View From The Dugout

Beware Of Lefties - Teaching Fear Through Baseball

Brian Tompkins — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 14:15:35 +0000

As the baseball season reaches its climax and the 2009 World Series gets underway, and those of us who follow the Milwaukee Brewers are once again enviously consigned to watch other teams play on into the chilly days of October and November, I am reminded, with some ambivalence, about a fateful August night spent cheering on my baseball heroes.

The night at Milwaukee's Miller Park started off on the highest of notes; it was a beautiful evening and the Brewers were playing the hapless San Diego Padres which surely guaranteed a win (it actually turned out to be a ghastly 13-6 loss) and thanks to the largesse of a good friend, my family and I had front row seats behind the visitor's dugout for the sold-out game.

I have been to many major league baseball games over the years but it was the first time for my nine year old daughter and her friend and, suitably adorned in our Brewers paraphernalia, we excitedly settled in to watch the game, eat hot dogs, watch the infamous sausage race and cheer vociferously for the home team.

I had the glow that all parents feel when they sense they are doing something good and wholesome with their kids and things got even better when one of the players flipped her a baseball between innings. It was amazing; her very first game and she gets a baseball. I have been going to games for thirty years and I only ever got one baseball and that deflected to me off the shoulder of a person sat behind me who wasn't quick enough to recover after the ball had hit them! Be that as it may, I was feeling parentally proud and somewhat heroic for providing this cultural rite of passage for my child.

Then things changed.

Due to our proximity to the field I had mentioned that we all needed to be alert when left-handed hitters were batting in case a foul ball came in our direction. Although it was a relatively serious request it was received with about the same attention that I pay to flight attendants' instructions about where the exit rows are on airplanes; in other words , not much.
Things were fine until Prince Fielder, perhaps the biggest and most powerful baseball player in the majors lashed a foul ball over us and into the crowd several rows back.

Nobody else in our group seemed particularly bothered by it but, motivated by some sort of father-knows-best instinct, I felt a rushing compulsion to sharply and emphatically spell out again how dangerous it could be to sit in these particular seats and to be extra vigilant when a lefty was batting.
I was trying to imbue my daughter with my savvy baseball-watching experience but unfortunately the only thing I imbued her with was fear. From that point on, whenever a left-handed batter was at the plate she heeded my admonition and ducked her head below the dugout as soon as the ball was pitched in case she got hit. I pointed out that there wasn't any reason to be so afraid but, because my reaction to the earlier incident had alarmed her so much, there was no changing her mind. To her, these wonderful seats and this fantastic event were fraught with imminent danger, and as much as I tried to convince her otherwise I was fighting a losing battle.

As I sat there I became increasingly annoyed with myself for putting fear and trepidation into my child's mind when there were probably other, less dramatic ways I could have handled the situation. I had wanted this to be a great overall experience for her but my own well-intentioned anxiety had dampened her appreciation of seeing a big league game from a once-in-a-lifetime location.

It made me reflect on the other ways that parents make their kids uptight and anxious in the name of being safe and how we coddle, over-protect and sanitize their experiences because we feel we know with absolute certainty what is good for them. Nobody wants to knowingly endanger their kids and it was important to me that mine was not blind-sided by a Prince Fielder foul ball but I had no intention of fear being the medium by which she learned the lesson I was trying to impart.

There are good reasons why a kid should not run with scissors, or touch a hot stove, or cross the street without looking, or talk to strangers, or eat without washing their hands but unmeasured parental fear is not something that we want them to inherit either. I believe that when we pass on fear we handicap self-confidence and inhibit their willingness to explore, take calculated risks and learn from mistakes and misfortunes; all of which are essential developmental skills.

The onus on parents to protect and prepare their kids provides us with many teachable "Prince Fielder" moments, some obvious, some more subtle. With the best of all possible intentions I inadvertently dropped the ball at Miller Park but thankfully there will be more innings to play.

Awesome Is As Awesome Does

Brian Tompkins — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 21:26:16 +0000

Barney Stinson is awesome, if you are in any doubt, just listen and he will tell you. He is a smooth-talking, thirty-something New Yorker whose goal in life is to constantly embellish his "awesomeness" by seducing as many beautiful women as possible. While he may be amusing Barney is not an actual person but rather an outrageous character (played by Neil Patrick Harris) on the TV show "How I Met Your Mother." Barney says and does things in every episode that people could not possibly get away with in real life and I confess to a sort of guilty pleasure in watching his rakish antics, all the while realizing that he is little more than an absurd cartoonish figure.

