One thing you know about playoff competition is this: If you have a hot quarterback and your defense can take the ball away, you don't need to have a dominant defense anymore.

That's playoff basketball. Can you not get too happy after a win? Can you understand how determined the team is going to be after a loss and bring the energy you need to bring?

Even if it's just two shots, I just want to see the ball go in the hole. That gives me the confidence to know I can make shots when I'm called upon in a playoff type of situation.

I'm not superstitious about anything in my life - except for playoff hockey. I get really kind of sketchy and weird about it. I don't like talking about it. I don't like making predictions.

Your superstars are going to do what they do, but most teams win playoff games by what role players step up. That usually determines how far you're going to go and how much you're going to win.

I've been blessed with doing something I love and then at the same time, do introductions at World Series, Stanley Cup championships, NFL playoff games and a lot of commercials. No regrets at all.

My durability is just something I took a lot of pride in, that I was able to play 70 games over and over and over and they add up to 1,200-and-something games, plus the playoff games, plus whatever.

There's going to be different kinds of challenges on a yearly basis. You're going to have to overcome injuries, or you overcome a playoff loss or what have you. So there's always challenges in this business.

And now we're in a world where players are skipping some of these bowl games, people are talking about the only bowl games that matter are the playoff, and I just happen to disagree with that wholeheartedly.

If we think a playoff spot's not in the cards, there will be no concern for appearances or cosmetics whatsoever. We'll continue to address our future and trade off some pieces that would keep us respectable.

We literally had all 10 teams alive for a playoff position in the final week of the season. That outstanding balance and those close races created a major surge in attendance in the last month of the season.

In many college classes, laptops depict split screens - notes from a class, and then a range of parallel stimulants: NBA playoff statistics on ESPN.com, a flight home on Expedia, a new flirtation on Facebook.

I played in Joe Louis in a playoff game. I played there when the roof caved in for half a season. The facility is great for basketball because it goes straight up, so you feel like the fans are on top of you.

Any competitor would be frustrated in that moment... but it certainly made sense what Coach Kubiak did for the playoff run. I got replaced by Peyton Manning... I think we all know who is going to play in the game.

Every game, we're going to go for it, so when we get into playoff time, it's not like, 'You've really got to ratchet it up. You've really got to do something different.' Then what have I been doing the whole time?

When you logically think about it, what the BCS people have done, which obviously we're all part of it, I think it was great for a while. I think it took an imperfect system and did the best you can without a playoff.

I think one of the hardest times was when I almost won a Web.com tour event in 2016 after my freshman year. I lost in a playoff to Ollie Schniederjans and J.J. Spaun. I mean, who knows what could've happened if I'd won?

I never paid, or intended to pay, $10,000, or any amount of money, to any player for knocking Kurt Warner, Brett Favre or any other player out of the 2009 Divisional playoff game, 2010 NFC Championship Game or any other game.

Playoff basketball isn't about who scores, stats or putting numbers up on the board. It's just about winning at the end of the day. When you play a game in a series, it becomes chess. It becomes who can outsmart the other team.

I think any time you bring those guys in, one with a lot of playoff experience, with rings - those guys won - guys in the locker room gravitate towards those guys. Those guys have been there, so there's a lot that they can teach the guys.

We don't tell the officials to change the standard for the playoffs, but as we all know, time and space tends to evaporate very quickly in a playoff game; there tends to be a lot more physicality and a lot more adjustments in the course of a series.

So you wake up this morning and find you're president of the United States. Pretty cool, no? Helicopters and a 747 at your disposal; courtside seats at any NBA playoff game of your choice; everyone stands up and the band plays when you come into the room.

Everything we talk about is about beating the Packers, the Bears and the Vikings. Obviously there are other teams in the league, but if you can dominate and be on top of your division you are always in the playoff hunt. It's time for us to win that thing.

Vijay Singh won a playoff in 2004 at Whistling Straits after a final-round 76, which was the highest last round by the winner of any major since 1938, when Reg Whitcombe won the British Open with a 78 in a storm that blew down the exhibition tent at Sandwich.

On our way to the Super Bowl XV Championship, the Oakland Raiders played a frigid 1981 AFC playoff game in Cleveland, in which the temperatures plunged to -35 degrees. I remember looking up in the stands to see a dedicated Cleveland Brown fan celebrating topless.

I think when they put together this College Football Playoff, I think you... do you play a light schedule and put everything into your conference championship? That's not what I'm feeling across the country. They want to make every game important, which they have.

Every game is its own thing in the playoffs. When you're in them long enough, you understand. If a playoff series goes six or seven games, it's like a rollercoaster. Your emotions are so up, then they're so down. 'You can't do anything right! Then everything's going your way!'

I have done a lot of NFL games, a season-opening home games, playoff games, championship games, and of course Stanley Cup games, World Series, NBA championship games. But I have never done a Superbowl. It's probably the only major sporting event I've never done and I would like to.

Obviously I bet on games I officiated. I passed on information based on the meetings that the referees were having, and based on what the league office wanted us to call in playoff games. With that being said, I was able to win at a high percentage when we were betting on NBA games.

I'm from Cleveland, Ohio. And I'll tell you a real quick thing: we didn't have a pro hockey team when I was growing up, so I adopted the Red Wings as my hockey team just so I could, you know, be amused and enjoy playoff hockey every single year. I really get into it. Detroit is my team.

I think they need to expand the playoff system. I think the minimum should be 16 teams, but they could easily go with more than that... in other words, I want to see more football. Everybody from rec league softball on down can figure out how to put together a tournament and yet Division I can't.

I show up in a playoff game, I have my sideline sheet. I can't even spit plays out, I get so excited. I mean, you get nervous. These are critical, do-or-die situations. Third down and 1, Red Zone, what do I call? Two minute drill? Are we going to go no huddle? These are decisions that you wrestle with.

Hopefully my time in Nashville has helped me. We've had a lot of different things happen to our hockey club, seen a lot of different situations and different types of clubs from an expansion team to a Stanley Cup playoff threat. I think any coach that's gone through those things, you become a better coach.

Now you've been in the playoffs once, you know what it tastes like, you know what it feels like. You know, going through the season when Coach is preaching physicality, how hard you gotta play, how you gotta take care of the ball, why he's saying that. Because all that comes into play in playoff basketball.

Whenever we're all getting ready for a playoff game, you know how serious those games are, and you try to motivate your guys. There's a lot of emotion that goes into those games, and when I play, it's all about winning, and it's all about doing whatever it takes to fire guys up and to get that emotion running.

I live for the Red Sox. I thoroughly enjoy them. For whatever reason, baseball has been a lot more fun for me in recent years. I loosely follow the Patriots and I root for them. I loosely follow the Celtics and then it gets to playoff time and I don't miss a game. Same with the Bruins. I'm not the diehard fan anymore.

Sports exact too harsh a toll on our beautiful women. Like engendered species, they should be protected, and instead, we exploit them and demand they fly too close to the sun for our amusement. We send them into the arena for an exhausting three-setter, an 18-hole playoff, a 200th lap. The burnout factor is insurmountable.

It did not matter whether it was preseason, regular season, my first playoff game, or the Super Bowl, I was nervous. And all that meant was that it always mattered to me. Anytime I was putting myself on a line, it didn't matter what it was, it was okay to be nervous because it was important to me. It was important to do my job well.

There are lots of decisions, and also non-decisions, that go into this job. In the same way that it can be impossible to separate a coach from the players, it's also impossible to separate the GM from the coach from the players. You just have to ask: Is the GM helping the team have playoff success? Is he giving the team a chance to win the title?

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