Voila_Capture908I love a good motivational tactic. I still hate-blog my eighth grade teacher, who told me I was lazy and made me take handwriting classes when I was 13. Thoughts like: Fucking handwrite this– a blog post, which I’m typing at 3 a.m., that’s going out 10k people who will gobble up every delicious, carefully-constructed sentence. That’s more minds won over than you’ll reach in three lifetimes, and I do that every day, 10 times per day, Bitch.* It gets me through the slow days.

So, I appreciate it when a professional athlete or team uses a little trick to light their flame. Brandon Boykin has a good one.

Boykin, who had four interceptions in the Eagles’ last seven games and has been a surprise standout, keeps a list of the cornerbacks drafted ahead of him in 2012, which, strangely, is no longer “last year.”

Mr. Reuben Frank of CSN Philly explains:

The 11 corners taken ahead of him last year combined for nine interceptions this year.

Six for Boykin.

Nine for everybody else.

No wonder Boykin has a chip on his shoulder.

That’s why he has a list of the 11 corners taken before him that he looks at constantly.

“It’s over my bed,” he said. “That’s motivation for me. It legitimately motivates me. That’ll never go away.”

Some men have posters of Kate Upton hanging above their beds to minimize masturbatory effort. Others put those questionable glow-in-the-dark stars on their ceilings while in college.** But Brandon Boykin… he keeps a reminder of the disrespect hurled his way over an April weekend in 2012 so he’ll have that extra edge when, say, a sour puss backup quarterback throws his team’s season over the middle in Week 17.

*I still can barely sign my own name in cursive and haven’t changed my underwear since last year.

**Never do this. You’ll have a 0% of getting laid. Ditto for hanging a poster on your wall explaining the seven steps to perform the perfect BJ. Girls won’t go for that. Unless you go to Rutgers.