In my line of work one doesn't encounter many lotharios of Barney's caliber but there are plenty of examples of similar self-absorption. I recently visited a local sporting goods store and was partially amused and somewhat turned-off by a t-shirt from a well-known sports manufacturer that in true Stinson-esque fashion declared: "You're Not That Bad......I'm Just Awesome!" What I found amazing was that the shirt was very small and obviously intended for a child of elementary school age. It got me thinking about the extent to which those of us involved in sports have a role to play in the development of self-assurance and confidence in young people and where the line is drawn between supreme confidence and hollow braggadocio.

Helping athletes of any age, and especially young people, to be physically, psychologically and emotionally confident is one of the greatest rewards that coaching has to offer. We all like to see growth in the effectiveness and aptitude of those we teach and a fortified ability to deal with the challenges and adversity that a particular sport, or life beyond that sport, can present. But are we not also responsible for helping them develop a degree of perspective about their accomplishments and abilities while attaching that to an appropriate level of humility and appreciation?

Encouraging successful athletes to think highly of themselves and their bona fide achievements is one thing but to allow or even encourage youngsters of limited ability who haven't accomplished anything to adopt a swaggering mindset is troubling because their perspective is not based in quantifiable reality. Perhaps we are experiencing some of the unintended cultural effects of the so-called self-esteem movement where the unfettered affirming of young people can take on a greater importance than their actual aptitudes and performance. If that is the case, is it any wonder that coddled, over-praised and in some cases over-rewarded, youngsters have a disproportionate view of their abilities and a world-view that would suggest: "I'm here, therefore I'm awesome"?

I am inclined to borrow from Forrest Gump's mother and suggest that in a sports context, "awesome is as awesome does" and I offer Tiger Woods as an example of an amazing athlete who, while confident and super-competitive, projects a perspective of hard-working graceful humility completely absent of narcissistic self-praise. He, like most secure, competent people in any field or endeavor, doesn't need to tell people how good he is. Indeed the very thought of Tiger bragging about his skills and achievements while taunting or deriding his opponents would almost certainly hasten the transformation of his image from reverence to revulsion.

It's an ironic pity then that the company who spend so much money on the sponsorship of Woods and his wholesome image is the same company that produced that dubious t-shirt. Tiger wouldn't be caught dead in it...........but, because "shallow is what shallow does," I'm sure Barney would.

The Feelgood Paradox - Can Camaraderie And Competitiveness Coexist?

Brian Tompkins — Fri, 15 May 2009 01:47:40 +0000

In most athletic teams camaraderie is a desirable quality; it can foster a sense of security and belonging; it can boost an individual's confidence while creating synergistic well-being within the team and it promotes cooperation. It can also enhance the enjoyment and fun associated with being part of something bigger and more important than oneself.

In the cycle of a typical college school year I spend a considerable amount of time promoting the benefits of an inclusive and cooperative team culture by initiating mentor groups, peer leadership exercises, social activities and good, old-fashioned conversation. Maintaining a palpable feel good factor in the squad is a significant goal and I check its pulse on a regular basis.

But there is an issue, and that is whether camaraderie actually undermines competitiveness and vice versa in the context of modern-day athletic teams.

From the time kids are introduced to organized sports they are often immersed in a great contradiction. They are encouraged to participate in win-loss activities, which by their very nature require the separation of individuals and teams from each other via the keeping of a score, but to do so in a manner that suggests that the score is not as important as being uniformly cooperative. While non-results-based sporting activity may be desirable at an early age and may foster important social and other learning skills, its benefits may not be so helpful later in the young athlete's career when the ability to compete in a more goal-oriented environment is required.

Coaches nowadays can often be heard bemoaning how "soft" their athletes are. Not necessarily lacking physical attributes or ability but lacking a deep reservoir of the psychological strength to single-mindedly persevere and do whatever is needed to win. A coaching colleague at a high-level Division 1 collegiate soccer program recently told me that he was going to Scotland to recruit a couple of players because he was distressed that all his current players wanted to do was " be nice to each other and be friends." Presumably Scottish players are neither nice nor friendly.

The prevailing sentiment among coaches seems to be that maintaining an environment with a high feelgood factor is important but not at the expense of the type of competitiveness that enables individuals and teams to be effective and successful. However before one becomes too enamored with super-competitiveness it is important to note that a ruthless, goal-oriented approach can be even more problematic and divisive than perceived softness. Youth sports that are overly competitive can breed self-interested athletes who tend towards a "win-or-quit" way of thinking and run a high risk of results-focused burnout sometimes before they even reach their teens.

