Ego, nothing personal word of the day. Good morning. It is Wednesday, January 18, 2023.

Word of the day is Ego. As in the new Arizona Cardinals GM announcing to the world that Ego will not be tolerated in this organization.

I want to have a conversation with you about Ego and the importance of Ego in an organization and how foolish he sounds,

given that Ego was manifested very clearly on the Pat McAfee show by Aaron Rogers. Ego is a part of Tom Brady.

It's a part of Bill Balochek. It's a part of LeBron James. Every story we talk about from owners down to presidents and players,

Ego is one of the most important parts of a person's personality. Controlling your Ego is difficult, especially when you've got people around you

since you were young telling you that you do nothing wrong, that you're allowed to do anything you want, and you get everything you want

because you have a certain level of talent in a certain discipline. People get very confused by associating Ego with negative thoughts or negative actions or negative results.

When you're putting a team together, you've got to find the right balance of Ego is what we would describe.

We've got to find players who understand that they are the best at what they do, but also understand they're part of a team,

who understand that occasionally subjugating your Ego is going to be necessary to win a team game.

For individual sports, there's absolutely no subjugation required. You don't need Raphael Nadal to have no Ego or a smaller Ego.

By the way, he lost last night in the Australian open while you were sleeping. That'll be pretty good for break point on that flex bonnet,

talking about him losing the 23 Australian open. But when you are putting a team together, you consider these things.

You look at character traits. Now we don't do the the OEPS team eight hour interview with managers or talk about giving players IQ tests.

We get to know a player. We talk to families. We talk to teammates. And we try to understand what this player will be like both on the field and off the field

because we can evaluate on the field, but until you know a player and live with a player, you don't really know what they're like off the field.

And so when you're signing free agents, when you're deciding whether you want to resign your own or reallocate the money to others,

and this is what GMs do every day as they're putting their teams together, figuring out where they're going to allocate their resources.

Aaron Rogers has such an interesting point of view as it relates to this. He talked yesterday about his desire not to rebuild but to reload.

And he talked about that he can win MVP again. He talked about in the right situation. He is still amongst the best.

That screamed ego to me. Tom Brady telling you that he still has the ability once he tells you to perform

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