Quote of the Day | January 3, 2009: The Playoff Cycle

Michael MacCambridge's 2004 America's Game: The Epic Story of How Pro Football Captured a Nation:

And even those who'd grown to accept the reality that football was a business were still struck by the way that the game could, for a while every January, render all of those business questions irrelevant, if only for a time.

"You gotta remember the cycles we go through," said Jay Zygmunt, the president of football operations for the Rams. "When we're in the playoffs, we get the game of football at its absolute best. And when you think about what guys are getting paid, guys who are making millions and millions of dollars are getting very little money for those playoff games, in terms of economic compensation. But no one cares. Everyone's making the same, it's all about the game and 'We gotta win this game.' You never hear during that time, 'Jeez, we only make X amount of dollars,' or anything like that. No one ever, ever, ever talks about anything but 'How do we win this game?' 'We gotta win this game,' 'We gotta get to the Super Bowl.' You finish the cycle out with the Super Bowl and, again, you have the game of football at its best."

"The day after the Super Bowl," Zygmunt sighed, "it's the business of football at its worst. And you just -- you go through it. And that's justthe life cycle."

Tags: America's Game, Michael MacCambridge