Collegiate level athletes will usually have ascended through stratified levels of increasingly higher and stronger competition but it appears that the non-competition side of their pre-college training and environment is having a more noticeably profound effect than in the past. In the view of those coaches that rue the onset of softness, " fun" has become something of a buzzword and whereas in the past the most surefire means of having fun was to win; nowadays it is tied less firmly to outcomes and more closely to the quantity of a person's playing time. Similarly "fairness" is another prevalent concern and the old-fashioned "dog-eat-dog" notion that you get only what you earn has been undermined by a way of thinking that suggests everybody works hard and therefore everybody should be rewarded. Although many coaches at the college level will be unbowed by such ways of thinking it is impossible to discount them entirely and therein lies a great challenge; how to manage and maintain an environment where one can pursue both process and goal-oriented ends by having high levels of camaraderie and competitiveness.

It seems counterintuitive to expect that camaraderie, which pulls people together, can effectively coexist with competitiveness, which requires that they separate themselves, often at each other's expense. The ideal state would be to have high levels of both in perfect balance because too much of one will almost certainly lessen the benefit of the other. Too much emphasis on the feelgood side may engender the softness that impelled my colleague to go to Scotland while a reckless concentration on competitiveness can trigger divisions that cause teams to crack when cohesion is most needed.

I spoke above of our efforts to create team spirit but it is also true that we have stepped-up our focus on ways to breed decisive competitiveness in the practice and game environments; we are constantly looking for ways to spur individuals and the team as a whole to relish and respond to situations that demand they go for broke in their efforts to succeed. A generation ago teaching athletes to have competitive fire when they played would have been viewed as laughably redundant, but this is an age where social and emotional well-being matters a great deal more than in times past. As a consequence athletes are routinely faced with the challenge of smoothly transitioning between distinctly different on and off field personas. Coaches are required to fashion teaching environments that can make sense of these opposing forces and often find themselves undertaking a challenge akin to walking a season-long tightrope with uneven weights in either hand where equilibrium is elusive and constantly changing.

It is possible to have both and there have been famously successful examples but finding that magical blend is not easy for today's youngsters or their coaches because in sports as in life, the trick is in the balance.

Basketball Insanity - Two Weeks On The Brink

Brian Tompkins — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 14:51:41 +0000

There are few annual sporting events that capture the imagination of the American public more completely than the NCAA men's basketball tournament. Take a cross section of any community in the country and one can find fans wrapped up in basketball insanity regardless of age, gender or socio-economic status. Even in a crammed menu of televised sports that ranges from the Super Bowl to the Summer Olympics, the NCAA tournament is viewed with a unique and special reverence. But why? What is so special about the NCAA tournament?

Firstly, everyone can "participate" on some level. The fervent rooting interest of the students, fans and alumni of the 65 invited teams is expected but there are also hundreds of thousands of others who jump on numerous collegiate bandwagons by virtue of the NCAA pools to be found in almost every workplace, office, school and bar across the country. These pools generate incredible interest( and prize money) even among the most casual of fans and "bracket-watching" has become a March tradition. Picking the winners is a serious scientific pursuit for some and there are ample web sites and publications to aid the hard-core prognosticator. Others may take a more relaxed, untraditional approach and select their teams based on their liking for the particular city that the school is in, or the color of their uniforms or the weather in that particular town. In a tournament where upsets abound there are no sure-fire ways to win and the picks of the uninitiated part-time fan are equally valid to those who purport to know about basketball.

Another attraction of the tournament is its abundance of opportunities for romance. Not Romeo and Juliet-type romance but the sort that sees an individual overcome personal obstacles or injury to make or miss the game-winning shot or the unheralded team that somehow manages to pull off an unlikely victory against a national powerhouse. Add to that the fact that the games are being played by (supposedly) amateur college kids and not jaded professionals and the romance grows. These are the types of stories that NBC has built its Olympic coverage on for decades and they are a magnet for casual and non-sports fans. The NCAA tournament is fertile ground for the emotional and unexpected stories that many TV watchers are suckers for.

Escaping the tournament is almost impossible and CBS, having paid $6 Billion for the television rights and having copyrighted the terms March Madness and Final Four, make sure that we are confronted with an "all basketball, all the time" bombardment of opening round games from morning until late at night. With the later rounds taking up prime time viewing slots and the incessant hyping of upcoming match-ups it can prove intoxicating even for non-believers.

Perhaps the most important reason for the popularity of the tournament is that it is time-limited and immediately consequential. It takes a little over two weeks to play 64 games and declare a national champion. Every game has importance and meaning; win and you advance, lose and you go home. This is a welcome departure from the American tradition of deciding sporting champions by following a six month regular season with the playing of a series of games instead of one honest-to-goodness winner-takes-all contest.

The baseball and NBA basketball seasons are interminable and when they do finally get to the playoff stages feature series of best-of- five or best- of- seven match-ups that can strain the attention of even the most committed of fans. There is nothing more boring or soul-sapping than to see a team sweep another team in a playoff series and in some situations it can take forever to get to a game that really means something with true winner-takes-all importance. That is why fans love to see a "Game Seven", a game where both teams are on the brink. It is the essence of competition, me against you, us against them, last one standing , for all the spoils. The NCAA tournament is two whole weeks on the brink, every game is a "Game Seven" and the excitement of its "do or die" framework is palpable from coast to coast.

