertaining games of the season. In what would become an ominous sign, Franklin and the Nittany Lions lost to USC that night, but all prognostication was pointing up.

The Ohio State win acted as a propellant for Franklin and his program. A coach who was on the hot seat in early October was holding the Big Ten Championship trophy in December. Young, exciting players like Saquon Barkley (a generational talent) and Trace McSorley (a scrappy, underrecruited quarterback) who committed to the program in the middle of the heaviest impact from the sanctions would lead the Lions back to greatness.

The victory along with a Big10 conference championship provided validation for Franklin’s program. His approach had been methodical, bordering on obsessive. Every detail mattered—from recruiting scripts to practice schedules to media talking points. The 2016 breakthrough felt like vindication: his system worked.

What couldn’t be seen yet was the same control that built consistency would eventually suffocate freedom and growth.

In the aftermath of a turning point season, those “Fire Franklin” chants that echoed in the stadium in mid-October seemed far away now.

They would, in time, return.

Always Bridesmaid, Never a Bride

The 2016 season had been written for a Hollywood screenplay; in the rise from the ashes the program would be lifted by heroes who came in the darkest hour. The man hired after drastically outperforming at a historically weak program would bring a national championship back to a storied program, taking his place among the all-time greats.

As in life, College Football reality is messier and more unpleasant than Hollywood films.

The next three seasons established Penn State as one of the strongest programs in the country. Franklin utilized the 2016 momentum, stacking top-tier recruiting classes and wins—31 victories from 2017 through 2019. But the 2016 Ohio State upset that was supposed to launch a dynasty became an apparition. Penn State lost heartbreaking games to the Buckeyes in both 2017 and 2018 by a combined two points. The annual ritual of falling short against elite opponents became a sword hanging over the Franklin era: questionable coaching decisions, physical failures at critical moments, and gut-wrenching ‘what ifs’ that would linger for years.

The pattern was set: Penn State could beat anyone they had more talent than on paper, but they were paralyzed when facing their equals. When the lights were brightest, facing an elite opponent, Penn State lacked the execution or difference making performances to win.

In 2018, Penn State once again found itself on the precipice of greatness – only to fall victim to a coaching miscue in the biggest moment. Trailing by a single point with two timeouts in hand, gunslinger Trace McSorley orchestrated a drive into Buckeye territory. With less than 90 seconds remaining and a timeout, the Lions offense found itself roughly 15 yards from comfortable field goal range. 45 feet was all that separated Franklin from a second win against a top five Ohio State in three years –a victory likely locking up another Big10 Championship game appearance.

Fourth down, possibly the final play, five yards to go. McSorley unexpectedly handed the ball off to running back Miles Sanders who was stuffed immediately.

Roughly 108,000 people fell silent, utterly shocked by the final play call. Ohio State took over, ran out the clock, and walked off the field with another win over Penn State. A pattern becoming a curse.

After the loss, Franklin, caught up in the emotion and frustration of the moment, delivered a post-game press conference that would define the rest of his tenure.

It was here he laid the ultimatum that would determine his legacy and longevity.

"We’ve gone from an average football team to a good football team to a great football team... but we’re not an elite football team yet. We’ve gotten comfortable being great. We will no longer be comfortable being great. We’re going to find a way to take that next step... because we’ve been knocking at the door long enough."

In the immediate wake of the sanctions, mere survival—just being competitive again—had been a triumph. No longer. Penn State, and the man leading the team, would no longer be content to simply bully inferior opponents. The new standard was narrow and unforgiving: wins against the best of the best. The program, the community, and the man in charge were finished with moral victories. They were tired of being “close”.

Success would be defined not just by number of wins, but wins against Ohio State and Michigan. Franklin, and by proxy the fans, wouldn’t be satisfied with just being a “good” coach – he needed to be “elite”.

Seeds of Discontent

Cracks began to form in the marriage between Franklin and Happy Valley long before the October 2025 collapse. Between 2019 and 2021, the program entered a state of gilded stagnation. While an 11-win season in 2019 kept the critics at bay, Franklin’s name became a permanent fixture in rumors for premier openings at USC and Florida State. To the Penn State community—a fanbase that values loyalty as much as yardage—his silence felt like a leverage play, a way to extract more resources without commitment.

The breaking point wasn’t a loss, but a contract. In 2021, coming off a mediocre 7-6 season, Franklin secured a massive 10-year, $75 million contract extension with a staggering buyout if he was ever to be fired without cause. The massive commitment wasn’t just about money—it was about leverage. Franklin and his agent had negotiated a buyout so massive, and the terms so favorable to the coach, it effectively gave him ironclad job security. He’d built the program his way; now he’d ensured no one could take it from him. But in seizing total control, he’d also accepted total responsibility. There would be no excuses left.

Message boards and social media sites lit up with frustration. Franklin’s flirtation with other jobs, his complaints about lacking resources—it all rang hollow without ‘elite’ results to back it up.

The “Fire Franklin” chants of 2016 were replaced by a cold, transactional resentment. He was now a CEO with a massive salary and a “Great” product, but no “Elite” results. The man and his supporters stayed optimistic and persistent, others felt he would always be asking for more – resources, players, staff, money – without delivering his end of the bargain and shopping for his next gig.

Franklin knew that despite financial security, the seat was getting warm. He had the money, the facilities, and the security—but he still didn’t have a championship.

To save the marriage, he needed a difference maker. He needed divine intervention.

He needed a quarterback.

The Prince Who Was Promised

Just 100 miles from Columbus, shrouded by the overbearing shadow of Ohio State, lies the birthplace of Drew Allar. Initially overlooked by the hometown juggernaut as a mid-tier prospect, Allar spent the COVID pandemic transforming himself into a phenomenon. In less than two years, he charted a meteoric rise from a forgotten three-star recruit to the No. 1 quarterback in the nation.

For Franklin and Penn State, Allar was the missing evolutionary link. The Nittany Lions had won plenty of games with gritty overachievers like Trace McSorley and Sean Clifford, but they had never possessed a true “unicorn”—a prototype field general capable of going blow-for-blow with the NFL talent at Ohio State. Allar was that dream. Standing 6’5” with a rocket arm, he was straight out of central casting. The comparisons to Buffalo Bills QB Josh Allen were immediate and intoxicating; the kid from Medina possessed the physical traits that made scouts salivate and social media accounts explode.

The true victory for Franklin and his staff wasn’t just securing his talent; it was Allar’s loyalty. When Ohio State finally panicked and offered him a scholarship late in the recruiting cycle, the quarterback didn’t flinch. He rejected his childhood dream school to stay with the coach who believed in him before anyone else.

When asked why he turned down Ohio State, Allar was diplomatic but firm:

“’I have a great amount of respect for the Ohio State coaches and their program, but I just didn’t feel like it would be the best fit for me, personally. I feel like Penn State is a better fit for me.’”

Before he ever took a snap, Drew Allar had already delivered Franklin a win over the Buckeyes.

Finally, the Nittany Lions would have the elite quarterback required to be the difference-maker in the biggest games. The 2022 recruiting class, led by Allar, offered the newly extended Franklin the firepower to finally clear the hurdle that had defined his career.

Allar’s commitment was a line of demarcation for Franklin and the Nittany Lions.

The future, for both the program and the man in charge, would be tied to the success of their prized recruit from Central Ohio.

A Glimpse of Potential

Penn State fans wouldn’t have to wait long for a glimpse of their dream. An appetizer arrived on a humid Thursday night in West Lafayette, Indiana, midway through the 2022 season opener against Purdue. When veteran starter Sean Clifford retreated to the locker room with an injury, the “Allar Era” began not with a gradual introduction, but with a sudden, high-stakes thrust into a hostile environment.

Allar navigated the pocket with a surgical, statuesque calm.

On the first meaningful drive of his collegiate career, the eighteen year old avoided the chaos of the Purdue pass rush with the poise of a fifth-year senior. Then came the throw that would provide an allegory for the next three years of Penn State football.

Dropping back in shotgun formation, navigating the collapsing pocket, Allar effortlessly lofted a ball downfield. With a flick of the wrist that looked almost indifferent, he lofted a twenty-five-yard crescent through the Indiana night. The ball tracked a perfect, smooth arc, clearing the fingertips of an outstretched linebacker and splitting a pair of lurking safeties to find tight end Tyler Warren in a window that shouldn’t have existed.

The pass hit Warren’s hands and fell to the turf—an incompletion that was entirely irrelevant. The stadium, and the thousands watching on national television, had seen a unicorn.

It was a pro throw, a physical manifestation of the “Elite” standard Franklin had promised years earlier. The fact that the drive eventually stalled at midfield, and Allar’s next pass was wildly incomplete, mattered less than a glimpse of the potential: if a true freshman could manipulate a defense and make a throw like that, what would the finished product look like?

For a fanbase that had grown weary of game managers like Clifford and McSorley, that single incompletion was more intoxicating than a decade of safe completions. It was the lightning bolt of hope and promise that would sustain James Franklin’s credit with the community for the next thirty-sixth months.

Growing Pains

By 2022, Penn State had become firmly entrenched in the upper-middle class of college football. An eleven-win season capped by a Rose Bowl victory provided a glossy finish, but the sheen was deceptive. Once again, the Nittany Lions had surrendered second-half leads to Ohio State and Michigan. The victories were enjoyable and consistent, but the losses felt defining. Hope remained an intoxicating drug; the optimistic part of the fanbase convinced itself that Allar, after a year of seasoning behind the veteran Clifford, was the missing ingredient required to finally reach the summit.

The following year proved that hope, while intoxicating, is often a cruel mistress.

Allar’s first season as the starter was characterized not by the “pedal to the metal” aggression fans craved, but by a program stuck in neutral. While Allar set records for consecutive passes without an interception, the milestone felt more like a condemnation. On the surface, sure, the offense looked efficient and avoided turnovers. However, those watching closely saw a unit and a quarterback who looked timid, out of sync, and paralyzed in the biggest moments.

The pivot points the community expected never arrived. Against the measuring-stick defenses of Michigan and Ohio State, the unit looked less like a national contender and more like a mid-major program overwhelmed by the moment. Allar finished the year with an astounding 25-to-2 touchdown-to-interception ratio, yet his shallow yards-per-attempt told the real story: a Ferrari being driven like a minivan. A horrific performance in the Peach Bowl against Ole Miss turned whispers of doubt into a roar.

The question that haunted Happy Valley was whether Allar was playing scared, or being coached into submission. Franklin’s offensive coordinators had built a system designed to minimize errors, not maximize explosiveness. For a quarterback with Allar’s arm talent, the scheme felt like a cage. He wasn’t learning to process chaos and make off-script magic; he was checking down to safe, short throws and avoiding mistakes. In big games, when the conservative script was exposed, Allar had no improvisation or aggressive muscle memory to fall back on.

Franklin had protected his quarterback from failure—and in doing so, prevented him from developing the scar tissue elite quarterbacks need.

