Sport Psychology

Sport Psychology, or, at least, the role of the sport psychologist, is often viewed as b.s. for the weak of mind.  The Onion pours it on Mark Sanchez, who, as of time of writing, seems to be succeeding.

Coaching Perspective

Coaching college basketball is a difficult job because it requires recruiting, coaching, and raising money for the university.  There is much more to say on this topic, but for the moment, this article about Steve Lavin, the coach at St. John's University in New York, discusses a bit of the tumult of coaching big time college basketball - losing recruits to bigger fish, and trying to maintain perspective.  I'm usually cynical about coaches, but this article is humanizing.

Why sport?

Freshmen basketball player, Lauren Hill, of Mount St. Joseph's College, has incurable brain cancer and has months to live.  On November 2, 2014, she played in a college game and scored the first basket of the game.  Lauren has taken on the mission of increasing cancer awareness, and raising money for research.   Her attitude is admirable - she has willed herself to focus on something positive out of a tragic situation.  My thoughts go to her and her family.

Though this story is a bit of a tangent for this blog, the story spurred me to think about sport and the role it plays in contemporary US society.  Why sport in a time of difficulty?  For Lauren, the answer is simple.  It was her dream to play college basketball, and she was thrilled to do it and raise attention for a worthy cause.  She was heartened by the support.

One of the things that sport does is to literally bring people together - as in the same building.  In this case, people showed up to support a young woman's dream and a young woman's cause.  The game was attended by over 10,000 fans who filled Xavier University's basketball arena in Cincinnati. In the US, sporting events and major pop music concerts are two events that can reliably bring people to share the same physical, and often psychic/emotional space.  Sport can offer a forum to express some of our thoughts and emotions.

How else could 10,000 people show up to support a person, or a cause, in a clear way?  I'm not saying that this is a good thing, but it's a reality of the culture we live in.  Sport reflects and inspires all sorts of human behavior ranging from greed and arrogance to achievement and self-sacrifice.  Stories like this show the good that sport can help bring out. Thank you Lauren.

The Effectiveness of a Football (Soccer) Manager and Hope for the Cubs?

ESPN writer, Gabrielle Marcotti, wrote this article about the role of the manager in top level European soccer.  His thesis is this:  There is no objective, analytic way to judge a manager, and therefore, hiring and firing is done on reputation (self-promotion and PR) and has more than a little bit to do with timing and luck.  He uses the examples of Jose Mourinho, the self-appointed Special One, and David Moyes, the failed successor to the extremely successful Alex Ferguson, at Manchester United.

Marcotti's argument is consistent with the view of the book, Soccernomics, (earlier version reviewed here) written by a sports economist - Stefan Szymanski and a journalist - Simon Kuper.  The book self-admittedly takes cues from baseball's Moneyball - which is basically an ode to using statistics to evaluate sporting performance.  Statistical analysis in football is difficult since there are few discrete, objective data points (ie goals scored), but they argue that the wages of a team are the best indicator of success with coaching/managing accounting for a small fragment - though they do cite a few notable exceptions to the rule - thus, implicitly backing Mourinho's self-styled moniker, the Special One.  They found that about 10% of managers actually overachieve - in other words, their teams did better than their wages would suggest (2012, p. 114).

This makes me wonder if Joe Maddon will be able to improve the lot of the Chicago Cubs.   He was hired by General Manager, and analytics acolyte, Theo Epstein.  According to the New York Times, "Maddon was the ideal fit, open to ideas from the analytics-minded front office and popular with players for cultivating a loose clubhouse atmosphere while thriving on competing with the payroll behemoths" (full article here).

What Cubs fans really want to know is,  will he get the Cubs to overachieve, or at least achieve up to their payroll?  Is he the exorcist needed to rid the curse of the Billy Goat, and win the World Series?  If he does, we know he will get the credit, but we won't probably know if it was the analytics, or the 'loose clubhouse' that got them there, or just luck.  Cubs fans won't care. 

Competitive Practice

So, the previous post- quote- extolls the virtues of 'having fun' in sport.  This post extolls the virtues of competitiveness.  I recall Michael Jordan saying that one of the best things about his college coach, Dean Smith, was that he made practices competitive.  Under Smith as an assistant, current UNC head Coach, Roy Williams, used to track the performance of each player in practices. Here is an article that touches on this aspect of Coach Smith.
"Much of practice was competitive, and often the losing team in drills and scrimmages had to run."
Read more at http://www.wralsportsfan.com/respect-discipline-among-lessons-from-the-dean-s-office/13132307/#f5vGu8mW1QUcxK4l.99

In another article, UNC's legendary women's soccer coach, Anson Dorrance, winner of 20 NCAA titles, talks of the influence of Coach Smith.

"Coach Dorrance measures and tracks everything his players do in practice, and calls this atmosphere the “Competitive Cauldron”." 

For some, there is a tension between competition and fun.  Some dislike competition and perform better when the stakes are low.  Michael Jordan thrived on competition.  It seemed to make him focus and excel all the more.  This was clearly an asset on the basketball court, but can be destructive in daily life, if, say, you need to gamble to enjoy a round of golf .  Jordan was motivated to prove every detractor wrong, and seems to have the memory of an elephant when it comes to slights received, as his hall of fame speech attests to.

So, how can 'fun' and competition co-exist in a health balance?  Can the competitive mindset be let go of when the context calls for humility, graciousness, and gratefulness?  The post baseball life of Pete Rose might indicate no, but maybe someone like Magic Johnson might indicate something else.

Tiger Woods on Earl Woods,

Don't force your kids into sports. I never was. To this day, my dad has never asked me to go play golf. I ask him. It's the child's desire to play that matters, not the parent's desire to have the child play. Fun. Keep it fun.

Tiger Woods

Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/t/tiger_woods.html#2QMHZjM3qpaUT36x.99


Regardless of what you think of Woods the younger, he dominated golf for a long time.  This quote (and I've heard other similar ones) points to role of fun in sports and in instilling a sense of intrinsic motivation in athletes.

Hello World!

This blog is an inquiry into performance - most especially, how the human mind can be used or trained or manipulated to one's advantage or disadvantage.  It is founded by a former athlete and hobbyist photographer who was maddeningly inconsistent, and, more frustratingly for him, acutely aware of his inconsistency.  We hope to draw from  the world of sports, of brain science, of art, of literature, of psychology and of all sorts of human endeavor to explore what makes humans perform well, and perhaps more importantly, take satisfaction in their life's work.  We are skeptical of cliches, tips, new age-y, stuff, but not above it.  We hope this blog will be of relevance to athletes, coaches, teachers, managers, artists, creators, researchers and to the curious.  We acknowledge the tension between the intellectual dissection and classification of performance and its attendant anxieties, and the 'flow' of actually just 'doing it', so, we'll search for sustainable practices and processes rather than just observations.  This tension is the thrust behind the moniker of the blog, 'The Smart Play Dumb'.  Please do let us know what you think.