Sports and television are, by necessity, money driven and it is understandable that a playoff series can generate more revenue than a time-limited, single-elimination tournament but as fans we are competitive animals that love the meaningful battle, we actually enjoy being on the brink where anything can happen, staring victory and defeat in the face, cheering, cursing, laughing, crying, pulses racing. With brackets in hand, of course.

Sport As A Vehicle - To Have And Have Not In Argentina

Brian Tompkins — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 21:34:02 +0000

I recently had the good fortune to spend a week on a soccer trip to Buenos Aires, Argentina as a staff coach with the United States Youth Soccer Olympic Development Program and to experience the exhilaration that comes with seeing the sights of a beautiful city for the first time. I was also confronted with some eye-opening comparative realities about the stark cultural differences in what participation in sports can mean to kids in different parts of the world.

Our itinerary called for us to practice and play in a number of facilities in or close to Buenos Aires and it didn't take long to get a sense from the locals about those that have and those that have not. Our team mostly played and trained at the youth complexes of professional clubs and the quality of the playing environments ranged from modest to pristine. These were the facilities provided for those kids fortunate enough to be selected to step onto the lower rungs of the lengthy ladder of Argentine soccer that might one day lead to playing as a professional. Being invited to be part of such a club usually involves living in a dorm with regular meals and high-level coaching and is a privilege that for many youngsters would be akin to winning the lottery.

The professional clubs have scores of registered youngsters who all share the dream of one day making it to the top. There was an edgy, focused air about the kids we watched practice and played against; this was indeed serious business for them and not something to be taken lightly. The answer to why these young boys carry themselves with such determination could usually be found within a half mile of any of the training complexes; that is where the kids who hadn't been selected were often to be found playing. Kids in ragged clothing, beaten-up shoes and of varying ages could be found playing on dusty patches of rutted dirt amongst broken bottles, rocks and ubiquitous stray dogs.
The tall fences surrounding the professional complexes separated the lucky few from the wishful many and the lower working-class backgrounds, and in some cases abject poverty, from which many of these youngsters spring follows a sociological pattern that can be found in most countries around the soccer-playing world. Soccer is, in essence, the world's street game; except in the United States.

There are probably numerous reasons and theories as to why the game has been absorbed by the American middle and upper-middle class and, truth be told, this country already has basketball as its street game so it would be hard to insert soccer in its place. The fact of the matter is that soccer is one of the most popular participation (as opposed to spectator) sports in the United States and its spread and popularity has been enabled and enhanced by the money poured into it by its participants.

As I watched our clean-cut, well-educated high school freshmen and sophomores play against their earthy, pragmatic Argentine counterparts it struck me that the game was merely a vehicle for both groups of kids.
For the locals it was a vehicle to two destinations; one being the glory of becoming a vaunted professional star in a soccer-crazed country, perhaps even a god in the mold of the nation's living deity Diego Maradona; the other being the slim, slippery tightrope leading to an escape from the poverty of the barrio.

By contrast most American kids are fortunate enough to be able to see soccer as a recreational opportunity, a fun distraction, an opportunity to travel and meet other kids that can be picked up and put down whenever it suits. Additionally there is the undoubted benefit of soccer as a vehicle for gaining access to, and perhaps even paying for, a college education. Very few Americans make a career out of the game or see it as a viable means to escape poverty.

It was clear in the heat of the Argentine summer that although there was spirited competition and a commonality of playing rules and codes of conduct whenever we took the field, that was pretty much where the similarities between teams ended. We were told that most of the Argentine kids would be released at age 17, at which point the club relinquishes all responsibility and the under-educated youngsters are sent back to their families or left to fend for themselves in environments that often feature high unemployment, drug and alcohol abuse and gang membership. The soccer dream is over, the lottery lost.

The American kids will almost certainly pursue collegiate degrees and most will voluntarily walk away from their soccer days to pursue other goals, their sporting dreams fulfilled.

In Argentina, as in most soccer-obsessed countries, the bulk of the money is to be found at the top of the game (picture an inverted pyramid) with the huge, fanatically-supported professional mega-clubs existing as iconic goals for the young, hard-scrabble working class kids to aspire to. Fortunately for those of us who ply our trade as coaches in the United States much of the money is in the broad base of the American soccer pyramid beneath the professional level and resources for high school, club and especially collegiate programs are the equal of many professional complexes in other countries. Because of the presence of other, long-standing American sports such as baseball, basketball and football it is debatable whether soccer will ever achieve the level of popularity it enjoys in other countries and presumably the money will stay at its lower levels and the high quality experiences young people are afforded will continue to be the norm.