That pattern ingrained in the program’s reputation; Penn State shrinking in the biggest moments. Multiple blown leads against Ohio State. An offense that went conservative when aggression was needed. Had Franklin’s vice-like grip on every aspect of the program stifled the creativity and freedom required to win championship games? After almost eight years, the Lions were always on the wrong side of the big play.

Franklin’s response to media questions about his tactics rarely satisfied—always some version of (paraphrasing) “Obviously, we will look to evaluate everything and get it fixed." The questions had no easy answers. Was it coaching? Player development? Or was Franklin simply a great builder without the killer instinct to finish?

The flip side over having total control of a program is that when it goes well you can earn a $75mm contract. When it goes badly, there is really no one else to blame. The proverbial monkey on the back of big game failures would follow Franklin until he finally won one.

The season leading up to that Orange Bowl game against Notre Dame, as the Nittany Lions prepared for their first true playoff run—highlighted by a grit-and-grind overtime win at USC and a bruising encounter with Oregon—the old ghosts remained.

Penn State was at the table – thanks to an expanded twelve team playoff field – but the team, and Allar himself, didn’t look like they belonged at the head of it.

By the time Penn State reached the Semifinal Orange Bowl, Franklin and Allar were trapped in a cage of their own making.

Franklin’s need for control and fear of upsetting the consistent standard had created a risk-averse culture. A conservative philosophy had been coded into his quarterbacks’ decision-making. His coordinator choices, and the staff at large, had prevented Allar from developing the improvisational skills and aggressive mindset elite quarterbacks need. And beneath it all, Franklin’s need for validation meant he could never simply coach the game in front of him; he was always coaching against the criticism, the doubt, the ‘not elite’ label.

When the moment arrived—40 seconds, tie game, championship on the line—Allar was asked to do something Franklin’s program had never equipped him for: abandon the script and trust chaos.

The interception wasn’t just a bad throw. It was the inevitable result of a philosophy that had brought them 99% of the way to the summit, but could never carry them to the final step. When the ball left Allar’s hand, ten years of questions were answered.

A Shot at Redemption

It’s easy to look back now and point to the heartbreak in Miami as the moment the dream died—the moment the promise of James Franklin leading Penn State to a championship on the back of a prolific quarterback finally evaporated. That is the portrait history will likely draw; history rarely has time for nuance. But the reality was more complicated. The Nittany Lions actually returned the majority of their starters in 2025, led by Allar, who turned down the NFL Draft for one final run.

The “unfinished business” angle was espoused hard.

Even before the season began, however, something seemed amiss. Franklin’s pre-season comments carried an edge that betrayed something festering beneath the surface. ‘Most programs would be envious of the success we’ve had here,’ he said, repeatedly.

The man who’d once preached 1-0 mentality—focus only on the next game—was now looking backward, cataloging achievements, seemingly exhausted by the burden of never being enough. The community had given him time, resources, and a $75 million contract. But they hadn’t given him what he truly wanted: recognition as an elite coach. And in college football’s binary world, “very good” was just another word for “not good enough”.

Penn State stumbled to a rocky 3-0 start against inferior opponents. Allar did not look like the senior leader or projected top draft pick who was supposed to “take the next step” with a new trio of transfer receivers. Nittany Nation collectively held its breath, but the cracks in the facade were impossible to ignore. The weight of a decade of expectation and promise seemingly formed an anvil over the head of the coach and his quarterback.

Allar had entered his senior season as a projected first-round pick, but failed to look the part. Three years in various systems had made him efficient but not dynamic. The transfer receivers Franklin brought in—supposedly the missing pieces—only highlighted the problem: Allar had the weapons, but couldn’t make the most of them. Perhaps, after three years of being taught to avoid mistakes above all else, he’d internalized the fear so completely that freedom wouldn’t have mattered. The freedom and aggressiveness he showed at Medina High, neutered by the pressure of being labeled a “savior” for not just thousands in a stadium, but an entire fanbase.

A kid who had a thousand watt smile and rosy cheeks when he arrived in State College now looked exasperated; weighed down by the eyes of the college football world expecting a championship run and a Heisman trophy.

The Nittany Lions heartbreak would not have to wait until Ohio State this time.

The End

Everything had built to this: early October, primetime, 107,000 fans packed into Beaver Stadium’s famed White Out to watch two undefeated teams. Penn State versus Oregon—a rematch of last year’s Big Ten Championship loss. A chance at redemption.

For three quarters, doubt crept through the stadium like fog. Allar struggled to find rhythm, frequently sprinting to the sideline in frustration. Franklin battled with officials, unleashing a decade’s worth of pent-up anger. When a fumble return touchdown was overturned—a blade of grass the difference between euphoria and dread—the entire stadium seemed to collectively recognize the moment. They’d been here before.

Then the fourth quarter arrived, and hope returned. Trailing by multiple scores, Allar suddenly came alive. Forced to abandon caution by desperation, he threaded passes through the autumn night, rallying the Lions to tie the game with thirty seconds left. Overtime.

Penn State struck first, a bruising touchdown drive that felt like the entire community willing the ball forward. Up seven, they needed one stop. One play to exorcise a decade of demons. One play to prove they were finally different.

Oregon converted on fourth down to tie it. Double overtime. Penn State’s ball again. Allar had forty seconds in Miami; now the clock was irrelevant. Just get the ball into the endzone.

He dropped back and forced a throw into triple coverage. The Oregon safety stepped in front—the same setup, the same mistake. The interception floated into the opposing safety’s hands. Game over.

Allar collapsed to the turf, staring into nothing. Franklin stood frozen, the thousand-yard stare of a man who’d just watched his fate sealed. There were eight games left on the schedule, but the looks on their faces told the story.

The dream was over. Everything that followed would just be the aftermath.

The Oregon loss resulted in a psychic fracture within the team. The following week, the Lions collapsed against a winless UCLA squad on the road, then followed it up with a loss to a sub-.500 Northwestern team at home.

The football gods are cruel writers, particularly around endings.

Midway through the Northwestern game, Drew Allar fell to the grass with a twisted ankle. The quarterback who had been delivered to Penn State with the pressure of driving a program to new heights, carted off the field with tears once again streaming down his face. After the game, Franklin announced the inevitable: the quarterback’s season, and Drew’s college career, were over.

Frustration erupted down upon the man who had been greeted as a savior ten years prior. The “Fire Franklin” chants that had echoed through Beaver Stadium in October 2016 returned, louder and more certain. They’d been temporarily silenced by hope. Hope that with an elite quarterback, surrounded by more blue chip talent, Franklin’s program would finally reach that “elite” standard he set after the second consecutive loss to Ohio State in 2018. That hope had finally run out.

Franklin was fired less than twenty-four hours after the loss. The $50 million buyout and the remaining term of his contract be damned. There would be no saviors. There would be no happy endings in Happy Valley for the coach or his quarterback.

Subscribe now

New Chapters and Fresh Starts

Time heals all wounds, and history will likely be kind to the legacy of James Franklin and Drew Allar. Allar ends his career as the program’s all-time leader in completion percentage. He won more games in a single season than any other signal-caller in Nittany Lion history. Despite his season-ending injury, the quarterback remained a fixture on the sidelines, helping his backup guide the team to a 4-3 finish. His NFL story has yet to be written.

For Allar, the ending was particularly cruel. Four years of carrying expectations that would have broken most 18-year-olds, and what does he have to show for it? Program records that feel hollow, a college career that ended on a cart, and the knowledge that he’ll forever be the ‘what if’ quarterback in Penn State lore. The kid who rejected Ohio State to stay loyal, who returned for his senior year when he could have left for the NFL, who did everything asked of him—and still couldn’t deliver the moment everyone dreamed of. That’s the weight he’ll carry into the League.

Emotions remain tense—a consequence of Franklin immediately hitting the national television circuit to espouse a desire to coach elsewhere, yet refusing to issue any genuine sentiment of gratitude towards Penn State and the community. It didn’t help matters that a few weeks later, Franklin and his new staff lured the majority of the 2026 signing class with him to Virginia Tech.

Regardless, History will reflect positively on the coach. Franklin took a program that was barely surviving and turned it into a perennial Top 10 mainstay. Penn State won nearly every New Year’s Six bowl game under his watch and won multiple playoff games for the first time in school history. He leaves for Blacksburg with 104 wins—tied for second-most in program history—having won nearly 70% of his games. The fracture between Franklin and the fanbase, the transactional nature and mutual feelings of lack of appreciation, only would have been resolved with a championship.

As Penn State turns the calendar to 2026, it is forced to reckon with what could have been. Before the program can begin a new era with a new coach in Matt Campbell, it needed a final chapter for the coach and quarterback who were supposed to lift the program to the summit.

In the end, it was fitting that Franklin’s tenure ended alongside Allar’s. Both arrived in Happy Valley carrying the weight of immense promise; both accomplished great things. However, since that ‘Great to Elite’ declaration, it would not be enough for either man to simply win more than they lost. They needed to win the biggest battles. Now both start new chapters, a cloud of “how did it all go so wrong” hanging over their legacies.

In 2026, all parties receive a fresh start—Franklin in Blacksburg, Allar in the NFL, and Penn State with Campbell. The marriage had become a cycle of anger, frustration, and disappointment. It had to end.

There is a saying I heard once:

“If you can sell hope, you can usually keep working. When you run out of hope, you get run out of town.”

Ultimately, the story of Franklin and Allar is one of two fates intertwined. They needed each other to reach the mountaintop, and they came agonizingly close to the peak. But despite the achievements along the way, time simply ran out.

Hope had run out.

Share

Acquired, hosted by former venture capitalists Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal, is one of the most popular podcasts in the business niche. Leveraging their natural chemistry and expertise, Ben and David publish exhaustive deep dives, weaving the history of an enterprise from its inception to the present day.

The episodes routinely exceed four hours and occasionally span multiple parts. Alongside David Senra’s Founders, Acquired has become a global benchmark for business media. In the last eighteen months alone, they have interviewed Daniel Ek, Jensen Huang, and Mark Zuckerberg, and hosted Jamie Dimon for a live event at Radio City Music Hall.

This preamble is necessary to establish the show’s immense popularity and its staggering reach across business and technology.

Though I am not a routine listener, I tuned in when I saw the famed author Michael Lewis was interviewing Ben and David for the show’s tenth anniversary. Through Lewis’s skills, I gleaned fascinating insights into the creative process of building a brand and product.

What initially blew me away was the amount of iteration the show endured before it achieved the level of notoriety required to interview the creator of Facebook in a live arena. The hosts knew they wanted to explore their love of business, but the exact execution took several forms.

When the show first gained moderate traction, they maintained a higher cadence of shorter, shallower episodes. While the metrics were appealing, the hosts were savvy enough to realize this was drifting away from their core mission. The increased cadence left less time for research, and the quality of the end product dropped.

The subject matter also shifted. Initially, the focus was strictly on companies that had been successfully acquired. Later, in an attempt to be topical and chase immediate listeners, they covered younger institutions that lacked the history to sustain a deep narrative. They even experimented with formats like “Taylor Swift,” covering the business model of her career. All of this occurred while the show was already considered “successful” by normal metrics.

