J. Ofori Agboka isnt just climbing the ladder of success, hes moving up by leaps and bounds.As the current human resources director for the General Motors Co. North America manufacturing strategy and global manufacturing staffs, Agboka attributes much of his professional success to lessons learned during his two years on the football field at Louisiana State University.I thought I would be a doctor, a car designer or a professional football player, he recalled. When I was in 10th grade, Detroit Lions football player Jerry Ball, who lived in my neighborhood, gave me some advice Ill never forget. He said, For every player in the NFL, there are 100 starters who dont make it. You must have a plan B.He graduated in December 1998 with a degree in psychology.Id do it all over again, he said. With classes in the morning, stretching regimens at noon followed by warmups, drills, studies and meals, you had to manage your time wisely.Agboka took the importance of teamwork he learned as a college athlete into the business world, starting his professional career at GM.As a human resources leader, you truly appreciate the concept of a team, he said. You have to know your role, and to understand that everyone on the team has the same objective. Someone is always depending on you to play your position well.In 2010, with multinational experience in his professional portfolio, Agboka landed his dream job as the human resources director of global design, a role that allowed him to work with innovative car designers around the world. By 2013, he was globetrotting again, moving to Zurich to assume the role of HR director for Chevrolet and Cadillac Europe.Agboka returned to Michigan a year later and assumed the position of GMs human resources director for U.S. sales, service and marketing. He stepped into his current role this past April, and was recognized as a 2016 Automotive News Rising Star for his increasingly influential efforts as a young executive leader, mentor and champion for organizational excellence.Ive had great mentors encourage me to stretch and take on more than I might have thought I was capable of, he said. Im just looking forward to the next challenge and getting to the next level, whatever it might be. Youve got to play the game today to get to the Super Bowl tomorrow.To read the full story on Agbokas journey, click here.PJ Tucker Rockets Jersey . 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Robert Horry Rockets Jersey .ca NHL Power Rankings for the second straight week, ahead of the Pittsburgh Penguins and Colorado Avalanche.RIO DE JANEIRO -- On Sunday night, right after the flame has been extinguished in Rio de Janeiro, another Olympic project will burst out of the starting blocks.Its the launch of the Olympic Channel, a $450 million venture designed to keep Olympic sports and athletes relevant in the years between each games and attract new, younger audiences to a sports movement that has recently been battered by corruption and doping scandals.The digital channel, which will operate 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, will go live after the closing ceremony of the Rio Games, providing a mix of live sports events, documentaries, archive footage, news and highlights. Its an undertaking that is still in evolution and whose success, or failure, will depend on whether todays generation finds it relevant or tunes out.This is just the starting point, not the end point, Yiannis Exarchos, the head of the new channel, said in an interview with The Associated Press. We want to be able to surprise people and make it look different. Its not an institutional tool. This is about telling stories in a way that can bring younger people to the world of sports.The project was approved in December 2014 as part of International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bachs Agenda 2020 modernization program. The free channel will be available worldwide via a mobile app and online across mobile phones, tablets and other devices.The channel is based in Madrid, home of the Olympic Broadcasting Services, the IOCs television arm. Nearly 100 staff from 25 countries are currently working at the channels headquarters in Spain.Exarchos said the channel has already prepared more than 600 pieces of original programming, including 100 hours of high-end documentaries and premium content. Much of the content will be material from the Rio Games, which will be become available in full at the end of the year when global TV rights deals expire.Beyond producing feel-good stories, the channel has another, more challenging goal -- encouraging young people to get off the couch and play sports. That sounds counterintuitive from a channel that gives kids another excuse to stare at their screens.Were trying to push video to make people active, Exarchos said. For me this will be the criteria of success. Its not enough for the channel to be popular. It would be even happier if we demonstrate that these people go out and start doing sports. The channel needs to help in that. Lets see.The channel already has formal agreements with 27 of the 35 summer and winter Olympic sports federations. The IAAF and FIFA are not among those, though Exarchos noted that wass because both had a lot on their plate this year, referring to corruption and doping issues.ddddddddddddBut he said soccer and track and field are super eager to get involved with the channel.The channel has signed up 11 sports events that will be shown live between September and December, including triathlon, canoeing, rowing and an Olympic ice hockey qualifying tournament.What the channel wont do is compete or pay for broadcast rights. It doesnt air the Olympics themselves, which are shown by networks like NBC in the United States after paying billions of dollars to the IOC for exclusive rights. Many sports federations also have rights deals in place for their own international events.Exarchos said the Olympic Channel has huge synergies with NBC, which holds U.S. rights through 2032, and that the American market is a key target.The channel will offer documentaries that feature inspirational, dramatic or emotional stories of some of the biggest athletes in the world, he said, adding they wont be presented in a didactic way.`That may be a little bit of a surprise to those used to a traditionalist story line, he said. It will be presented in way that can be enjoyed by younger people.At the channels disposal is the IOCs rich trove of archive footage, much of it never seen before by the public, and some going as far back as the 1912 Stockholm Olympics. About 42,000 hours of footage that was stored at the Olympic Museum in Lausanne, Switzerland, has been digitized and will form a core of the channels content.We dont simply replay the archive, Exarchos said. We work with it, creating fresh ways of looking at it, sometimes even in a funny or bonkers way.The channel will be offered originally in English, but localized versions in other languages are also in development.The IOC is kicking in more than half of the $450 million to finance the channel for the first seven years. The international federations and national Olympic committees are paying the rest. Exarchos said he expects the channel will break even within seven years.Why launch the channel at the close of the Rio Games? To keep the spirit going and stave off the letdown associated with the day after each Olympics, Exarchos said.Its a big opportunity to reverse the emotional down of this day, he said. It will be very much linked to the games and the end of the games.--Follow Stephen Wilson on Twitter: www.twitter.com/stevewilsonap. His work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/content/stephen-wilsonCheap JerseysChina NFL Jerseys[/uraid. 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