As we rode around Buenos Aires in our air-conditioned vans, shopped in tourist boutiques and took our meals in our comfortable hotel it occurred to the coaching staff and many of the youngsters in our squad that their soccer experience had in fact become a vehicle to yet another destination, one of appreciation and realization of our collective good fortune; a place not always too readily acknowledged by those of us that are the "haves" of the world.

Competitive Sense vs. Common Sense

Brian Tompkins — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 14:48:50 +0000

Where does competitive sense end and common sense take over? That is a question that coaches must navigate on a regular, even daily, basis when pushing athletes to get the best out of themselves. Some recent incidents illustrate that if coaches and administrators are faulty in their judgment it can have unintended but nevertheless far-reaching and even catastrophic consequences.

Defining common sense is a tricky and nebulous task but in almost every physical education or coaching course there is an implicit Hippocratic oath of sorts that requires that the safety of students is always the primary concern of the coach or teacher. This "do no harm" approach is presumed to reach across the physical, psychological and emotional dimensions and to call upon the sensible instincts of those in charge.

The recent arraignment of a high school football coach in Kentucky for the reckless homicide death of one of his players is a tragic example of a worst-case scenario coming to pass. The student died of heat exhaustion-related complications following a pre-season practice in the sweltering heat of August. It is claimed that the coach denied the players water and neglected to swiftly attend to the young man after he collapsed. Afforded the benefit of 20-20 hindsight most people would look at the situation and determine a number of common sense mileposts were missed by the coach and his staff that may have resulted in a much less tragic outcome. While there is probably plenty of culpability to be meted out in this case it may be instructive to look at the fragile line that coaches often tiptoe between competitive sense and common sense.

Coaches and the innumerable methods they employ to accomplish their aims are a kaleidoscopic mixture of ideas , theories, beliefs, techniques, systems and philosophies. But, at the more serious levels of sports, high school, college and professional for example, there is an almost universal acceptance that an athlete, in order to accomplish their true potential in the physical and psychological realms, must be willing to push themselves through escalating levels of personal discomfort to the place where high achievement and accomplishment are to be found. In athletic terms this is how the proverbial wheat is separated from the chaff and if a coach is committed to excellence and winning it is a big part of his or her job to make that happen. The same way of thinking also applies to athletes and it is not at all unusual to find athletes that are willing to push themselves to incredible lengths in order to prove themselves. That sort of competitive sense is understood, accepted and in many cases required within the insular cultural circle of many athletic teams.

The unfortunate situation in Kentucky may have been a case of a coach or even an athlete being consumed by their competitive sense and blindly losing sight of the obvious warnings of common sense related to heat, hydration and fatigue. Sadly a well-liked and respected coach and mentor, who knows that safety comes first and is doubtless well aware of the dangers of heat-related injuries appears, by not being on top of the gravity of a situation in his practice environment, to have perhaps allowed, however unwittingly, competitive sense to trump common sense with disastrous results.

Common sense seems to have been a victim in another high school sports debacle that occurred in Texas recently when Covenant School trounced Dallas Academy 100-0 in a girls basketball game. To make matters worse, it was reported in the local papers that some Covenant parents and an assistant coach were gleefully cheering and celebrating three point shots made late in the game when the result was already irreversibly skewed. The outcome of the game and the conduct of some people associated with the school caused Covenant to issue an apology and to request that the game be forfeited citing the whole matter as "shameful" and an "embarrassment."

The Covenant coach refused to apologize for running up the score claiming that his players had done nothing wrong and were simply playing the game the way it is supposed to be played. In the arena of competitive sense he is absolutely right because after all, you play to win and if the other team isn't very good that's their problem. That way of thinking may be apropos in the NBA but it scarcely seems to make any sense in a tiny parochial league against a team that hadn't won a game in four years! Competitive sense versus common sense got that coach fired because in the context of a low-level girls basketball league he appeared to lose sight of some of the other reasons that kids play sports in small parochial schools. It is debatable whether a coach should be particularly concerned about the well-being of the other team but given the context of this event it seemed a particularly egregious flouting of the notion that one should respect and honor ones opponents.

Interestingly, Dallas Academy, the "victims" in this drama never complained about the score. After the furor in the media their athletic administrators decided to remove the team from the league and put the them into a JV league where the talent level is more comparable. After four years of seeing their team over-matched to the point of losing every single game, common sense would seem to beg the question "what took you so long?"

Ultimately these unfortunate cases both illustrate that all competitive coaches, whether they like it or not, still have a responsibility to maintain a level of common sense and perspective in their work. Being competitive does not grant immunity from respecting the accepted norms that operate in the particular culture or environment, especially where the physical, and sometimes, mental health and well-being of athletes is at stake.