Ultimately, I find it fascinating that both hosts were willing to experiment with format and focus to find the perfect fit. They didn’t abandon the show when it failed to generate income for three years—far past the point most creators would quit. They didn’t rebrand the core concept when certain episodes failed to resonate the way they hoped.

Instead, they used feedback to iterate. They didn’t start a different show or retreat to venture capital; they stayed until they found the perfect alchemy of cadence and structure.

Share

They realized that while interviews created spikes in listeners, those audiences rarely subscribed. Instead of abandoning interviews, they pivoted to a live-event format to supplement the show rather than define it. They understood that while the news cycle drives listeners today, it does nothing to create a timeless archive. A company dominating the headlines today could be irrelevant in five years. Ben and David aren’t interested in the temporary; they were building a foundational cohort of listeners who valued deep, four-hour deep dives.

By watching the market, they discovered their focus: historic companies with intricate backstories. They moved toward creating “audio documentaries” rather than a weekly news show. They weren’t trying to make another 60-minute tech podcast; they wanted to create the definitive, timeless history of business.

Why did this jump out to me? Every day we are inundated with the demand for “more” and “new.” We are encouraged to start fast and pivot quicker. I have been guilty of this myself: if something doesn’t work immediately, I stop trying. If I don’t get the response I want, I rebrand or start something else.

It is rare that a breakthrough comes right away. More often, it comes from sticking with a project and being willing to experiment until it gets just a little closer to what you want. Then doing that again. And again. And again.

Subscribe now

Ben and David didn’t pivot to the “hot” names in tech when growth plateaued. They didn’t launch a crypto show at the height of the bubble. They stuck to the core idea: two people researching historic companies and publishing long-form deep dives.

The lesson isn’t just about persistence; it’s about choosing to iterate and adapt over a full pivot when things get difficult.

In a world that tells us to “fail fast,” Ben and David chose to “fail slowly”—iterating within their niche until the market finally caught up to their vision. They didn’t change the show to find an audience; they refined the show until it became the only place that audience could go.

Why compete with a hundred average, short-form shows when you can be the best long-form deep dive show in the industry?

Identify the core mission. Iterate and adapt relentlessly. Don’t chase short-term wins or the direction others are pushing you if it deviates from the main thing.

That’s how you end up with Michael Lewis interviewing you about your own show.

What’s the difference between 35 and 40?

5 miles?

It’s not just five miles. It’s everything.

It’s the difference between being able to live with yourself or being haunted knowing you could’ve given a little bit more. It’s the difference between whether or not you can look at yourself in the mirror.

The War Starts at Mile 35

Nine weeks after I committed to this challenge, and nine hours into this overnight ultra-marathon, the battle had finally started.

The war doesn’t start at “GO”- that’s just when the race starts. The war starts when you reach the point where every part of your body wants to quit, and 99% of your mind agrees. It’s the tango with that final 1% that determines everything.

Unfortunately, you only get to meet that 1% after enough time and suffering have passed. But here it was. The voice of reason, seducing me to stop: I’ve done enough. I have run farther than I ever have before. 35 out of 50 miles is nothing to be ashamed of. People will respect this effort.

The structure of this race - hosted by Bare Performance Nutrition on a central Texas ranch - was simple but brutal. You had to complete ten 5-mile loops within a 12-hour time cap.

If you chose to stop, voluntarily removing yourself from the fight, you were required to stand at the starting line and ring a bell. Then, you had to drop your gold entry chip into an aged bucket labeled “DNF” - Did Not Finish.

This ritual pays homage to Navy SEAL training. Requiring entrants to physically and audibly acknowledge their failure is an effective incentive to discourage quitting. And it was working on me.

The Breakdown

I had spent the entire previous five-mile loop - my seventh - resigned to the fact that my race was ending here.

The first 20 miles had been a trap. For five hours, the running was surprisingly tolerable; I felt physically strong and mentally optimistic. But the next 10 miles were a cold reality check. The dropping temperatures, six hours of slurping liquid calories, and the accumulating fatigue finally took their toll.

Lap six had been my slowest yet. It was the first time I struggled to hold a consistent pace, leading to a total physical and mental breakdown. I had been forced to collapse into a chair at base camp, looking up at my two-person support crew: my best friend and my fiancé. That stop cost me nearly 35 minutes, but seeing them and regrouping likely saved my sanity. I headed out to the dark forest again.

I stumbled into camp at the end of mile 35 - seven laps down, nine hours gone. I was ready. I called to my team, intending to walk to the line and turn my chip in. I had accepted it. Seven laps is a respectable outcome, I told myself. There is no shame in this.

Then, my best friend cut through the noise.

“You have three hours left.”

It hit me like a splash of cold water. Maybe it was the endorphins of the finish line calling, but the previous lap hadn’t actually been that bad. My body wasn’t failing anymore; it was just my mind. Yet here I was, standing on the precipice, ready to end the fight with three hours still on the clock.

The reality of the transaction sank in. If I quit now, I wouldn’t just leave with no medal - a privilege reserved only for the 50-mile finishers. I would have to hand over my timing chip. I would walk away with nothing but iPhone photos and a haunting realization: I left miles on the table. Ten weeks of training, suffering, and discipline would evaporate into a “Did Not Finish.”

What is the difference between 35 and 40? Or 45? My mind argued. If you aren’t hitting 50, who cares?

I care. The difference is knowing I emptied the tank. The difference is honoring the promise I made to run for 12 hours, not 9.

My team, thank God for them, must have seen the hesitation in my eyes. They had ignored my request to pack up the tent. They were waiting for me to catch up to the truth they already knew: I wasn’t done.

Into The Woods

“Already done nine hours. Might as well go a couple more.”

And out we went for lap eight. I was striving for five more miles, but I knew the difference was much more than that. Surprisingly, miles 35 to 40 ended up being my strongest in hours. My legs remembered how to work, shifting from the pained shuffle of the last 15 miles back into a rhythmic run.

By the time I finished that loop, with 90 minutes left on the clock, the internal debate was over. I knew I was going back out. I didn’t even bother fighting it.

For the ninth lap, the running stopped. I wrapped myself in my fiancé’s camping blanket like a cape and began the long walk. This was the hardest part. Not the physical pain, but the crushing solitude.

For 95% of that hour, it was just me, the biting Texas cold, and the sound of my own feet crunching on gravel. The darkness felt heavy. My headlamp carved a narrow tunnel of light, shrinking the world to just the six feet in front of me. When people ask me now what the hardest part was, I tell them it wasn’t the miles; it was staying strong during those long stretches of isolation in the deep woods.

In that void, humanity became a lifeline. The brief glimpses of my pit crew, or the volunteers at the aid station with their cheery voices and warm broth, were the only things keeping me from a total mental fracture.

Throw Yourself Into The Fight

The final 90 minutes didn’t feel like a battle. Without the energy-sucking need to fight off doubt, I finally had space to breathe. A feeling of complete clarity washed over me.

In the quiet of that final loop, I discovered who I was again. I found the version of myself I was most proud of - the one I wasn’t sure existed anymore. He still struggles with doubt and insecurity, sure. But I learned that he runs toward the fight. I found a guy who fell back in love with the process, finding peace in the journey rather than obsessing over the outcome.

Most importantly, I found someone who would not let fear define him.

As I finished mile 45 - 32 miles further than any previous race - I didn’t stop. I trotted out to start Lap 10, knowing full well the 12-hour clock would swallow me before I finished. I didn’t care. Out of 200 runners, I was literally the last person moving on the course.

I was defeated by the clock, but not by myself. I can live with that.

This certainly would not have been possible without the anchor of my crew. My fiancé and best friend sat through the rain and the cold, waiting for me to loop back to them. Their belief was the fuel when my own tank ran dry.

So, no. I did not run 50 miles. However, I ran for 12 hours, and I didn’t quit. I left it all out there.

Because the win isn’t the distance. It’s showing up.

You just have to be willing to throw yourself into the fight.

On August 22nd, I learned I’d been selected—out of a lottery of thousands—to run 50 miles overnight at a race hosted by one of the largest supplement brands in the world. The challenge was daunting: nearly four times farther than I had ever run, through the night, from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m., on Halloween weekend at a ranch in Central Texas. My first reaction was anxiety—every excuse surfaced about why this was impossible. But my gut told me this was the jolt I needed. A chance to wake myself from stasis, to test limits I hadn’t touched in years, and to find out what I was truly capable of.

Fast forward three months, and the training miles are in. Alongside that effort, life brought its own milestones—an engagement, a new job—making this one of the most memorable and positive stretches of my life. As race weekend arrives, I’m filled less with nerves than with gratitude. Gratitude for the process, for the people around me, and for the chance to show up at the start line ready.

Coaching and preparation. I cannot overstate the value of good coaching. Under at Tribal Training, I’ve never come close to injury or deep fatigue. He built a plan that drew on my background, accounted for my schedule, and steadily built my confidence. It was simple, effective, and sustainable—everything a plan should be.

My body. I’m grateful for years of training that gave me the capacity to pivot into endurance running and still trust my body to respond. Fitness is the ultimate compounding investment: work you put in years ago pays dividends when you decide to chase something new.

Community. Family, friends, mentors, even casual acquaintances—some knowingly, others unknowingly—have kept me accountable, inspired, and confident. You are the reason I take on challenges like this. You make the journey meaningful.

Consistency. I’m proud of the discipline I showed. Aside from one four-day stretch (where I still hit my mileage), I didn’t miss a session. Every workout was executed, and I even kept up twice-weekly strength training. Could my nutrition and mobility work have been sharper? Absolutely. But the training itself was as close to a 10/10 as I could hope for.

Some moments stand taller than others. The clearest: running 26.2 miles through Manhattan on a random Tuesday. Being between jobs was a blessing—I had the window to attempt it. One of my biggest doubts had been: How can I run 50 miles if I’ve never even run a marathon? That day, with a four-hour session scheduled, I knew I’d be close to the distance. So I pushed. I wanted to know, in my bones, that I could. That run broke me down physically and mentally, but it also built me up. It stripped away the stories I tell myself and forced me to see what was left when excuses fell away. That experience is now a cornerstone of my confidence.

Now, just days out, I feel the nerves. They sit next to excitement. And I remind myself: nerves are good. They mean this matters. Out of thousands of entrants, I get to toe the line. I get to celebrate the work I put in while surrounded by hundreds of others chasing their own limits. I’ve already won by staying committed through a season of change.

I hope the day brings a 50-mile finish in under 12 hours. But the real victory has already happened: I showed up, I did the work, I stayed consistent despite distractions and the fear of failure. Running has become more than training. It has become a grounding force—quiet mornings before the city wakes, feet on pavement, thoughts sharpening with each step.

The race is still ahead. But the preparation is complete. Now comes the fun part. To test myself, to push past fear, to learn who I am through challenge. To remind myself that I am, above all, an athlete—and that joy is the reason I do this in the first place.

One foot in front of the other. That’s all it takes. See you on the other side.

I ask myself this often; but in this unique case, I really have to think about it.

