Another coaching stress article

[LINK] Greg Wallace, Andersen Independent-Mail

When Bobby Bowden, as he often does, speaks to younger football coaches, he has a simple message for surviving in coaching.

"I tell coaches, ‘Don’t make football your God,’" Bowden, Florida State’s veteran head coach, relayed this week. "Because if you do, it’s liable to get you."

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Bowden’s words seem especially wise this summer, in the wake of the tragic death of Northwestern head coach Randy Walker.

Walker, who died of a massive heart attack June 29 at the age of 52, was only the latest in a long line of college coaches stricken recently by heart problems.

His death served as a serious wakeup call to ACC coaches: while football is important, health matters most of all.

"Your focus is on employment, but the focus the last couple years from a health perspective is even more important than employment," said Clemson coach Tommy Bowden, Bobby’s son. "It raises your eyebrow in another area."

Just before, Tommy Bowden had rattled off a list of coaches stricken with heart problems.

"(Tennessee offensive coordinator) David Cutcliffe? Heart attack. (Central Florida coach) George O’Leary? Heart attack.
(Georgia Tech coach) Chan Gailey? Heart attack," Bowden said. "Randy Walker? Dead. (Memphis and former Clemson coach) Tommy West? Heart attack. (Joe Daniels), the quarterbacks coach at Ohio State? Heart attack. And (almost) all of them are early 50s, a lot of them offense, which is my side of the ball."

It’s enough to make Tommy, a regular exerciser in good shape, think about his own health quite seriously.

"It makes you think about (the stress) of coaching," he said.

The recent influx of money and attention onto college football has made a head coach’s job much tougher. Coaches deal with media, recruiting, the influence of the Internet, text messaging, angry parents, boosters, and, oh, yeah, coaching football.

"We live in a tough profession," said Maryland coach Ralph Friedgen, a large man who has dealt with plenty of questions about his own health over the years. "I enjoy what I do, especially the football part — that’s not even work.

"What’s work for me is getting kids to go to class, do the right thing, dealing with their moms, all the other stuff, that’s where the problems of stress come in and you have to get away from it."

At its highest levels, the game has also become far more competitive, which affects coaches’ longevity.

At this week’s ACC meetings, Virginia Tech’s Frank Beamer was celebrating his 20th season as Hokies head coach. Tommy praised Beamer, and in the same breath said another coach repeating his feat would be "unusual" because of the pressure and expectations surrounding modern programs.

"(The ACC) is a pretty competitive conference from a talent standpoint and a coaching standpoint," he said. "It’s tough to maintain the level of consistency that Miami had for a few years and my father’s had in 14 10-win seasons and what coach Beamer’s had. It’s tough to maintain that with the quality of competition from top to bottom."

Internet message boards, Bowden said, only compound problems. He said the ‘Net made publicity "snowball" against him in 2004, when he was nearly fired before a season-ending run that started with an upset of Bobby’s Seminoles.

"You hope you survive," Tommy said. "If you look in this profession, some guys make it and some guys don’t. And fortunately, that particular hump, we made it over. (Technology) is a new part of the profession, whereas criticism has always been part of the profession. If you don’t want criticism, don’t choose this as a profession."

Criticism and pressure lead many coaches to put in long hours at the office, in and out of football season. Those hours took a toll on Friedgen recently before he made a huge change for the better.

Friedgen, who typically works from 5 a.m. to 11 p.m., found himself falling asleep at the wheel going home while stopped at red lights.

"I think people thought I was drunk," he said. "I’d be at a red light and nod off."

At his wife’s urging, he went in for a sleep apnea study, which he called "two of the worst nights of his life."

"It was electrodes all over your body, your head and they watch you breathe," he said. "They tell me I’m a mouth breather but they tie my mouth up (with apparatus). I said, ‘I’m a mouth breather and you’ve got these things coming out of my mouth – how am I supposed to breathe?"

At one point, the study found, Friedgen woke up 97 times in an hour. But the apparatus made him miserable, so he resisted treatment.

Finally, after talking with Jacksonville, Fla., sports radio host David Lamm, he found a device called a CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure), which goes up the nose to keep a person’s airways open during sleep and blows air up the nasal passages.

"It took me one night to used to that thing, and I put it on now, and click, I’m out," he said. "I’m like another man now. Even my kids say I’m much better, not irritable; I’m ready to go 20 hours a day now."

Buoyed by his improved rest, exercise and a better diet (Friedgen now eats five small meals per day), he has lost 35 pounds.
"I really haven’t felt this good in a long time," he said. "I don’t have any aches or pains."

Friedgen is happy, healthy, and might have prolonged his life and career.

Bobby Bowden says others would be wise to follow his path.

"If football is the only thing you think of and live for, you ain’t going to be around long, baby," he said. "You have to have something more important than football in your life."