Schadenfreude - Relishing The Fall Of O.J.

Brian Tompkins — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 21:20:18 +0000

OJ Simpson is going to prison. In the minds of many it is a long-overdue assignment for a man that somehow managed to elude incarceration after overwhelming evidence suggested that he was responsible for the awful murders of his ex-wife and her friend back in the 1990's.
I am not an expert on criminal or legal matters but I was always of the opinion that based on the evidence he probably did it and that he was an extremely lucky man. His subsequent lifestyle and conduct made me feel increasingly irritated and resentful towards him. That being said, even I was surprised by the degree to which I enjoyed seeing him get sentenced recently. There is nothing particularly dignified about reveling in the misfortune of others especially when, in a situation like the Simpson case, it has been something of an ongoing tragedy, but there are times when it seems justified (or is at least easily rationalized) to take some pleasure from another person's fall.

Schadenfreude (defined by Webster as "enjoyment obtained from the troubles of others")of this sort often goes hand in glove with sports and, for many, seems to be an essential component of being a "die-hard" fan. I have written elsewhere about my disappointment over Brett Favre's departure from the Green Bay Packers and I have taken absolutely no pleasure in seeing the meteoric rise of the New York Jets' fortunes since he became their quarterback. In fact I now find myself enjoying every sack or interception against him. I don't consider myself a "die-hard" Packers fan but admit I am infected by a sort of low-octane schadenfreude.

By a fluke of geography I find myself living on a kind of fault line of baseball fandom in Connecticut where the rivalry of the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox might have its epicenter. Walk into any gathering of people here and it is likely that one will find an equal distribution of fans from both teams. What often defines the "die-hard" element among these fans is not their love of their own team but their resentment and even hatred of the other. I have witnessed (and walked away from) many a "discussion" between opposing fans where both parties engage in an escalating process of finding fault with the others team, stadium, fans, owners, history and so on without really advocating or saying anything positive about their own team! A friend once told me that if one is to be a true "die-hard" Yankees fan it is partially required that one resents, despises and wishes ill upon the Red Sox and takes pleasure in any and all misfortune that might have happened to them in the past or may befall them in the future. Boston fans presumably feel the same way about the Yankees. This rivalry phenomenon is neither limited to the Northeast or to professional sports; it sometimes has even deeper roots in college and high school competition where team-fan connections are even more personal.

Sir Alex Ferguson, the highly-successful manager of the world-famous Manchester United soccer club in England once described Britain as having a "mocking culture" and nowhere is it seen more clearly than in the British tabloid press. A few years ago in an important international match the goalkeeper of the English national soccer team made a costly blunder that resulted in a defeat. The next day the tabloids were merciless in their battering of the player and the memorable lowlight was a full page picture depicting him as a jackass with donkey ears and bucked-teeth. That was the supposedly "friendly" English press; one can only imagine what fun the other country's press made of it!
The adversarial, territorial and somewhat tribal nature of sports will always breed conflict and wherever there is athletic conflict there will be inevitably be motivation to root for our heroes to do well but it's debatable whether we like that as much as we love to see opponents mess up, struggle or fail. Perhaps this type of gallows mentality is precisely what sells British newspapers, even at the expense of its national team's image or reputation. The same can probably be applied to the recent case of New York Giants wide receiver Plaxico Burress who drew considerably less attention from the media for his Super Bowl heroics last year than he did for accidentally shooting himself in the leg at a New York night club recently.

The popularity of tabloid publications and TV shows suggest that it goes far beyond the realm of sports and that in the worlds of entertainment and politics there is an almost limitless appetite for celebrity misfortune and scandal. Whether we choose to admit it publicly or not most of us are probably guilty of enjoying a little schadenfreude once in a while; be it Simpson's conviction, a Favre interception; a wild pitch in Yankee Stadium, an Oscar winning actor arrested for DUI, an air-ball at the free throw line, an illicit celebrity romance, or a State governor arrested for trying to sell a Senate seat. The phenomenon is almost like a type of cultural junk food that we know isn't good to consume too much of but can be oh so addictively enjoyable, even in small doses.
How to take the high road and resist the urge to find enjoyment in others' troubles? Perhaps it's as simple as adopting and following the motto on the British Royal crest: Honi Soit Qui Mal Y Pense - Evil To Him Who Evil Thinks (except during Jets games!)

Sit On The Bench? I Don't Think So!

Brian Tompkins — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 15:33:59 +0000

"I want it all and I want it now." Those lyrics have been featured in a recent television credit card commercial but were actually written with some rebellious prescience in the late 1980's by the rock group Queen. They sang of a desire to see young people seize the day and march boldly into an unknown future. Little could Freddy Mercury and Co. have known back then that their somewhat innocent assertion would become an unspoken mantra in the new millennium.

