STRESS IN COACHING : While Five More Succumb at Pro Level, Others Learn Survival Secrets in World That’s Out of Their Control

STRESS: Mental or physical tension or strain.

--Webster’s New World Dictionary

Stress problems are increasing in professional coaching today. The evidence can be found almost everywhere.

There have been five such victims this year--three National Basketball Assn. coaches, a National Football League coach, Mike Ditka of the Chicago Bears, and, most recently, an American League manager, Sparky Anderson of the Detroit Tigers.

Ditka has had a heart problem. Anderson was a victim of nervous exhaustion.

The stressed-out NBA coaches, whose symptoms ranged from bleeding ulcers to blacking out on the basketball floor, included Jerry Reynolds of the Sacramento Kings, Frank Layden of the Utah Jazz and Bernie Bickerstaff of the Seattle SuperSonics.

All five have become victims in the last 10 months.

Of the group, only Layden has quit, acknowledging that he has taken his last ride on the NBA “roller coaster.” Ditka, Anderson, Reynolds and Bickerstaff have come back warier, although not necessarily for good.

Still another coach, Bill Walsh of the San Francisco 49ers, has given up, too, citing, in part, the pressure of big-time coaching.

“It almost consumes you,” said Walsh, who retired at 57 after leading San Francisco to three of the last eight Super Bowl championships and then becoming an analyst for NBC Sports. “There were years when I was so enmeshed in my work that I lost energy--lost the will to handle the job.”

To Raider Coach Mike Shanahan, stress is an NFL universal.

“It isn’t just the head coaches who are (afflicted),” he said. “It’s the whole staff, particularly the (offensive and defensive) coordinators. If you say you don’t feel it, you aren’t being honest with yourself.”

Perhaps the most widely publicized stress victim of the decade so far has been Dick Vermeil, who, when he resigned as coach of the Philadelphia Eagles in 1983, popularized the word burnout as related to people, not rockets.

“I can’t see myself coaching again,” Vermeil said recently. “For me, it was always first and 10. I lived in a state of continuous tension.”

Those with a sense of humor can sometimes joke about it. Said Marv Levy, coach of the Buffalo Bills: “I’ve noticed that burnout mainly affects the financially secure.”

Reynolds, the Sacramento coach who collapsed on the court last December and lay senseless for six minutes, can even laugh at himself now.

“I don’t want to pass out again,” he said the other day. “I might have to find a real job.”

But most of his peers, who remain concerned about Reynolds’ blackout, aren’t laughing.

“It’s scary, to be very honest with you,” said John MacLeod, coach of the Dallas Mavericks.

According to Dr. Bruce Ogilvie, a sports psychologist in San Jose, a well-adjusted, reasonably contented coach is usually one with realistic goals, a personal physical fitness program and a concerned family.

“A person in a stressful job--and coaching is about the worst--needs to return to the warmth and shelter of a loving partner after the workday,” Ogilvie said.

“Stress is like a poison, and the pain and discomfort continue to build until you find a release. Running and swimming are good, but hardly anything is more important than a relationship with an attentive partner.”

A sports psychologist for 35 years, Ogilvie said that the NFL and the NBA have become the country’s most traumatic places to coach, mostly because of the high expectations of changing ownerships in an era of increasingly high-priced franchises.

“Big league coaches are subject to two kinds of pressure that don’t much bother the rest of us,” he said.

“First, the performance demands by owners, fans and the press are unreal. Making the playoffs is now a minimum requirement, and if you don’t get there, regardless of how ordinary your players are, you’re made to feel that your job is in jeopardy. That’s a hell of a way to have to live.

“Second, most NBA coaches and many in the NFL have been winners most of their lives, either as athletes or on (lower levels of coaching) or else they wouldn’t be where they are. Suddenly they’re in a situation where they can’t win no matter what they do.

“The result is a feeling of helplessness, anxiety, and pressure--enormous pressure.”

The only antidote is finding a way to cope.

