National Collegiate Athletic Association |
CommentJune 29, 1998
Guest editorial -- One coach's lament: Save us from ourselves
BY RICK BURNS
As I have moved from NCAA Division III to Division II and now to the ambivalent challenge of Division I, I'm gradually feeling the increased pressure to get results. I've found most of my coaching brethren, like tributaries flowing smoothly into the same channel, are buying into the "win at all costs" mentality. Many need to -- to keep their jobs. Even coaches in "minor/nonrevenue/Olympic" sports are being fired for not producing winners. Many of my colleagues look to their seasons with anxiety rather than anticipation. Self-worth and their jobs are tied totally into results. Egos soar or plummet after each win or loss. Winning is euphoria; losing tragedy. The space allotted to other measures of the job (our students' academic success, what kind of human beings we are helping develop) is shrinking. Calvin Trillon opines, "We need some training in losing so that defeats won't be so devastating." Ultimately, only half of us will have winning records; only one can be a national champion. But the American mindset allows for one winner and one winner only. Everyone else is a loser (for example, the Buffalo Bills). When I lived in Europe, the football club I supported, Chelsea, finished sixth in the top division of English soccer -- sixth of 22 teams -- but really sixth of all 92 teams in England's four-tier professional league. Chelsea played 42 regular-season matches and was sixth-best in the country. This was the cause of great joy and satisfaction for the team and its supporters. Excellence over the long haul was the highest reward. In our country in professional as well as college sports, there is an overemphasis not only on winning but in getting in position for "the playoffs." In professional basketball and hockey, the regular season has become relatively unimportant as teams cruise through, biding their time until the "real" season starts. In a January issue of USA Today, columnist Michael Heistand wrote, "The NFL is at a point worth watching. Now it really matters." I've noticed this mentality encroaching into college athletics as well. A soccer coaching colleague lamented to me this year after losing three of his first four matches that postseason opportunities were gone and that his team had "nothing to play for." It seems just being competitive, striving to get better, teaching your players that there is intrinsic honor in the effort is not enough. The mentality of increasingly emphasizing winning in the postseason at the expense of the regular season is all-pervasive. I have not met a coaching colleague who does not favor enlarging the number of berths allotted for the NCAA playoffs. This leads to the dilution of the championships as well as longer seasons and more time out of class for our student-athletes. Why not let everybody in for the ultimate feel good? (The men's basketball tournament, due of course to revenue, is on the way with 64 teams.) We now have more teams, longer seasons, more games, seven-month basketball seasons, 80-game baseball seasons. Some sports, using loopholes in NCAA rules, are year-round now. Bygone times Remember when being the conference regular-season champion was the most signifi-cant achievement? When the regular-season champion was the champion? Now you can go undefeated and lose in the first round of a postseason conference tournament and you're rubbish. Remember when there were four college football bowl games on New Year's Day? It was an honor to be one of those eight teams. Now there are more than 20 bowls loaded with 6-5 teams. Is a 6-5 season worthy of extending the season another month for our student-athletes? Do we just nod knowingly and say "money" and close the subject? Coaches, like a Norwegian revolution, forcefully, quietly, relentlessly push for more postseason opportunities at the expense of their student-athletes' academic and personal lives. There is so much more going on in the college milieu for our student-athletes. Academics is given great credence because most coaches want their athletes to be successful and, of course, to stay eligible. But beyond academics and athletics, the third part of the student-athlete's experience is the personal/social bounty offered them during this exciting time in their lives. It's important for them to simply enjoy the college experience before the crush of life's responsibilities envelops them. If we expand the focus from results and instead prioritize the holistic development of our students, we can teach/coach with greater purpose. Our players, via the athletics experience, can have wonderful fuller experiences that they carry with them the rest of their lives. Experiences like learning to win and lose without excuse, but rather with grace and dignity. We can help lead our student-athletes to learning experiences such as handling pressure and conflict, the joy and satisfaction of shared purpose, time management and perspective on the role of sport in the great scheme of things. In actuality, for 99 percent of athletes, college athletics is just a temporary, wonderful phase to pass through on the way to something significant. The college years are irretrievable wonder years for most of our students. We need to let our students cast a wider net and pull in other aspects of college life. Cervantes' idea that the journey is more exciting and satisfying than the end seems sadly obsolete. As educators, we should be measuring process as well as outcome. It's wonderful to win, but if athletics doesn't offer