The regularity with which coaches are witnessing the "I want it now" impatience of young people with regard to the payoffs of sports has become at best a talking point and at worst a nagging headache that promises ongoing challenges for the foreseeable future.

Patience was once considered a virtue and the notion that "good things come to those that wait" was a folksy truism that validated the ability of young people to postpone rewards and gratification and to equate the ideas of hard work and earning what one gets.

In the modern athletic arena we are dealing with youngsters who have been raised on and geared-up for immediacy; the speed and access of information via the internet; the constant and unfettered contact that comes with cell phones and text messaging; the virtual 24/7 availability of just about any and every conceivable service and resource. Their world is exciting, it's fast-paced and it's always in the now.
The problem is that sports, not unlike the world of work, are geared to a different pace where building up one's abilities and experience and establishing credibility over the course of time are the norm. Unfortunately the idea of starting at the bottom i.e. the substitute's bench, the JV team or the entry level job and working one's way up seem to be alien and even offensive to many young people.

Colleges have moved to scrap JV sports because students accustomed to being rewarded with playing time and recognition regardless of their level of ability would rather not play if they are not going to be on the best team. They want the status and payoffs associated with being at the top of the tree without necessarily having to climb it and the days of the happy and content JV athlete seem to have gone the way of the dinosaur.

The acquisition of immediate playing time and the prestige and personal validation it provides has become almost as desirable as winning to many athletes and more frequently coaches are being confronted with kids whose actions suggest "I don't mind whether I win or not as long as I'm getting playing time." An exaggeration? Not really.

I recently asked a group of athletes if they would rather play a full game and lose or play ten minutes and win. Predictably they all asserted they would take the victorious ten minute option. While that sounds good in theory it is rarely borne out in action and almost any coach will tell of kids who are high-spirited, committed and zealous teammates while they are getting regular playing time but who become sullen, self-interested and disconnected when they are not, even if the team is playing well and winning.

It would be simplistic to suggest that athletes should be happy if they are not playing but the frequency and degree to which some kids and their families are over-reacting is troubling and their responses run the gamut from pouting to quitting the team altogether. If there's nothing in it for them, many would rather take their proverbial ball and go home. For some, sitting on the bench of a collegiate team may be the first time they are confronted with the idea that their sporting rewards will be gradual, conditional and based entirely on merit and performance. In other words you can't have it all and you can't have it now.

As coaches we are presented with the challenge of integrating a generation who want immediate gratification into an environment where slow and steady often wins the race. To us, winning the race is important and the satisfaction of an individual is often a secondary consideration to the greater good of the team and the outcome of the game. However, one can't help but feel that through this collision of values the goalposts of coaching, teaching, managing and yes, even parenting, are moving and we will have to continue to recalibrate our aim in the years to come.

The Would-Be Veterinarian

Brian Tompkins — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 13:53:59 +0000

When I was a kid growing up in England one of my best friends was a lad named Tim Carter. Tim lived in a big house with his parents, three siblings and a variety of animals. I used to spend a lot of time there and, being from a far more modest background myself, marveled at how great I perceived life to be as a Carter.

Tim's dad was a veterinarian whose surgery was in a building adjacent to the house. He was a man that I always found to be tremendously impressive and one day he sat Tim and myself down and asked us what we wanted to be when we left school. It was a question that I, like many twelve or thirteen year olds, had not ever given serious consideration to because I was swanning through life under the assumption that I would be plucked from obscurity by a professional soccer club and make my fame and fortune that way.

Dr. Carter, being considerably wiser than me and knowing that my chances of making the big time were slim to say the least, encouraged me to think about other possible careers and given my fascination with him, his work and his life in general, I decided that my great passion in life was now to be a veterinarian.

I recall leaving his house that night full of youthful fire and determination to follow-up on his suggestion to buckle down at school in the math and science classes and begin my journey towards my goal of becoming just like him. I had a new dream and I was going to follow it.

My dream lasted approximately two days or however long it took me to attend my next math and chemistry classes. What I had neglected to remember was that I had no particular enthusiasm, and more importantly no heretofore apparent aptitude, for any mathematical or scientific subject.

I naively thought I was going to develop a new love for those subjects because I wanted to be a vet but when push came to shove, I just wasn't any good at them and my fantasy career became invalidated by the fact that I just don't have a mathematical brain. It was a stark lesson in learning the need to play to one's own strengths and not hang one's hat on another person's accomplishments. Though I was mightily inspired by Dr. Carter he simply had a different skill set that put his career beyond my grasp.

