“Coach Graham rode you pretty hard, didn't he?" he said.I could barely muster a "yeah."That's a good thing," the assistant told me. When you're screwing up and nobody says anything to you anymore, it means they've given up on you.”

“When you're screwing up and nobody says anything to you anymore, that means they've given up on you.”

“When you're frustrated with people, when they've made you angry, it just may be because you haven't given them enough time.”

“There's a lot of talk these days about giving children self-esteem. It's not something you can give; it's something they have to build. Coach Graham worked in a no-coddling zone. Self-esteem? He knew there was really only one way to teach kids how to develop it: You give them something they can't do, they work hard until they find they can do it, and you just keep repeating the process.”

“When you see yourself doing something badly and nobody's bothering to tell you anymore, that's a bad place to be. You may not want to hear it, but your critics are often the ones telling you they still love you and care about you, and want to make you better.”

“A coach yells at the kid he thinks can improve but the coach will not yell at the kid who he/she knows won't.”

“[Jim Graham] had been a linebacker at Penn State, and was seriously old-school. I mean, really old-school; like he thought the forward pass was a trick play.”