Or as Ogilvie said: “You have to develop a defense. To go on living, you’ve got to drain the poison off by, say, running to exhaustion--or, perhaps, by involving yourself closely in a caring family or with a loving wife.”

He added: “All creative people know pressure, of course.” Many of them thrive when working against deadline pressures.

“But the difference is that creative people in other (fields) aren’t working in a crowded stadium or arena,” he said. “They can hide. They can make a mistake or two without losing their job. For a coach, there’s no place to hide--and one wrong decision is career-threatening. That is real pressure.”

And so, stress lives on. Said Ogilvie: “A successful NBA coach told me this winter: ‘We’re all just waiting to be fired.’ ”

BURNOUT PLAGUE FOR COACHES, NOT PLAYERS

The Detroit Pistons, who took the champion Lakers to seven games in last season’s NBA finals, demonstrated this season that their 1988 performance was no fluke. They beat the Lakers in four games with a simple plan:

--On defense, the Pistons took away whatever the Lakers could do best at any given time, continuing a procedure that had worked well against the Chicago Bulls’ Michael Jordan, whom they had sometimes covered with as many as three or four players. Thus, Magic Johnson wasn’t much of a factor against Detroit even before he was hurt.

--On offense, the Pistons, with a surprisingly unsophisticated scheme, simply got the ball to the hot shooter. Theirs didn’t seem to be a guard-oriented offense so much as a hot man’s offense.

But if any of this worried Magic, he gave no evidence of it.

Shortly before reinjuring his weakened hamstring, the Laker guard, one of the most valuable athletes in L.A. sports history, was asked about his attitude toward an event as pressure-filled as an NBA championship series.

“I love it,” Johnson said. “Everyone should have a chance to trade places with me (when) every play counts . . . every shot counts.”

Johnson’s coach, Pat Riley, didn’t see it that way at all.

“I get a kick out of people who say (this) is fun,” Riley said. “If you want to have fun, go to a Boys Club. I’m (here) to win.”

What is this? What accounts for such a conflict of attitudes toward a high-pressure event?

“Responsibility,” said Shanahan, the Raider coach. “The (pressure) load is incomparably heavier on the guy in charge. Burnout doesn’t come from coaching. It comes from responsibility.”

Pro athletes, by contrast, each accountable for himself only, are freer to enjoy a clutch moment--as former Dodger Pedro Guerrero was saying the other day.

“I love to go out there with the pressure of men on base,” the St. Louis Cardinal first baseman said, adding: “There’s pressure on the pitcher, too.”

Indeed. And only managers are accountable for all of those pressured.

The dividing line is between making and accepting decisions. In big league sports, a coach or manager has no choice but to make the game-time decisions that create the strain that raises their blood pressure, as a Humboldt State professor, Albert J. Figone, concluded in a recent paper.

During one recent study, a basketball coach’s pulse rate leaped from 75 beats a minute as the game started to 140 a few minutes later to a twice-normal 170 in a first-half crisis.

Referring to football coaching, Figone said: “The coach (must) demonstrate hard-boiled rationality (with) no signs of inaction or lack of good judgment in making decisions while at the same time (assuming) total responsibility.

“However, in reality, the coach’s decisions often depend on influences such as injuries, officiating, amount of talent and other factors clearly beyond reasonable control.”

In other words, the coach is often stupendously uncertain, but must take a bold, macho stance nonetheless. The result: heavy stress.

If anything bothers the players, cardiologist Richard Scott notes, they can go out and run it off. Activity is their relief. At the same time, the coach on the sideline, who can only watch, simply stews in his anxiety.

“There is no satisfactory (game-time) outlet for (a coach’s) stress,” Scott said from Washington, D.C. “Coaching is a high-risk activity from a cardiovascular point of view.”

And it gets worse, Vermeil found.

“Players get over losses much more quickly,” he said. “They just suit up and play again. A coach has to live with failure.”

Every pro coach’s problem, of course, is that somewhere out there, an owner is holding him responsible, regardless of who put his team together: a scout, the owner, or even the previous coach.