The most I have ever run in one effort is 13.1 miles. With a dial back in running, and shifted focus on doing my first triatholon, I MAYBE have run 50 miles TOTAL in the last month.

Despite this - on Saturday, November 1st, I will be attempting to run 50 miles. Consecutively, and through the night no less. At a literal ranch in Central Texas.

Again - almost certainly, there is something wrong with me.

Warm Up

3 months ago, I ran my first half-marathon. This was a big deal to ME, but in the overall grand-scheme of things, running 13.1 miles once, is not an earth-shattering achievement. For someone who had pretty much never spent time in endurance based activities (even going back to my youth sports days; I hated conditioning/running), training for and successfully completing my first half-marathon was a big deal. I had the running bug, and started to understand why so many people fall in love with running.

I have shared before the interest and journey that led me from training for aesthetics, to strength, and then eventually Crossfit. After needing a shift, I had recently taken to running, and became interested in the broader “endurance sport” world. After going from a scrawny teen tennis player, to college-aged kid into strength and powerlifting, then finally a 30 year-old who could do muscle ups on rings and walk on his hands - I still had always looked at endurance athletes as an entirely different breed of athlete and human.

While the movements (running, biking, swimming) are pretty elementary - the ridiculous mental fortitude it takes to do these for hours on end, at the distance some of these people would do them, is jaw dropping.

“That could never be me”, I thought. A little over two hours in my head running was probably my max. Sitting on a spin bike for 60 minutes can be a struggle. I weigh somewhere between 215-225lbs, I am not built for doing anything for 3-12 hours aside from sleeping.

But one day…

Ah the “one day” fallacy.

It would be cool to “one day” complete all the major fitness event types. I pull out my notes app, enter in “powerlifting, crossfit comp, half-marathon” and quickly add a check mark to those.

I add sprint triathlon, half-ironman, full ironman, and a marathon. I added an ultra marathon as well, effectively a marathon on steroids (50-100 miles+ in length, and in some cases no defined ending - the race doesn’t end until there is one runner left). I view the ultra as something I will likely attempt once I do the shorter events, shed 50 pounds, and built of thousands of miles and hours of training. One day…

I’m a hypocrite. I have internally said “people are capable of so much more than they think they are”, and “most people sit around saying ‘one day’ they’ll chase their dreams, and ‘one day’ never comes and they’re filled with regret”. Shame and fear; keeping them paralyzed from ever trying”.

In truth, I found myself getting softer. Maybe not physically, but spiritually and mentally. When I look back on my early 20s; I reminisce on the optimism, confidence, aggression, the internal drive I felt I had. Now that view replaced by feelings, at almost 32, that negativity, self doubt, and lack of credibility/accountability had taken over. The world has beaten me down a little. I am feeling lost - and then the universe comes calling.

Earlier in the summer, I found myself captivated by a race held by supplement company founder and major fitness athlete Nick Bare at his ranch outside of Austin, Texas. Over almost three days, runners completed a last man standing, ultra marathon style race where runners had to complete a 4.2 mile loop every hour on the hour until there was a single runner left (it took an act of god for the race to end, the two runners never quit, there was a storm that created safety hazards for everyone involved).

A few weeks later, I saw a post from BPN (Nick’s company; one of the biggest brands in the supplement space) about the lottery for another ultra race in the fall. I sign up, and text my best friend - “Imagine. I definitely couldn’t do it, but I would have to figure it out and try”. Always giving my fantasy version of myself way more credit than I give my real life counterpart.

Fast forward a few months, focus fully shifts on life and training for my first triathlon. In the middle of the work day, I find out that out of THOUSANDS of applicants, many no doubt more qualified and experienced than me, I was one of 200 people selected to compete in the overnight ultra on November 1st down in Texas.

Fear sets in.

Is this even possible? It is certainly not “safe”. There’s no way. It’s 10 weeks away. Could I do it? How could I turn down this opportunity? But the risk.

The thoughts flood my mind, excuses, fears, excitement, apprehension, determination all building.

I share it with some close friends and fitness enthusiasts (endurance and non-endurance), and receive the same response: “You HAVE to do this”.

It takes me approximately 48 hours to decide against any logical or reasonable judgement. I have to try.

Why?

I might not be the most prepared. I don’t know if I'll succeed or fail. There is a risk of injury. All those “if, may, maybe” statements. One thing I know for certain, is that if I don’t at least give it everything I have and show up and attempt this, I will always regret it. I’ll always regret, and wonder what if. What if I had bet on myself. What if I had had full faith in confidence in my preparation and dedication and the support around me that I could embrace fear, uncertainty, pain - and accomplish something I never thought possible. Push myself farther than I ever thought possible.

That is worse for me than any “maybe”, “but what about”, or “this might happen”. I would rather go down swinging, knowing I tried - than look back and say I didn’t, that I was too afraid to step into the arena when called. Not hitting 50 miles wouldn’t be a true failure, that would be quitting before I even tried, before I even knew the limits of what I was capable of.

Fear and self doubt will no longer be the overriding factor in my decision making. Will it be hard? That’s the whole [expletive] point. Only certain things can be learned by going through the “hard”. You don’t wake up resilient. It’s forged in the fire of hard.

It’s free, but it costs everything -

There is a strong possibility I will not be able to make it through the full 50 miles. I might get injured. I might do all this training, get down there, and not finish the race. I acknowledge those facts.

But I wouldn’t be able to live with myself, if I didn’t live by what I believe in. That WE are all capable of anything we set our minds to. That failure is nowhere near as bad as not even trying in the first place. Most times, we quit on ourselves before even giving ourselves the chance to succeed.

I am writing this to hold myself accountable. I am writing this because maybe it will help someone else. I am writing this to document the process and the journey - so I can look back on it as a reminder when I feel that fear, self doubt, and softness creeping in once again. Because it always comes back. It’s never an end, only a temporary reprieve.

I hope I finish. I don’t know if I will.

The only thing I know for certain?

I’m going to try and fight like hell.

See you in the arena.

When I first started writing earlier this year, it was really to satisfy a personal urge. Initially, I struggled to determine what exactly that urge was. I constantly found myself dealing with a mental storm, my brain scattered and jumping from thought to thought. I was unable to focus for extended periods of time, reading constantly interrupted by a need to check my phone or look at an app. I needed to do something to disperse the energy that was built up in my mind and body, but somehow left me feeling constantly fatigued. I needed something to ground me in the present moment. The realization dawned on me - I was missing the act of creation. Literally using my mind or my hands to make something that previously had not existed, not just sitting and consuming something mindlessly. This sounds extremely basic, but I venture to bet if you are similar to myself in regards to your age (shoutout young millennials) and are not an artist by trade; that you rarely, if ever, are actually “creating” anything.

Think about it. We wake up, and 99% of us immediately grab our phone. We start frying our central nervous system with dopamine-hijacking 12-second videos or 140-character messages. We go to work, sit in front of screens, move numbers around, and answer emails. After the taxing workday, we need to unwind. So, we sit in front of an even larger screen, playing something we barely watch while we digest our nighttime serving of digital sludge.

This is not meant to be a depressing diatribe on the state of the world in 2025, just more of an observation that I have been thinking about as I have begun to build my creation muscles back up. Atrophy is the act of muscle mass disintegrating when it goes unused. Just as your physical muscle mass disappears if you don’t actively use it, so too does mental muscle mass. I cannot be alone in noticing how difficult it is to concentrate now, or how rarely I go throughout my day without watching something, or feeling the need to click into one of the various trillion dollar applications designed to feed off this urge.

Writing turned out to be the rare activity for me where I was completely unaware of how much time had passed while I was doing it. As someone whose life has revolved around competitive fitness and finance for over a decade, measuring numbers and time pretty much dominated my life. Suddenly, it was not about tracking some quantifiable variable - but simply creating something.

Creation, in whatever form, literally requires different parts of your brain than just consuming information. I have always prided myself on being a very active reader, but even as someone who reads a tremendous amount - digesting information does not have the same effects as taking those inputs in your mind, mixing them in a stew, and delivering outputs.

The outlook for society does not rapidly seem to be improving in regards to how skewed it is towards consumption vs creation. The rise of the internet and mobile phones has dramatically increased the convenience of our lives, but at the cost of the ability to engage in making things of our own creation. Boredom or inactivity often led Gen X or Baby Boomers to writing great works of art, painting masterpieces, or cultivating vibrant social lives. Millennials and Gen Z inversely have limitless forms of “entertainment” at their fingertips - there is rarely the space to think and create that said physical or mental inactivity often provides.

We haven't even gotten to the generation raised on iPads and TikTok yet. In the coming decade, a whole cohort of young people will enter adulthood, having spent the majority of their time in front of screens from almost the moment they experienced consciousness. Long car rides, once spent daydreaming or reading, have been replaced with flashing content and declining attention spans chasing the next distraction. This group will have gone through school using artificial intelligence that gives them every answer, rather than forced to go to the library or even filter through Google search results. In their spare time, endless online forms of “entertainment” numb their brains from developing an original thought or perspective, hindering critical thinking ability.

I am glad I grew up when I did. I’m still struggling to pay attention, and I’ll binge television or play video-games for hours with the best of them - but I'm glad I grew up with legos, action figures, books, and [insert boomer voice] playing outside. Writing really illuminated how much my “creation” muscles had atrophied. It also made me audit how much time I was actively using them vs just consuming.

Ordering food on an app vs cooking, scrolling social media vs writing or drawing, streaming content vs playing an instrument or learning photography- the ways in which our lives have totally been shifted towards consuming vs creating are numerous. There’s not a takeaway I have here, or a nice little motivational directive. Creation can look different for everyone, maybe its food for one person, relationships or social activity for another. Whatever it is, I hope we can all take back our ability to get out of pure consumption mode. Maybe we can all take a step back, or outside, and do something with our hands and our minds. Otherwise, I’m not even sure there will be much left to take over for the iPad kids.

After dropping a flurry of articles discussing the 2025 Stanley Cup Finals, life picked up—multiple international weddings, a beach vacation, and far too much time on Twitter (never calling it X, sorry Elon). I got away from the writing cadence, and lost some momentum. It happens, but I want to live by what I preach, and there’s no excuse not to get back into the swing of things and talk about things that interest me. Despite it being roughly a month since the Panthers lifted the 34 lb silver chalice for the second consecutive summer, I’ve still been thinking about the Florida Panthers. Not about their punishing forecheck, nor the heroic efforts of individual players, but something else more relatable.

These Florida Panthers are a really interesting case study in calculated risk-taking, masterful decision-making, and a supercharged environment that extends beyond the sport of hockey. While I enjoyed writing about the Finals live at the moment, it's less interesting to me now to dwell on the specifics of what happened, and more about what made this team special, and allowed them to secure back-to-back titles. The now mini-dynasty in South Florida shows us a roadmap to improve performance, amplify results, and enhance decision making. You don’t have to be a die-hard hockey fan to take something valuable from these lessons. Let’s dive in.