The notion that following a dream will lead to athletic success was an recurring theme at the recent Olympic Games in Beijing. Medal winners, when asked for words of wisdom or advice for young people, seemed to invariably default to the "follow your dreams, work hard and you can accomplish anything" response. Based on what I learned the hard way as a kid and what I see routinely as a coach, those statements are often little more than public relations pap. Well-intentioned, but pap nonetheless.

The hard work part of the equation is easy to agree with; it is difficult to succeed in any walk of life without it but the "follow your dreams and you can be like me" notion often dismisses or disregards the obvious need for talent or aptitude. It is simply not true that any kid can become an Olympic-level swimmer, hurdler, archer, gymnast or BMX rider (how did that become an Olympic sport by the way?) just because they want to. If one has extraordinary physical gifts, an obsessive desire to improve and compete, high level coaching, access to facilities, parents or spouses willing to subjugate their own needs (such as the gymnast's parents who mortgaged their house so that she could train), the flexibility of schedule to miss work or school, some level of corporate sponsorship and the good fortune to remain injury-free then one might, just might , have the opportunity to become an international-caliber athlete.

The idea that one can simply dream or will oneself to a level of athletic or other excellence is folly and unfortunately it has become commonplace among many young people, often creating a distorted sense of their true abilities. College coaches often encounter young people who have very high and strong opinions about their abilities, often encouraged by, or as a result of pressure from, parents, friends or other associates and they sometimes take those opinions to be immutable fact. Fortunately or unfortunately they often learn the hard way (sometimes by butting heads with their coaches) that their subjective dreams or opinions may not stand up to objective scrutiny or independent standards and they are left to reassess, recalibrate and redirect the course of their athletic or real-world lives. For many young people, be they aspiring Olympians or would-be veterinarians, this acceptance, even when hard to swallow, of life's difficult truths, is often the necessary genesis of the maturity and perspective needed to realistically make one's way in a competitive world.

No Winners - The Lament Of A Packers Fan

Brian Tompkins — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 22:28:56 +0000

One of the unavoidable consequences of living, as I did, in Wisconsin for sixteen years is that, regardless of one's place of birth or previous sporting affiliations, one will inevitably become a fan of the Green Bay Packers. The old sporting cliché about the team being "part of the fabric of the community" is an undeniable fact and everybody who spends more than a fleeting amount of time in Wisconsin becomes infected with some degree of Packer Fever.

It was with no small degree of interest that we followed the Brett Favre coming-out-of-retirement saga of the past few weeks. We were by turns hopeful, excited, confused, frustrated and ultimately disappointed to see our icon do the unthinkable and take his gun-slinging arm to New York to play for the Jets.

While the Favre story had multiple twists and turns and more than a little rancor between he and the Packers it was interesting to watch the actions of the person caught most squarely in the middle of the soap opera: Packers coach Mike McCarthy.

McCarthy's charge is to lead the Packers on the field and put them in the best position to win not only on a weekly basis but also over the long haul of the NFL and playoff seasons. When Favre announced his tearful, apparently sincere retirement back in the spring, the sad reality was that McCarthy, and the rest of us, would have to prepare for a future without one of the most beloved players in NFL history.

Professional coaches are, by necessity, pragmatic people and although it is not easy to envision a future without an inspirational, Hall of Fame-caliber quarterback, McCarthy and the Packers did the only thing they could do; move on, name a new quarterback and start to prepare for the upcoming season. As fans of the team we were compelled to do the same.

How confusing then for Favre to reverse fields this summer and decide that he wants to return, but only if he can be the starting quarterback. McCarthy made the obligatory gestures and claimed he would be happy to have Favre in a back-up role but it was clear that he didn't want to undo months of hard work spent in preparing for the post-Favre era. As the fans ranted for the return of their hero and the organization stood firm, McCarthy ended up being at the conflicted fulcrum of a see-sawing emotional drama.

Standing firm in the face of extreme passion and refusing on principle to go back on the organization's plan to hitch their wagon to a new, unproven quarterback was commended in the eyes of some and vehemently scorned by others.

So it is for any coach, teacher, manager or leader when adherence to a matter of principle, whether long-standing or subjectively situational, proves unpleasant and unpopular. It is the point at which we are forced to wrestle with the conflict of doing what's right or doing what's popular in the eyes of others and these situations are the precursors to many a long, sleepless night.

Maybe Mike McCarthy was only doing what he was told to do by the people that employ him and both he and the Packers management will no doubt be equally applauded or vilified in the taverns of Wisconsin.

The unfortunate way in which this scenario was handled on both sides, the posturing and equivocation and the bringing to a grinding halt of a hotly-requited love affair between player and State, is fodder for question and criticism and ultimately nobody won, not the organization, not McCarthy, not Favre and certainly not the fans.
I suspect that even the most die-hard fan is fed-up with the soap opera and wishes, like I secretly do, more insomnia on its protagonists.