educational value for our athletes, why is it functioning within the context of the academic setting? How far have big-time athletics programs drifted away from the mission statements of their institutions? Pressure to win (especially at higher levels) has also led to coaches compromising values. Emphasis on results has also led to an increase in poor sportsmanship. As a head college soccer coach and active college referee for the past 16 years, I have observed a gradual crumbling of the principles of fair play and a decline in cheerfulness and congeniality. Before the matches, coaches used to chat amiably. No more. There is too much tension. I've seen the men's game on too many occasions turn into a testosterone-charged, swearing, shirt-pulling, spitting, referee-challenging, physical war. I rue the lost certainty of fair play. Power, physical strength and verbal warfare rule the day rather than grace, finesse and the joy of playing. (There are still some wonderful moments, however. As I neared the end of a women's Division I soccer match I refereed this year, the ball was kicked under the bleachers abutting the field. As the ball was being retrieved, an eager young woman breathlessly scurried up to me and asked, "Did you stop the clock?" "Why do you care? You're up 2-0 and it's almost over," was my cynical response. She smiled at me and gently offered, "I just love to play." What a sweet, rare, insightful moment for a man looking for a fresh route through his fourth soccer decade.) My fellow coaches looked at me like I was a fool at a recent national meeting when I spoke up -- the lone dissenting voice against lengthening our soccer season. My reasoning, that we bring our student-athletes back more than two weeks before classes already and that our three-month season in addition to our spring season allowed our students too little time for college life's other possibilities, fell on deaf ears. Recruiting has become a dog-eat-dog affair. At major club tournaments in my women's soccer world, there are often 150 or more college coaches in attendance, sometimes for as few as 16 teams. If someone has a good touch on the ball, they could get 100 phone calls. I have had young women or their parents begin their phone conversations with me with the statement, "I'm going to need a full ride." In the past, recruits used to receive offers, not make them. We have reached the point where coaches need to kowtow to 17-year-olds in order to recruit successfully. In the women's soccer world, the demand is tilted so radically in favor of the recruits that mediocre players are now commanding athletics scholarship dollars. I'm bloodied daily by the arrogance of some of the young women I try to recruit. If I don't call them every week to find out "how they are" and "how their family is," I'm probably not going to get them to consider my institution. I probably spend less than 20 percent of my time actually working with my players. At large Division I state schools, I'll bet it's less than 10 percent. The hours spent on the recruiting process are geometric multiples of what they used to be. Wouldn't it be better for everybody if we all did less recruiting? Couldn't we spend our time more wisely if we were more directly involved in the educational process? The need for more Everybody "needs" more -- larger recruiting budgets, another assistant coach, more travel monies for glamour trips to entice recruits, nicer facilities, better equipment -- although now the big apparel companies sponsor most major programs. (I'll gag if I see the Nike "swoosh" one more time, though I admit I'm jealous of the treasure trove of riches others receive.) I have found, however, that even those who get more than their fair share of riches can despair. The more you get, the more you want. The situation is analogous to the days of the cold war arms buildup: They have it, so we need it, too. The larger questions: Is it necessary? Can't we all do with less? We are losing our way. We need to find a way back from this athletics excess. Can there ever be enough budget money, enough scholarship money, long enough seasons? Can someone say that your facilities are adequate, we are not going to build a new stadium so that you can out-recruit your rival and win 12 games instead of 10? Can someone say you can offer your prospectives only half scholarships rather than full rides? That you can fly to only one coast this year, not both? It's unheard of in our society for someone to say, "Stop now, that's enough." Another benefit for increasing limitations would be to narrow the gap between programs (it's never teams anymore, it's programs). I have two head coaching friends on our schedule next year who will play each other as well -- one at a major state university and one at a small hyphenated state university. The big guy has two full-time assistants, a six-figure budget, the maximum 12 scholarships, a new stadium in the works, a glamour road trip to a tropical isle and a contract with a major sporting goods company to provide the best of equipment every year. The little guy has no assistants, a $25,000 budget, four scholarships, plays at a high-school field, takes vans on the road and has worn the same uniforms for the past three years. Any guess as to the result of their match -- this year or any year? Some schools, because of budget limitations (that is, reasonable budgets) are destined to battle their hearts out to be utterly ordinary. Wouldn't it be healthy for college athletics and for our student-athletes to narrow the yawning gap between these two teams? Sometimes I think NCAA