Environment Matters

You can be the best singer in the world, but if the rest of the band is subpar, you are probably not going to sell that many records (this analogy would’ve crushed in the early 2000’s, but the point still holds). You could be an incredible performer, but if your firm or team is struggling, it will likely put a ceiling on how far you go. Sports, entertainment, and the world at large are full of examples of exceptional individual talents that only achieved so much because of the circumstances around them. Would Tom Brady have won six Super Bowls if he was drafted by the Cleveland Browns, or the New York Jets? Unlikely. Would Apple have been as successful if Jobs didn’t meet Wozniak? Maybe, maybe not. On the flip side, what if Dominique Wilkins had been drafted by the Lakers instead of James Worthy? Is he now known as one of the greatest players of all-time? One with multiple championships rather than primarily known for the Dunk Contest spectacle. Where you are matters. Who you're with, matters. The best version of yourself, and your greatest success might lie on the other side of finding the right environment. Whether it's your career, living situation or relationships, ask yourself: Are your surroundings enabling your success? Or are they contributing to the drift of mediocrity? This Florida Panthers team is full of examples of players, who for various reasons, were either not reaching their potential, or needed a new environment to elevate their game. Matthew Tkachuk, Sam Reinhart, and Sam Bennett were all exceptional hockey players (if you make it to the NHL, you are in the top 0.0000001% of anyone who has ever played the sport) - but prior to arriving in Florida, none had truly ascended to superstar status (Tkachuk was definitely the closest, and also the one whose exit had more to do with personal reasons than on-ice results). However, all of them needed to come together in Florida to supercharge their careers - the sum of the whole being greater than the individual parts.

While Tkachuk was a rising star in Calgary, he seemed destined to be a good player on a team that was bound to be mildly competitive at best. The Flames were unable to build the supporting cast and organizational infrastructure necessary to open and sustain a championship window. Bennett and Reinhart were top five draft picks that were floundering on moribund franchises (you could compose a whole all-star team of players the Buffalo Sabres and Calgary Flames have traded, who then went on to win elsewhere). The lesson here is that while every player was “good” in their previous situation, it took them finding the right place, with the right people, to truly realize their full potential.

Matthew Tkachuk, Sam Reinhart, and Sam Bennett at their previous places of employment

This is not a directive to drop everything in your life, quit your job, move to Tibet, and change everything for the sake of change - but it's a worthwhile endeavor for all of us to look at where we are personally and professionally, and ask: “Is this the environment, group, or situation that will allow me to be the best version of myself?” The Panthers are an excellent lesson in the power of finding the right combination of environment and teammates, and never settling until you find your own championship environment. Bonus points if your peak environment also happens to have sunny beaches and no state income tax.

The Road From Good to Great is Built On Risk

At any point, when pursuing something—whether it be a business endeavor, a championship, a career move, a new relationship—there are moments of choice, where one must evaluate risk and reward, and often make tough decisions with lack of clarity or certainty. As the old saying goes: “no risk, no reward.”

When the Florida Panthers started their climb out of the doldrums of the NHL standings in the mid 2010s, just getting the team back to the playoffs seemed like a monumental task. Following a six-year stretch where the team’s best finish was a first-round playoff loss, everything finally seemed to come together in 2021-2022. The core of homegrown stars in Alexander Barkov, Jonathan Huberdeau, and Aaron Ekblad led the Panthers to a Presidents’ Trophy (the award for best record in the regular season) finish. The team then won its first playoff series victory in 26 years, before immediately being swept by the cross-state rivals Tampa Bay Lightning (on their way to their third consecutive Finals appearance). After spending the majority of your franchise’s existence as a laughingstock of the league—this was a tremendous step forward. 99% of teams, people, organizations—whatever you want to use—would have accepted this progress and been thrilled with the direction things were headed. They were still 12 wins away from the ultimate prize, but they had achieved the best record in the organization’s history, won a playoff series for the first time in a quarter century, and still had a core of young stars in their prime. Standing pat, trusting the process, and making small adjustments—would’ve been prudent. General Manager Bill Zito wasn’t interested in being prudent. He wasn’t interested in being “good”; he wanted to be “great”. The Panthers needed to take a swing at greatness.

Zito’s summer 2022 trade for Matthew Tkachuk completely reinvented the Panthers’ identity

When the following summer, a young burgeoning superstar came available (Tkachuk), Zito pounced. He sent two of his best young homegrown players (Huberdeau and defenseman Mackenzie Weegar) in return (big risk, big upside) for the star who wanted out of Alberta. Zito and ownership also fired the coach that had led the team to its record finish while making them one of the highest scoring teams in the league—and chose to replace him with a coach who had been fired or resigned from three other teams. Said coach (Paul Maurice) was also notorious for being hard and demanding on players (big, big risk). It took massive conviction and guts not only from management, but ownership as well, to realize while they were on a “good” path, they were going to need to make some hard choices, and take some calculated risks if they were going to get on the GREAT path.

Author Sahil Bloom often speaks about the importance of finding YOUR path. Paraphrasing the NYT best-selling author: “The worst thing is not being on a bad path, because that is inherently obvious and spurs quick, corrective action, but rather being on a ‘good’ path that isn’t yours, because the pull to stay on it is so strong.” When things are “fine” and “good,” the pull of staying on the set path is so easy. Why risk it getting worse? Why mess with what has worked? But, as the old saying goes, risk and reward: they go hand in hand. The most dangerous trap is being stuck in “good enough”. If you want to find the job of your dreams, it may require the big risk of entering a new field with a lack of experience. If you want to create something, you have to risk feeling dumb or insecure. If you want to build deep and rewarding relationships, you have to take the swing of putting yourself out there. There is probably a reason no great story has ever been told that looks like—“everything was super clear and easy, and no decisions were really that difficult, and everything worked out exactly as planned.” The Panthers are a sports-related example that sometimes to get to great—whatever you define that as—you are going to have to take a large risk at some point, and if you do it in an intelligent way, you can catapult yourself from good to great. The risk of firing your coach (who had also just won the NHL’s Coach of the Year award), and trading two of your best young players (albeit for another great young player), are two of the riskiest things any modern team has done. But Zito knew the trajectory the team had currently been on was one of “good,” and playing it safe would have kept them on that path.

Celebrated now, but at the time the hire of Paul Maurice was met with criticism

Without being comfortable with risk, Zito might have stayed on course, and the hockey landscape looks much different. At some point in your life, personally or professionally—you are going to need to evaluate and get comfortable taking a risk. As clichéd as it might be, the harder that choice, the bigger the risk, usually means the bigger the reward. (Disclaimer: Don’t put all your money on fifteen-leg parlays or crypto.)

Forget Chasing Someone's Example - Create Your Own

Trying to be the best version of someone else is a losing battle. Identifying what makes ourselves unique and valuable, and maximizing our efforts and focus there is the best way to maximize our chances at success. Listen to anyone speak about the NHL playoffs, and it takes all of five seconds to hear: “toughness”, “grit”, and “physicality”. The surface level takeaway of the Panthers journey is that Florida took a chainsaw to its high-scoring, sleek, offensive team and created a tough, defensive minded, mental juggernaut because that is the stereotype of a successful playoff team in hockey. The truth, as it often does, requires a little more nuance.

Yes, they brought in Tkachuk—who was more of an independent play-driver than Jonathan Huberdeau (himself a gifted offensive player, but required more support from linemates), and more physical. However, it took a full-scale commitment from the coaching staff and management to develop a system of play around the players on its roster. Yes Florida is “physical” and “tough to play against” - but the coaches identified the roster’s strengths were around players like Tkachuk, Bennett, and Sasha Barkov who thrived off chances created from forechecking and puck-possession - and less so from the high-flying transition game the team had been playing previously under former coach Andrew Brunette. Had Florida’s reflection from getting swept by the Lightning been—'we need to play like them’, the league probably looks very different right now. Florida looked at what the players on its roster were exceptional at, and built its system around them, rather than what other teams were doing well.

Rather than forcing players to fit a pre-designed system, they designed a system around the strength of its people. How often are we comparing ourselves to others? How much progress has been lost from wasting time and energy looking at co-workers, peers, or strangers on the internet? Driving ourselves crazy with comparison to others. I catch myself often finding pre-determined roles or behaviors, and trying to fit into them rather than doubling down on what I am good at, or what makes me unique. I would be shocked if I’m alone in that feeling. How much better off would we be if we got off of LinkedIn, Instagram, or TikTok and channeled our energy instead into thinking about what our own natural strengths are? The Panthers have shown the results building around and focusing on our strengths and unique identity, instead of chasing a recipe laid out by others. You’ll never be the best version of someone else—but you can be the best version of YOU.

Whose in Your “Front Office”?

While General Manager Bill Zito gets most of the credit for building the Panthers, anyone paying attention realizes the importance of the team alongside him in the front office. Throughout the many post-victory interviews he’s done since winning the Stanley Cup again, Zito’s been quick to deflect focus and credit towards other members of the team’s front office, often citing the importance the group’s input, lack of ego, and different perspectives played in building this team. When there is only a single person making decisions or solving problems—mistakes, bias, and lack of unique perspectives can invite failure. After purchasing the team in 2013, Florida’s owner Vincent Viola made a commitment to invest in the franchise, and not just on player salaries. Viola realized one of my personal favorite insights, that there is no salary cap on what an organization can spend beyond the players on the ice. Viola not only built out a robust infrastructure and new facilities, but supported Zito in making aggressive and unique front office hires to balance out areas that were outside of his expertise. While he had experience as an agent, Zito brought in Shawn Thornton and Roberto Luongo, two former Panthers players who could provide a direct line to the locker room and offer valuable first-hand, on ice experience. Zito made unconventional hires like Sunny Mehta, a former professional poker player and derivatives trader, to be the team’s head of analytics and recently Assistant General Manager. These are just a few of the many, but Zito and others have frequently talked about the extensive discussions this front office consortium had throughout the year and offseason on building this team. Many specifically highlight the group’s ability to check their egos at the door, challenge conventional wisdom, and provide fresh perspectives while having a culture of open dialogue and freedom of debate.

Viola (owner), Thornton, Luongo, and Mehta were just some of front office contributors

While corporate C-suites and boards of directors have ballooned, too often businesses and individuals continue to silo decision making. Either from inability to properly take feedback, or ego inflation keeping us from considering different points of view, anyone would benefit from having a similar supportive and trusted group for advice and feedback. Whether it's friends to bounce ideas off of, or peers to challenge our assumptions—finding fresh perspectives and using others can help sharpen your decision making and check for biases. The key is to make sure that we're considering diverse viewpoints and developing relationships with people who can challenge us to think in different ways while helping prevent us from falling victim to our own blind spots. It’s easy in sports and business to point to the individual’s role in success: the star player, the genius executive. More often than not—as the Panthers have proven—there are frequently a number of key players supporting and auditing the decision making process. The ice level game is the ultimate team game, it only makes sense to view the front office as one as well. Zito and Viola made this a core part of reinventing the franchise, and we’d be wise to consider our own “Front Office” going forward.