Said San Jose State psychologist Thomas Tutko: “The most devastating position you can be in is with full responsibility but almost no control.”

AMBITION, RECOGNITION, A NEED TO DOMINATE

As a life style, is it more hazardous, more stressful, to coach basketball than football?

It often seems so. In basketball, the coach is like an actor. He is the focus of the attention in a theater-sized arena.

Football coaches operate in larger, less personal stadiums. If they can’t hide, they can at least duck.

Nonetheless, most coaches seem to believe that one sport is as stressful as another.

“The basic nature of the person--not the sport--has the most to do with their reaction to pressure,” Levy said from Buffalo. “There are a lot of high-pressure jobs in this world.

“Coaching isn’t unique that way. What’s unique is each individual, and I guess if you’re unusually hyper, you’re more subject to the strain of any job.”

It does seem, though, that burnout actually eliminates few coaches in any league, and almost no baseball managers. Even Sparky Anderson was out for only a few weeks this season.

“There’s a lot of pressure in coaching, sure, and it can be a grind, but it’s too good a life--if you like it--to walk away from,” Levy said.

“Over the years, I’ve discovered that it’s more stressful not coaching than coaching.”

Levy, the NFL’s only Phi Beta Kappa coach, added: “There are, as you know, great vicissitudes in this field. You win some that you should have lost, and you lose a few that you should have won, and you come to agree with John McKay that a genius is a guy who won last Sunday.

“In fact, I sometimes ask myself, ‘Why am I doing this?’

“But I get over it quickly. Very quickly.”

From San Jose, Ogilvie said: “That’s a coach for you. The pressure is horrible, and still they hang in.

“The good ones hang in because they’re alike in three respects.

“First of all, they’re extraordinarily ambitious. They set surprisingly high goals for themselves.

“Second, they all thrive on recognition. They may be introverted, but they still hunger for recognition.

“And third, they all have a strong need to control, to dominate.”

So they survive. For now. But at what price? What’s the toll on the only hearts they’ll probably ever have?

At the Raider office, Shanahan said: “I’ve wondered about that. In this league, old coaches are eligible for pensions at 62--but how many coaches on a pension do you know? You’ve got to get there to get it.”

HOW TO COPE: HAVING FUN AND OTHER KEYS

One definition of stress is: “Reaction to change; the adaptation of one’s body and mind to any change.”

By that test, Ram Coach John Robinson is one of the best-adjusted individuals in football today--or, probably, in any other sport or field.

Robinson adapts, readily, to changes--new players, associates, friends, opponents, reporters, to any football system or problem, to any situation--even the loss of running back Eric Dickerson, probably the best in the game today.

How does Robinson adapt to pressure?

“The trick is to make football fun,” he said, taking a somewhat unusual tack for a coach, one that sets him apart from Pat Riley and others who equate losing with dying. “You make sure you’re getting your fair share of fun out of it.

“All jobs, of course, have negatives that wear you down if you let them. And you do have to deal with them. But you don’t let the negatives outweigh the pleasures of the job.”

How do other coaches cope with possibly the biggest threat to their own happiness and well-being: the burden of stress?

Count the ways:

--Nothing is more important than avoiding fatigue.

That’s Levy’s line.

“It’s fatigue that dulls you, and makes you vulnerable to stress,” he said. “So (Buffalo coaches) have a set leaving time. We’re always out of here by 10 (p.m.).”

A 15-hour workday may seem excessive to a 9-to-5 person, but it’s about the norm in football.

“The guys who have trouble are the ones who work till 1 or 2 (a.m.), then get up at 5:30 and hurry back to the office,” Levy said.

--You have to work at knocking out stress.

That’s from Ogilvie.

“A coach must deliberately defend himself against (stress),” he said. “You can’t just say, I’m not gonna let it bother me.

“You need a regular, active program--running or swimming, lifting (weights), biking, or playing tennis, anything that cuts quite heavily into your time, into your daily routine.

