Coaches Joining Health Crusade

Dick MacPherson’s recent problem with acute diverticulitis and the ensuing colon surgery that may sideline the popular New England coach the rest of the season brings focus anew to stress-related illness in a profession of highly motivated, highly visible workaholics.

First, the bad news: NFL coaches still work six-month marathons of seven-day weeks and 15-hour days--or worse--and the pressure to win is immense. The better news: As a group, they take better care of themselves than as recently as the 1980s; most of them eat better, smoke less and exercise more.

The Redskins’ Joe Gibbs, who has lasted longer than any current head coach except Miami’s Don Shula, three seasons ago started jogging four miles at least four days a week. Some Sundays, he has been observed paddling along near the team hotel a couple hours before the bus leaves for the stadium. He no longer gains 20 pounds or so during the season. Other coaches prefer racquetball or weightlifting.

MacPherson, 62, in his second pro head-coaching season after 17 years as a successful college coach, had the double whammy of bad diet and bad team.

Shula says his 30-year longevity as a head coach is a combination of nonmeddlesome management, good players and a personality that tries not to let losses linger for more than a day.

“I’ve never had an ulcer; I give ulcers,” Shula said. “The carriers keep everything inside, and eventually it catches up with them. My emotions come out and, when it’s over with, it’s over with.”

Shula and Gibbs cite the stability and tenure of their staffs as factors in their coaching longevity. Although Gibbs says, “I’ve been blessed in that regard,” he says there are tense times. “It’s just there,” he told The Washington Post’s Richard Justice. “You end up in those meetings with coaches throwing stuff at one another, threatening to fight and all the rest.”

If coaches are taking better care of themselves, it is a reflection of society as a whole, club officials said. In fact, NFL teams may have been trend-setters in giving them extensive physical exams. The Giants detected early stages of cancer in two assistants who still coach today, GM George Young said.

Cigarette smoking is way down, among players as well as coaches. Many teams ban all smoking in meetings; cigarette smoking on the sidelines, so prevalent a decade ago, is virtually extinct.

Also, nutritionists now are common on NFL staffs, serving coaches as well as players. As a result, the dinners Young said he now sees his coaches order “aren’t as heavy in starches and fried foods.” The late-night refrigerator used to be a staple of NFL coaching staffs. “I was one of the guilty ones earlier,” Shula admitted. “I looked forward to that midnight snack.”

To Young, stress is part of the job.

“I don’t like to moan and groan about that, because there are so many other jobs that are stress-related,” he said. “When you like your job, it’s a lot less stressful than when you don’t.”