The Bigger Picture

Decades from now, this Florida Panthers team will be remembered for their incredible accomplishments on the ice. Qualifying for the playoffs on the final day of the 2023 season, the Panthers went on to three straight Stanley Cup Finals appearances, winning the last two. The memories of strong and unique personalities of the players on the roster will be forged into legend, while many will recount the impressive depth throughout the lineup the team was able to regenerate year after year. For me, the really interesting story of the team has been elsewhere, providing a roadmap anyone would be keen to follow. Beyond punishing body checks and powerful slap shots, a team’s championship DNA is built by a group of people coming together for something bigger than themselves—taking calculated risks, embracing new environments, forging a unique identity, and having a strong and open decision-making group. You don’t have to be an NHL player, front-office representative, athlete, business mogul, or anything special to realize some value from what we’ve learned from the Panthers’ recent run of success. You just need to be open-minded and willing to go further than ice level - you might just find something useful.

Florida’s famous “rat” victory celebration momento - made famous during the ‘96 Finals run

Back when the New England Patriots were in the midst of their near two-decade dominance in the NFL - there was always a feeling of inevitability in high stakes situations. No matter how strong another team started, or how much more skill they had, there was always a feeling that the longer the game went on - the Patriots would find a way, and more times than not it would be by simply not making the critical mistakes other teams would. Why am I talking about the NFL in a post about the Stanley Cup Final? Frankly, a play-by-play of a game that was only competitive for four minutes isn't a good use of anyone's time, or particularly interesting to read about. So I wanted to do something a little different here after Florida’s absolute drubbing of the Oilers 6-1 in Game 3. Like those 2000s Patriots (and now the Kansas City Chiefs), these Florida Panthers have taken on the allure of that “inevitable” juggernaut team that will make you beat yourself. I was being facetious earlier, the game actually was close until a few minutes into the second period, but from then on it was a complete meltdown by Edmonton, who played right into Florida’s hands by taking a parade of senseless and undisciplined penalties that gave Florida a significant amount of time with an extra skater to extend an early lead.

Edmonton took about 3 years worth of penalties throughout the game, and Florida took advantage on the scoreboard and to hijack the momentum the rest of the way. It’s almost impossible for highly skilled teams like the Oilers to establish momentum when constantly shorthanded, and the Oilers ended up taking a combined 85 penalty minutes in Game 3. The first game at Amerant Bank arena was a microcosm of what makes the Panthers so special - enough skill to play high-risk games, enough physicality and grit to beat you in a street fight, and enough mental savy to goad you into taking undisciplined penalties. The whole game was a masterclass by a team that has spent the last three years excelling in making teams beat themselves, and even a team with McDavid and Draisaitl couldn’t overcome the amount of mental errors and lack of discipline the Oilers showed on Monday night. While Edmonton has shown tremendous signs of resiliency this postseason, it feels like Florida has been doing this for so long, against so many different types of opponents, that they are going to be impossible to beat four times in seven games. Additionally, Florida’s incredible depth became a huge factor in the series as Tkachuk and Barkov have been mostly silent, combining for one point through three games. You absolutely need star players to win and carry your team, but eventually those players are going to have games where they do not score, and the rest of your roster needs to balance that out. So far Florida’s has, while Edmonton’s had decidedly not. Edmonton could certainly flush one bad game away, a blowout was likely to happen at least once in the series after two incredibly close games - but Game 3’s mental warfare felt like the schoolyard bully showing the upstarts that even though they learned some lessons, it’s going to take a lot more than a few good punches to knock these heavyweights out.

Game 4 - Edmonton 5 - Florida 4 (OT)

For about 20 minutes on Thursday night, the Game 3 diatribe above looked downright prophetic. I was already turning the wheel in my mind about just expanding the above into one long piece about how special the Florida Panthers are, and how they had staked their claim as one of the most dominant teams of the last thirty years - and took a stranglehold on the series, putting itself one win away from its second consecutive Stanley Cup. The first period might as well have been a fourth period of Game 3 - Edmonton continued to look daunted by the moment, gifting Florida power plays, and star Matthew Tkachuk finally broke through with 2 goals to give Florida what felt like an insurmountable 3-0 lead after one period.

Hockey Twitter was alive with “thanks for coming Edmonton” narratives, and most had turned the page to game 5. Teams were 0-37 in Stanley Cup Finals games when facing a 3 goal deficit after the first period. You were probably justified if you changed the channel to something else. This is what makes Hockey the absolute best though, particularly when two elite teams get together at this stage of the year, and absolutely lay everything on the line in order to hoist that 34-pound silver chalice. Stuart Skinner got pulled (think we clearly can remove him from the goalie battle in our narrative discussion) - and the Oilers came roaring back in the second and took the lead midway through the third period. Edmonton, who had already come back to win 8 games when trailing this playoff run, is showing its resiliency is not far off from Florida’s either, and displayed the kind of grit and fight that may have been imbued in their team culture after clawing back from a 3 game deficit in last year’s Finals. Not relying on its two generational players solely, or a parade of power play opportunities, Edmonton got its own contributions from depth players (defensemen Darnell Nurse and Jake Walman) to take what looked like the final lead late in the third period.

Had the match ended there, it would have already been a historic game - however Florida said “hold my beer”, and Sam Reinhart tied the game with 19.5 seconds left, sending Amerant Bank arena into absolute bedlam and sending the 3rd of 4 games into extra time.

Regardless of what the outcome was going to be here, this had already been one of the best Finals series in sports of the last twenty years. Multiple overtime games, two incredible teams staging comeback wins, star players delivering on the biggest stages - the championship round has been all a fan could've asked for and more from an entertainment perspective. The fact that Leon Draisaitl (Pippen to McDavid’s Jordan) scored ANOTHER OT game winner and sends this series back to Edmonton tied 2-2 makes it even more dramatic (Draisaitl is probably the favorite right now to win the playoff MVP if Edmonton wins), especially after Florida’s Sam Bennett hit the post minutes before, almost handing Florida a 3-1 series win. Florida now has to trek back to Edmonton haunted by a new reality. In two of the last three games, Edmonton has done the impossible against them. They became the first team in 32 tries to beat this Panthers squad after trailing by multiple goals. More historically, they became the first team in 38 attempts in the Stanley Cup Final to win a game they trailed by three goals after the first period.

Can Florida continue to exhibit championship poise and not let being so close to having a commanding lead affect them? Can Edmonton use this momentum from the brink of death to take control of the series and win two more games and deliver the cup to Canada for the first time in 32 years? Can Draisaitl and McDavid ascend to all-time great status with their first championship? Or will Florida’s own core cement itself as one of the legendary teams of the modern era? There are literally so many questions and narratives left to answer in this Stanley Cup Final, I managed to get to the end of this piece without mentioning that Taylor Swift was in the building.

The series started off high energy, as Edmonton having home-ice this time around provided a definite energy boost to the home team early. Edmonton immediately came out flying, with Draisaitl scoring just over a minute into the game. Edmonton’s high energy and clear emphasis on getting pucks to the net resulted in the goal, showing early signs that Edmonton was prioritizing a fast start after falling down 3 games to none last year. Maybe it was just the benefit of starting at home, but Edmonton’s energy was noticeably higher than Florida’s, as they generated far more chances early and overall just seemed much faster in transition than the Panthers. After carrying the play for the majority of the start, the never-say-die Panthers made something out of nothing and immediately got a response goal from Bennett, with some possible goaltender interference controversy. Immediately following an unsuccessful challenge, Florida scored on the ensuing power play - leaving Edmonton reeling after dominating the start.

When the Panthers scored a third goal early in the second period to make it 3-1, Edmonton was suddenly in danger of losing the home opener - a gut-punch after controlling the early play. This was the first instance where Edmonton showed it had learned from the trials of previous playoff failures, doing what it has done all year and climbing out of a multi-goal deficit. Viktor Arvidsson launched a point shot that beat Bobrovsky - a soft goal from Bob, but one that immediately kept the game from being out of reach. 3-2 Panthers.

Previously, Florida had been 31-0 in the playoffs when having a lead under Coach Paul Maurice; however, Connor McDavid can be a great equalizer. Midway through the third period, McDavid drew the attention of every player on the ice before delivering a stunning cross-ice pass to Ekholm, who tied the game 3-3.

If we didn’t know already, this series was going to be a five-star tilt between two elite teams, with almost no margin for error. The game would continue into overtime, where an accidental over-the-glass delay of game penalty gave Edmonton a power play, and Edmonton's OTHER generational talent buried his second goal of the game to give Edmonton a 1-0 advantage to start the series. By showing a dedication to physical play (and not letting Florida dominate them on the boards), displaying resilience, and its generational stars delivering in the biggest moments, the Oilers threw the first punch.

Game 2: Florida 5 - Edmonton 4 (2OT)

Years from now, when both of these teams and the rest of the league look back on the run these teams have put together over the last few years, what might be most remembered about the Florida Panthers is their sheer ability to let nothing faze them mentally. A lot of teams might have been frazzled by losing Game 1 in OT, coming so close to stealing a game on the road, only to come up short. The Florida Panthers are not most teams. Almost immediately to start Game 2, the Panthers came to play. The contest was a seesaw battle, with neither team able to dominate for any significant stretch. This series has already been defined by its stars. For Edmonton, McDavid and Draisaitl have been immense, while Florida's core of Bennett, Tkachuk, and Barkov have all made huge impacts. When Edmonton seemed poised to take the game over, getting a power play late in the second period with the game tied 3-3, playoff veteran and trade deadline acquisition Brad Marchand sprung on a breakaway and buried a short-handed goal for a 4-3 Florida lead.

The third period was an absolute back-and-forth affair, with Edmonton throwing absolutely everything it had at Bobrovsky, but it seemed like it was going to be Florida’s night. That was until Edmonton’s own wily playoff veteran who’s won a cup with another team - Corey Perry - scored a goal with under 20 seconds left to send Rogers Place into absolute bedlam.

Edmonton truly was going to do everything in its power to test Florida’s mental resolve. Giving up a goal with 20 seconds left, after losing its first game in 31 tries when having a lead, would destroy most teams' psyches. The Florida Panthers are not most teams. After carrying the play most of the first OT, with Sam Reinhart getting a glorious chance on a breakaway, the Panthers had to be going into the second bonus frame feeling good, and Brad Marchand buried his second breakaway halfway through the frame to send the series back to Florida tied.

After two games, the series has absolutely delivered on the hype. Both games have gone to OT, both teams' star players have been excellent, and there have been multiple lead changes in each game. So far, the 2025 Stanley Cup Final has provided drama, thrills, excitement, and chaos. With two games down, let's check in on some of the key narrative points.

The Rematch - The fact these teams know each other so well and the bad blood of last year has made this series way more intense right from the get-go than a normal series would be, and also probably explains why the games have been so close. Both teams know how the other plays, and there is zero margin for error. Additionally, they clearly don't like each other, as Game 2 especially featured an abundance of post-whistle scrums and intense physical play. So far, the Rematch has delivered on the entertainment value.

