Dallas Cowboys head coach Jason Garrett is a New York Yankees fan, and thus a massive fan of Derek Jeter. He's managed to incorporate that fandom into a useful exercise for his day job.
The Cowboys are in the midst of mandatory mini-camp. While the club wants to get in three days of useful football work -- it's the last time they'll gather as a team before training camp gets underway let next month -- it's not as if the New York Giants await on Sunday. There's time for work, but also time for play.
In an attempt to keep his players' focus and inject some life into this week's practices, Garrett has staged arcade-style games to break up meetings, splitting the roster into smaller teams drafted by the players themselves. But there's a catch, and the catch is called the Derek Jeter Challenge.
Wide receiver Cole Beasley explains.
"You don't know the game. You pick five guys before you even know what the game is," Beasley told the Dallas Morning News. "They call it the Derek Jeter Challenge because someone said if you were starting a team and it doesn't matter what the game was and you don't know what you're playing, who do you pick. You want those type of guys on your team, who you know are going to come through for you and bust his butt to compete no matter what the challenge is for his teammates. That's kind of the thing behind it."
Some games involve sports like Pop-a-Shot or skeet ball, others don't, like stacking cups. Either way, it's a good way for Garrett and the coaching staff to track which players have earned the overall respect of their teammates in a, as Garrett may say, Jeter-like fashion.