Division III, pure Division III without special scholarships for athletes, has it right. Throw all the athletics scholarships out and let the student-athlete just choose the school that fits them without the incentive of athletics dollars. It still wouldn't be even competitively, but it would balance things a bit. Our athletes could play for the sheer delight of the competition. Those with professional aspirations could move directly from high school to the professional minor leagues or play for clubs like they do in Europe. What is important As I have completed my 17th year as a head college coach, it's with a growing sense of clarity that I see what is important. The emphasis on winning fades now that I have a better look from further down the road. More important is teaching your players the value and peace that come from doing the best they can with what they have, the ethical satisfaction gained from training and playing hard, the critical importance of the attempt to win, conducting yourself well in the heat of competition, representing your school with class and integrity, and giving them the time to simply savor the sweet rewards youth offers while joining each other's lives for a while. I fear that college athletics is sinking into the abyss -- that we are losing our way in a relentless, increasing tide of excess. That we have veered off course and are becoming higher education's broken child. Philip Roth's words seem applicable: "The black hole of self-absorption is bottomless." How wonderful it would be to reach the point where we wanted less and delighted in the basic simple things in sport. Alas, no one anymore will say, "I'm grateful for what I have. It's enough. God is smiling down on me." Someone -- the NCAA, college presidents, the taxpayers, boards of trustees -- must limit us more, give us boundaries. Someone with power, vision, foresight and compassion has to daringly cross the Rubicon, set a blockbusting new course and save us from ourselves. Rick Burns is women's soccer coach at Drury College. Letter to the Editor -- Sportsmanship can go from bad to worseWhile I sincerely commend coach Dave Morris for his insightful historical sketch of poor sportsmanship (Letters, June 22), I would also respectfully suggest that the force and point of his letter is factually mistaken in one important respect, and in another respect is aimed at what logicians or debate teams call a "straw man" -- an artificial and easily refutable position -- the refutation of which proves precious little and does even less to move a discussion forward. First, the straw-man argument that he needlessly and unhelpfully attacks: Coach Morris bemoans the assumption (presumably held by many) that, once upon a time in our sports history, there were halcyon days in which no unsportsmanlike conduct and attitudes could be found. One naturally wonders: How many among us actually believes -- as coach Morris thinks so many of us do -- that "all Little League games before 1965 [were] out of a Norman Rockwell painting?" The question of whether bad sportsmanship existed at virtually any point in time in our sports history is clearly a non-issue. As long as there have been fallible human beings involved in competitive games and contests, unsportsmanlike conduct has been with us. It's always been with us. The question can only be one of degree -- which brings us to the factual error in coach Morris' argument. He especially criticizes (and unwarrantedly calls "hypocritical") those who lament the "decline" or "death" of sportsmanship. His contention is not simply that unsportsmanlike conduct and attitudes are no worse than they've ever been; he claims that sportsmanship "is quite a bit stronger than ever before." While sportsmanship is no doubt alive and well and flourishing in certain under-appreciated quarters of our (amateur) sports world, and while I myself have argued that the "death" of sportsmanship at times has been greatly exaggerated, there can be no doubt that sportsmanship has indeed suffered a precipitous decline in recent decades. There's simply too much evidence to the contrary. From the Little Leagues to the Big Leagues, never has our sports world witnessed -- suffered, to be more precise -- such a degree of the win-at-all-cost mentality or what I call the no-place-for-second-place attitude. "From the Little Leagues to the Big Leagues" is crucial here, for never before have we been so concerned about the impact of sports participation on our impressionable youth -- our children, our future -- than now. And that's why coach Morris' historical sketch, insightful as it is, nonetheless presents a very myopic historical picture of the ethical state of our games. Notice that most of his examples of unsportsmanlike conduct are from professional sports, the other few examples being from the college game. Thus his sketch importantly fails to take into account what is probably our most pressing, deep-seated concern at present: the unprecedented unsportsmanlike attitudes and conduct plaguing not merely the professional and college game but much of pre-college competition as well, including interscholastic sports, youth sports, recreational leagues, Little League and the like. Finally, I would like to commend Kay Hawes and The NCAA News for taking the initiative to do what is so sorely needed from the sports media in general: constructively and proactively highlighting the utter importance of good sportsmanship -- and the dire consequences that can ensue if we ignore or take lightly the unprecedented win-at-all-costs pressures currently plaguing our games.