McDavid Legacy Watch - Connor has been phenomenal in both games, clearly being the best player on the ice. In time, it may be buried in the loss, but his assist on Edmonton’s third goal in Game 2 was one of the greatest individual displays of skill in the history of the game. With 5 points through 2 games, it's safe to say McDavid is doing his part.

Florida’s Dynasty Bid - Regardless of how the rest of the series goes, Florida’s resilience and ability to bounce back from any swing in momentum and take advantage of the smallest of opportunities will always be remembered. They are clearly showing the mental fortitude and complete identity that comes with three straight Finals runs.

The Goalies - I don’t feel either goalie has been particularly good or has swung momentum in either game so far. Both games have featured goals both would probably prefer to have back, along with some huge momentum-shifting saves. But neither has put together a full game yet or swung the momentum based on their play - i.e., neither goalie has been the main reason their team won or lost. I don't suspect that will be the case through five more games.

Contrasting Philosophies - I have actually been surprised by how physical Edmonton has been. Clearly, they remembered being taken aback by how bright the lights were last year and made sure to send a statement right away that they weren't going to be intimidated or beaten physically by the big bad Panthers. Through two games, these teams have more closely resembled each other than not.

With possibly five more games left, the league and fans could not have asked for a better start to the 2025 Stanley Cup Finals. Both teams have had major swings in momentum, star players have delivered, the dramatics have been of the highest order, and back-to-back OT games send the series to Miami tied at one game apiece.

For the first time since 2009, the championship round of the Stanley Cup playoffs will feature a rematch of the two final teams from the previous year’s finals - such a rematch is rare, having only happened twice over the last 40+ years (2008 and 2009 with the Pittsburgh Penguins and Detroit Red Wings, and then in 1983 and 1984 with the New York Islanders and these same Edmonton Oilers). A rematch alone would be interesting enough given the rarity, but given the dramatics of last year’s finals the stage is even brighter the second time around. Last year featured its own dramatic redemption arc. After losing the 2023 Stanley Cup Finals, the Florida Panthers roared to a 3-0 series lead. They then teetered on the brink of a historic collapse, nearly becoming the first team to blow such a lead in a championship series, before ultimately vanquishing the Oilers in Game 7 on home ice.The almost historic comeback that didn’t happen was thanks to the herculean effort of one man…

The Weight of Greatness: McDavid's Legacy on the Line

Last year Connor McDavid became just the sixth player EVER to win the Conn Smythe Trophy (the NHL’s Playoff MVP award) on the losing team. McDavid was unquestionably the best player across the entire playoffs, using his explosive speed and fast twitch play-making to dominate the game on a physical level not seen since Mario Lemieux. McDavid tallied 42 points with a record-breaking 34 assists in 24 games, and almost led his team to a historic comeback. Echoing Sidney Crosby's journey a decade prior, McDavid has carried the weight of 'generational talent' expectations since his preteen years. He was anointed the next franchise-altering superstar before he could even drive. And remarkably, he HAS mostly lived up to those expectations - winning four MVP awards, five scoring titles, and producing a trove of highlight reel plays over the last 10 years. However, the Stanley Cup is the most coveted prize in the ultimate team sport - and no matter how many awards, points, highlights McDavid racks up - he will never truly be able to enter the pantheon of all-time greats until he hoists the silver chalice himself. Will he finally get his Cup in his second try - having to go through the team that beat him the first time - ala Sidney Crosby and Wayne Gretzky?

The Cats' Kingdom: Florida's Bid for a Dynasty

While that's all well and good for Connor, the Florida Panthers are more concerned about their own legacy on the line. The Panthers became just the tenth team ever to reach three consecutive finals, following their Florida neighbors the Tampa Bay Lightning who did it from 2020 - 2022. They are trying to become repeat champions, joining the same Lightning (albeit who did it during COVID affected seasons) and the Pittsburgh Penguins as the only teams to have achieved the feat of winning two consecutive Stanley Cups in the last quarter-century. Their championship victory last year represented its own dramatic redemption arc, winning it all after a magical 2023 Cinderella run where, as an 8-seed, they reached the Final only to fall three wins short. Can Florida, fully embracing its “Bad Boy” persona through its physical play, aggressive attitude, and willingness to toe the line between physical and dirty - cement itself as one of the all-time great teams by winning two titles back-to-back?

The X-Factors: A Duel in the Crease

Goalies are often considered a unique breed. While superstars like McDavid can dominate games, arguably no single position can swing a series more decisively than the goaltender. Like a Quarterback in football, so much pressure is put on the one player who doesn’t come off the ice the entire game. Both of these goalies represent different paths to the finals, with Bobrovsky finally ascending to elite/franchise status over the last few years, showing himself fully capable of stealing a game or even a series if needed. Stuart Skinner of Edmonton has taken the more journeyman route, not even being the starter earlier in these playoffs, but he has steadied the ship, and shown he can be consistent enough to give Edmonton’s potent offense a chance to dominate. Ultimately, given how close these teams are, and how even the series was last year, it could come down to which Goalie can steal a game and shift the odds in favor of his squad. If Bobrovsky wins a second Cup, he is almost certainly a lock for the Hall of Fame as well.

Oil vs. Water: Contrasting Philosophies and Identities on Ice

Beauty vs Brawn. Speed vs Power. Drafting vs Trades/Signings. Cold Western-Canada vs Sunny Southern Florida. This is a Finals match up of stark contrasts. The clearest being the style of play both teams employ, with Edmonton feeding off rush chances (scoring in transition), while Florida is known for its relentless forecheck and strong even-strength play. Not that Florida hasn’t drafted well (it selected its Captain and best-player Aleksander Barkov near the top of the draft), but undoubtedly it has been shaped by franchise-altering trades: the biggest being acquiring Matthew Tkachuk from Calgary in the 2022 off-season. Edmonton, on the other hand, has primarily built its core through the draft. Franchise cornerstones McDavid and Leon Draisaitl, for instance, were top-three selections in consecutive years (McDavid first overall in 2015, Draisaitl third in 2014). Throughout their playoff journey to the Final, Edmonton has generated slightly more offense and high-danger scoring chances, while Florida’s stout defense has typically exerted greater control over the flow of play in their journey thus far.

Oh, Canada: Will Stanley Finally Come Home?

Beyond the on-ice narratives, an undeniable undercurrent runs through any Finals involving a Canadian team: a Canadian team has not won the Stanley Cup in 32 years, the last being the Montreal Canadiens in 1993. For perspective, imagine if a former Canadian MLB team like the Expos won the World Series, a past NBA team like the Vancouver Grizzlies took the NBA Championship, or a CFL team like the Saskatchewan Roughriders claimed the Super Bowl.For a nation that reveres hockey above all other activities (with due respect to the strides Canadian Basketball has made), the fact that it has been over three decades since a Canadian market team has brought the trophy home is a sore point for fans in the Great White North. Many teams have come close, including Edmonton being one game away last year, but could this finally be the year the Stanley Cup comes home? (Not sure if it will be subject to tariffs though).

1. Build Up Volume Slowly, Especially If You’re New

The key to finally being able to train successfully for and actually complete a half marathon was being smart about how much volume and how fast I would run. During my first few attempts, I immediately wanted to start logging double-digit miles at my estimated CrossFit mile pace—unsurprisingly, this led to inflammation and injuries. Running one mile fast is a lot different from being able to run 13.1 consecutively. You have to build your body up to be able to stay in the race, particularly if you are a larger athlete like myself. 225 pounds is a lot of force to be putting on your joints and tendons; if you do not gradually build into the volume and pace, you will blow yourself up—literally and figuratively—before you even start.

2. You Need A Date and a Motivating Factor

The first time I said I was going to run a half marathon, I never signed up for a race and, after a week, quit entirely. The second time, I signed up for a local race, but it wasn't one I was particularly excited about or had any real reason to do aside from it being close to where I lived. This time was different: I was going back to my hometown, running through the city I was born in, and doing it with one of my best friends. Having something more motivating than simply “running a race” powered me through those cold winter training sessions. Also, telling my family I was coming home to do it created even more accountability.

3. New Challenges Can Unlock Yourself Mentally

The gym was starting to feel like an obligation rather than something I looked forward to every day. Instead of being excited about training, I was mentally figuring out how quickly I could get through everything. This was rare for me, as I am usually very motivated and dedicated to my fitness routines. But for the first time in several years, I was getting sick of going to a basement gym every day. Two years ago, I made the commitment to really go all-in on improving at CrossFit. I hired a coach who created personalized programming (who also programmed my half marathon build and is excellent), and it completely supercharged my progress. Suddenly, I could walk on my hands, bang out ring muscle-ups, and do all the stuff I never thought I would be able to do. But after two years of training at a minimum of 2.5 hours a day, with a lack of competitive events to measure my progress, I was completely burnt out. I felt like I had given it my all and made tremendous progress, but I needed to do something different—I needed to feel that novice excitement and challenge again. The running training immediately scratched that itch, and suddenly I was excited to get back to training again. That leads to my next lesson…

4. Being Outside is Refreshing, Especially in NYC

The thing about CrossFit, especially in a major metropolitan city, is you're almost always in a small confined space. More times than not, it’s a dingy basement. The musclehead in me loves this environment, but there is something to be said for being outside, even when the weather sucks, feeling fresh air in your lungs. I started the run build in the middle of March in NYC—not ideal conditions. However, where I normally would’ve dreaded the city streets and cold temperatures, I found myself invigorated by them. The streetlights at night illuminating the course, the quiet empty streets in the morning providing time and space to mentally reflect and prepare for the day ahead—getting outside fixes a lot of problems.

5. Patience is a Virtue

I’ve never been a patient person. I prefer to move fast and struggle sitting still or taking my time with any task. The thing about running, especially when you get to longer distances, is you can only do it so fast. At a certain point, it’s going to take what it’s going to take. When you’re running a mile, you can grit your teeth and say, “Let’s get this over with.” When you’re running 13+ miles, you just have to embrace you're going to be there a while. If you’re mentally complaining 20 minutes into a 2-hour race, you’ll have a miserable time and sabotage your own success. When you accept it’s going to take as long as it takes, focus on breathing, and just be in the moment, you suddenly feel much better and more comfortable, and the run comes easier. Just like in life, sometimes it's about putting one foot in front of the other.

6. Running Solo is Necessary, but Running with Others is Awesome

You cannot avoid running solo when training for any event. There's tremendous benefit in this—the mental fortitude and self-reflection are huge positives. However, spending 90-120 minutes by yourself running gets pretty boring, and you can’t help but frequently check your watch, wondering how much longer the last few miles will take. There were probably only 2-3 sessions where I ran with someone else, but it felt like a party the entire time. Suddenly, instead of focusing on paces and breathing, a casual conversation would take my mind off the remaining distance, and I felt like I could run all day.

7. Running Gear is Sick

Self-explanatory. About 75% of why I get into any endeavor is the merch/gear/accessories. This probably isn’t ideal, but I am who I am at 31 years old.