“I know (an NBA) coach who, after every defeat, goes out into the night and runs eight miles. Runs to exhaustion. That keeps him quite sane and normal in his insane, abnormal world.”

Levy believes in running, too.

“After every practice, I drop everything and run 20 minutes,” he said.

Said Shanahan: “Just as you have to have a (physical training) program for your players, you need one for yourself. On a football team, the day is always divided into segments, and I block out a couple of segments for myself to run and lift (weights).

“That gets you away from the pressure, away from the phone, makes you feel better about yourself, relieves the tension.”

--A concerned family is a coach’s best conduit to stress reduction.

The San Jose State psychologist, Tutko, said: “Above all, make time for your family. They’re your support system.”

Said Vermeil: “The (other) people around a coach don’t know how to give him support. They’re there when he wins, but not when he loses, when he needs it most. Only his family can give him that kind of support.”

--A coach should always set realistic goals.

“Loosen your collar,” said Indiana Pacer Coach Dick Versace. “(You’re) coaching a basketball game, not trying to get over terminal cancer.”

Said Ogilvie: “Don’t let your fantasies dictate to you. Focus on the possible instead of a goal that might kill you anyway if you got there.”

--Don’t worry.

“I’m going to live my life to the fullest,” Notre Dame Coach Lou Holtz told writer John Nelson of Associated Press. “I’m not trying to abuse it, but I’m not going to worry about health. If you do, get out of coaching.”

--Ignore your critics.

In New York in 1983, after Knick Coach Hubie Brown was hospitalized because of a heart problem, he said: “There’s far more pressure here than there was in Atlanta or Louisville. Seven dailies (newspapers) follow us regularly.

“People think I’m heartless so I couldn’t have a heart problem, but I’m a sensitive guy. I read, hell, I memorize, every word that’s written about me.”

In New York in 1976, amid that kind of pressure, Holtz resigned in the last month of his first year as coach of the NFL’s Jets, with three games left.

The lesson?

“You shouldn’t get too concerned about what anybody says about you,” Levy said.

--Consult your friends.

“Don’t go it alone,” said Walsh, whose 49er teams have won more games in the 1980s than any NFL rival. “Talk things over with old friends or college classmates or a professional person.

“You can bounce things off a sports psychologist. Not so much for his advice as for his counsel. Being able to just visit quietly with them or with good friends keeps down the turmoil.”

--Relax.

After John Madden burned out in football, he finally settled down in another stressful field as an analyst. The difference?

“I’ve learned to relax,” he said.

The late Ray Malavasi got that message long ago as coach of the Rams, when he once fell asleep while being interviewed by phone on his radio show.

--Diet.

“You keep adding to the stress if you try to eat on the run, as a lot of (coaches) have,” said Levy. “Take your time over good food and not too much of it if you want your health and less stress.”

In that spirit, Washington Redskin Coach Joe Gibbs sits down with his assistants every night during the season to a nutritious, catered dinner that has three or four courses.

--Joke.

After he blended an improper diet with fatigue and a heap of stress to bring on his collapse last winter during a Sacramento basketball game, Jerry Reynolds began staving off the next attack with Bob Hope-style one-liners.

“I didn’t think I had a heart attack, but I knew that going out on a stretcher wasn’t the right way to leave the arena,” Reynolds said.

“The good thing was, I was the first one out of the parking lot.”

--Delegate authority.

Some coaches step up the pressure on themselves by failing to give their assistants a free hand, in the view of two Virginia teachers, C. J. Malone and R. J. Rotella.

And, in the Journal of Physical Education not long ago, they wrote: “(Some coaches) prevent burnout by surrounding themselves with talented (assistants) who fill roles not easily filled by the head coach. (He) must be willing to give away responsibilities so assistants perceive themselves as valued and important.”

--Revel in a hobby.

“It must be an absorbing hobby, painting, chess, gardening--anything demanding,” Ogilvie said. “There’s a hell of a lot more to life than sports.”

Times researcher Doug Conner contributed to this story.