Russell W. Gough
Game has gone battyRegarding the College World Series championship game, Southern California 21, Arizona State 14 ranks along with sundry other distortions of the sport that have occurred since the introduction of metal bats. Baseball was created for sunshine, grass and wooden bats. Send the aluminum to the beer-brewing companies.
Chet Gusick Opinions -- Delany: Problems in men's basketball must be addressed
James E. Delany, commissioner Discussing the state of college basketball: "It's been building for some time and maybe we didn't intend for this to happen, but we can't ignore it any longer. We are at an intersection of a number of things that raise serious concerns about the condition of the game today and how we are dealing with it.... "We believe the culture and environment surrounding the development and recruitment of the elite youth player is so contaminated that failure to adopt a series of structural changes in the sport will undoubtedly lead to further tragedy and scandal. "(NCAA members can no longer argue that they aren't responsible for an environment that) has for a variety of reasons corrupted the recruitment process, inflated dreams and expectations of the participants and laid the foundation for a great deal of future disappointment and frustration by all parties. "Certainly, the system is no way related to encouraging education values and academic performance.... "There are too many basketball players who don't hold jobs or work outside the basketball season. All they do is play and play all the time. Their life is the game, and their expectation of the future is the game."
Robert A. Bowlsby, athletics director "I would be very surprised if there aren't substantial and comprehensive changes within the next year in men's basketball. College basketball is a wonderful sport, but it is time to expunge the worst elements that are in the game today."
Foreign athletes
Jeff Zinn, tennis coach "A lot of coaches won't even recruit American kids anymore. The foreign players are less of a discipline problem, they are better students and they work hard....Look, I bleed red, white and blue, and I want to recruit American kids. But if I want our team to be competitive, I have to recruit some foreign players."
Creatine
Mark Asanovich, strength coach "It's Russian roulette because we don't really know what is going on in the long term....Forget about the NFL. Take a look at the high-school kids going through formative developmental years taking something that nobody has any idea what's going to happen in the long term."
Rob Zatchetka, football player "It increases your capacity for work. Let's say you bench-press 300 pounds six times. On creatine, you can do that eight to 10 times.... "I'm willing to risk it. There's no magic bullet out there. But creatine is about the closest thing."
Gary Vitti, trainer "It works. That's why people use it. And it has scientific data to back it up."
Dan Riley, strength coach "What message are we sending when we tell a young athlete, here's a pill, here's a potion? It's a bad message."
Mike Barnes, strength and development coordinator "It appears to be safe, but it's not the message I want to send. It's like saying, here's an easy way. It's like Cliff Notes."
High-tech bats
Dave Keilitz, executive director "What's the most exciting thing in baseball to a lot of people? It's the home run, right? "Well, when you hit three of them in an inning, people aren't excited any more. They're starting to wonder what's going on."
Jim Darby, Easton Corporation "Sure the championship was a brutal game, but a week before, it was 12-10 LSU over USC, and I met people in the parking lot who thought it was a great game. And what about the Thursday and Friday games, 5-4 and 7-3 both won by USC over LSU? How do you figure them? "And I've seen higher-scoring games than 12-10 in the American League, and nobody's talking about changing the bats."
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A quote from Missouri men's basketball coach Norm Stewart in a newspaper after winning his 600th game: "The only thing that matters in sport is winning 601."