8. Proper Fuel and Maintenance Are Paramount

Like a car or any expensive machinery, if you do not take care of it, it will eventually break down. Another previous fault of mine was abysmal effort or focus around proper fueling and body maintenance. I'd put on cool shorts and shoes, get after it, and wonder why my shins blew up one mile into the run. Proper warm-up is essential, as is post-run cooldown and mobility work. Ensuring your body holds up throughout the training cycle is crucial. Fueling also matters; proper carbohydrates pre- and post-workout, along with hydration, allows you to perform better and keeps your machine running well.

9. My Energy Noticeably Improved

Maybe it was just the excitement from embracing a new challenge and routine, but the amount of positive energy I had coming home from running sessions was noticeable. Instead of returning from training feeling like I'd been hit by a truck, I was energized, enthusiastic, and optimistic about the day ahead.

10. Runners’ High is Real…

I never understood when people talked about the “runner’s high” until I was several weeks into my training block. I think it is only possible once you surpass a certain distance or volume threshold, but it’s a real thing. One minute, I'd hear the same old complaints and negativity in my mind about running; the next, chills would run through my body, and I'd feel like Thor in an "Avengers" movie—like I could keep running literally all day. Once this feeling hits, it is as addictive as everyone says it is.

11. …but So Is The Mental Wall

On the flip side, there definitely comes a point where your legs start to get heavy, your body feels the accumulated volume, and you realize just how much further you have left to go. At this moment, you must literally see “The Mental Wall” and run through it. For me, this happened at miles 11–12 of the race (which, unfortunately, happened to be mostly uphill), where I felt the mental fatigue of what I was doing. Thankfully, training taught me that if you push through that brief period of mentally induced fatigue, you'll soon return to feeling strong again.

12. The Marathon Environment

The energy and crowd gathered in the city on marathon day were something I’ll never forget. Thousands of people were not just in the pre-race area but throughout the entire race—lining the streets, screaming words of encouragement, holding signs, and cheering on the runners. The actual half marathon was the first time during the entire eight-week training cycle that I ran without headphones or music. Some of this was intentional—I definitely wanted to fully absorb the atmosphere and energy of marathon weekend—but partly because my friend (who I thought I'd be running with the entire time) immediately took off during mile one to attempt a sub-2-hour finish. In the end, it turned out even better, as it allowed me to be fully present, mentally engaged, and to truly experience something unforgettable.

13. Running Your Own Race

What initially drew me to the world of endurance events (half and full marathons, triathlons, Ironmans, etc.) was the sense that the primary focus seemed to be about completing the race or improving personal times and accomplishments rather than “beating” anyone else. Maybe it’s just a novice perspective, and once you become competitive and experienced in any sport, you naturally want to beat others. Still, after almost a decade focusing exclusively on CrossFit—where leader boards and scores constantly measured against others often felt demoralizing, like I was never as good as I wanted or expected to be—running and endurance sports seemed to scratch an itch where the competition is really against yourself. Could I finish my first half marathon successfully? That felt more rewarding than beating someone else or achieving a certain time. The entire energy of both the full and half marathons centered around runners doing their best, running their own races, and focusing on personal achievements rather than the runners ahead or behind.

0.1. The Finish Line

It all hits you. It was all worth it. The feeling of seeing a commitment through to the end and being proud of the work you put in—that’s it. I said this was the 0.1 lesson…

Crosby surrounded by teammates after his record-breaking point Thursday, March 27th

From the moment Crosby entered the NHL in 2005 at the age of eighteen, he was saddled with enourmous expectations: be the face of the league, save a franchise. Casual stuff. He was spoken of as the greatest prospect since Gretzky. Wayne was “The Great One”, Sid the Kid was “The Next One”. Crosby almost immediately justified the insane hype, registering over 100 points as a rookie on a team that finished toward the bottom of the standings. His career has become a laundry list of Hall of Fame accomplishments: three Stanley Cup Championships, two Conn Smythe (Final’s MVP) awards, multiple Gold medals in the Olympics for Team Canada, MVP awards, world championships - he has accomplished virtually everything in the sport, and now owns a record of his own that no other player has ever accomplished. When you look at his production compared to other greats, and the relative to the era’s they played in, it is clear Crosby is the most consistently dominant player of his generation and arguably in league history, and remains an elite offensive force at the age of 37 - historically when players are out of the league, let only one of the leading scorers.

To put Crosby’s career scoring in context, the above shows just how remarkably consistent the Nova Scotian native has been throughout this career. While Lemieux and Gretzky had ridicolous highs that will never be touched again in the sport, both of their later career years trailed off significantly (due to injuries in Lemieux’s case, and natural aging in Gretzky’s). What is making Crosby and Ovechkin’s current seasons even more remarkable is how consistently productive both continue to be at ages 37 and 39 years old. Bringing it back to Crosby however, the graph makes it clear how smooth and less volatile Crosby’s production has been when comparing it to other legends careers: Gordie Howe, Gretzky, Lemieux, Bobby Orr, and Ovechkin. Its also worth appreciating just how dominant Crosby and Ovechkin have been for 20 seasons relative to the rest of the league.

I think the final point worth highlighting to put Crosby’s record into historical context, is the era in which he has played vs Gretzky and even Lemieux.

The majority of Gretzky and Lemieux’s careers were spent in an era where NHL scoring hovered around 3.8 goals per game - compared to Crosby and Ovechkin’s whose career average has been roughly around 3.0 goals per game - almost a full goal per game lower relative to the years when Wayne and Mario were at their peak. Another example of this, is just how many players in the league at the time ALSO averaged a point per game (scoring either a goal or an assist during the game = 1 point). In the 1980’s (The Gretzky era) - a whopping 38 other players averaged over a point per game. Yes Wayne’s scoring was prolific - but so was the entire leagues. Meanwhile, during the prime years of Crosby’s career - the 2000s and 2010s - only 15 - 18 other players also averaged a point per game. That is an whopping difference of 20 players who also averaged a point in every single game for an entire season.

Crosby’s sheer consistency and continued longevity have set him apart from some of the other legends of the game. Remarkably, an 18 year old kid who came into the sport with the highest level of expectations has not only lived up to them, but exceed them in almost every way possible (Not even considering how beloved and highly spoken of he is off the ice). His on-ice performance has been sustained at an elite level across six presidential administrations. While the Penguins are heading toward a third consecutive post-season on the outside looking in, Crosby remains one of the best players in the game. Hopefully the organization can bring in a new wave of talent to surround the living legend with while he is still producing at a historic rate, and give the Captain another shot at playing playoff hockey. Even if he never plays another game in the playoffs however, we should never take for granted how ridicolously strong and consistent his career has been. While Ovechkin will have the goals record, no one will ever pass Gretzky’s points record, and Mario will always be the most physically talented player - Crosby’s role on Hockey Mt.Rushmore will be as the king of consistency and longevity.

Crosby and Lemieux during Crosby’s rookie and Mario’s final season: 2005-2006

Charts created and sourced using Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet 3.7 Model; publicly available data.

That quote plays in my mind as the doorbell rings, waking myself and the two dogs up. The twin king Charles cavaliers I am dog sitting for my sister immediately start barking in fits of terror and rage from having their slumber disturbed The I roll over and look at the clock; it reads 3:19 AM. I spring out of bed, run to the bedroom window and gaze outside - the view of the front door slightly askew. No sign of anyone or anything. Nervously scrambling to get my phone, I immediately open the doorbell camera app. A small to medium size package sat solitary in the middle of the front entrance. I rewind the camera app a few frames, but the feed blacks out. One frame, total darkness and the front porch I have walked through twice since I moved into this house earlier today- the next frame: complete darkness - the following: the porch again, this time with the package sitting there. I click my phone off, and lay down, trying to ignore the mysterious package that has been left on my doorstep at 3:00am on a remote house a few miles inroad from the nearest signs of civilization.

Fifteen minutes and one thousand racing thoughts later, I get up and looked out the window again: nothing but early morning stillness. Checking the phone camera app again, absolutely nothing in the frame for the last fifteen minutes, and the same roughly still five second blackout when the package appears on the doorstep. The dogs now look at me, communicating with their eyes “well…go check it out”. “Some guard dogs” I say, as if I hoped the two dogs with a combined weight of 30lbs would protect me from the mysterious package deliverer. Knowing falling back asleep is a lost cause, I saunter down the stairs. “I really should have gotten a gun or something” I think to myself, forgetting that I have never seen a gun in anything but a movie or television show, let alone fired one. Reaching the main floor and accepting my firearm-less state, I grab the largest steak knife from the kitchen block, which makes me feel slightly more intimidating. I look out the glass surrounding the front door: no sign of any person, animal, thing. Nothing but the pure and complete silence of a ranch home surrounded by forest in the small pacific northwest town. I open the door, and what feels like the fastest I have ever moved in my life, grab the package. I almost fumble it, as it is heavier than the shoe box size of it would indicate, and faintly warm, as if someone had baked a fresh pie and placed it in the box. Getting the package inside, I immediately slam the door shut and flip the door lock and click the chain lock in place. I inspect the top of the package: no return address, no address label at all. The only words scrawled across the top of the box: “YOURS” carved in with what could have only been a knife. For some reason, I pick the box up and hold it slightly to my head: a faint humming rings out, and I realize it is going to be a long first night in my new home.

As I turn around to head back inside, something catches my eye. The moonlight reflecting off something in the woods, I look closer. A woman in a blue dress appears, and walks out from the woods. The dress hugs her body, but not in a sensual way, just perfectly form-fitting. She has shoulder length blonde hair that in the early morning moonlight looks almost white. While I should be absolutely terrified that a woman in a blue cocktail dress just walked out from the woods, her natural beauty and aura weirdly calms me and prevents me from moving. As if almost floating, she walks toward the house, coming to pause a foot from the stairs up the porch. I am still holding the box, and find myself unable to speak. Finally she says, “What’s that your holding?”. “Don’t know” I respond “…someone just left it for me on the doorstep”.

“Is it for you?”

“Not sure - it says YOURS on it”

She doesn't respond. She turns her gaze to the house and as if inspecting it, looks curiously at the home and turns her attention back to me. Her eyes are a color blue I have never seen before, as if the sun reflected off a perfectly clear body of water.

“Do you live here” she asks.

“I just moved in today,” I respond. I am unable to comprehend nor address the strangeness and severity of my current situation. The box still hums in my hand.

“Hm” she pauses. “Are you staying long?”

“I’m not sure, I have to figure it out”

“I think you’ll like it here. I’ll see you again soon”. She turns, and walks back into the woods.

I go to follow her but my feet are locked in place, and I am unable to move. She disappears back into the words. The humming from the box grows louder.

I turn back towards the house and grab the box. The slow hum has now turned into a violent vibration, the box is warm. The package requires me to squat down and pick it up with both hands, its weight catches me off guard. I hear a rustling from the woods, half expecting to see the woman in the blue dress re-appear; but she's gone. I get a chill down my spine, the massive trees surrounding the house start to rustle. I muster all my strength to get the package inside, struggling to open the door and keep from dropping it, and rush inside while the door slams behind me.

Image generation using Grok.