Players flipping behavior switch

On the field, violence and aggression are virtues. Off of it, there is a different set of rules. With all eyes fixed on them, players have no choice but to navigate both worlds.

By J. BRADY McCOLLOUGH

This NBA star wants his peers to know how he earned his degree in management studies after six years of online correspondence.

By Jalen Rose

College – The number one reason why I decided to get my college degree online is that I would become the first of my mother’s kids to have one. As excited as I was to be part of the Fab Five at Michigan, it still bugged me deep down inside that I went to school for three years [leaving after his junior year] and still didn’t have my degree. I needed maybe three or four semesters to actually graduate. To get those credits, it took me six more years of work. It wasn’t an overnight process.

The great thing about the NBA is that the players’ union has programs set up to help you get your degree online. So the first thing you need to do is contact a representative for player affairs. You don’t even have to know what you want to study, but you have to be prepared to do the work. Make school a priority and take it seriously, just like you take your training seriously. You’ve truly been blessed to be able to play professional sports. But your education will be what drives you before, during and after that time.

How do you choose a school? I went with the University of Maryland in College Park for my online correspondence because the agency that represents me is located in the D.C. area. When researching schools, I wanted to enroll somewhere where I could be hands-on during the offseason. A lot of times, I need to go to D.C. to catch up on business, so with UM, I was able to visit my professors while in the area. I needed a school that was convenient in that respect. But, no matter which school you select, taking a course online is like taking any other college course—it has a syllabus, assignments, group work, papers due and deadlines to meet. I did all the same things that my classmates did; I just wasn’t in class every day and didn’t get to interact with them face-to-face. What makes it cool is that eventually your classmates become interested in you. They may even find out you play ball. Because of that, it kind of helps the situation, because it’s not like you’re a total stranger.

As far as selecting courses go, find out what interests you. Part of being an athlete is being able to manage your affairs financially. That’s why I wanted to take classes in that area. That major [a BS in Management Studies] made sense to me. Two careers that I want when I’m done playing is to be an NBA executive and an NBA coach. Hopefully, I can wear a lot of hats like Isiah Thomas or Doc Rivers, guys who are retired, but are still part of the game. Shaquille O’Neal is trying to wear all the hats he can, too [last year, O’Neal received his MBA from the University of Phoenix, an accredited online school]. When Shaq’s done playing, as many options as he has on the floor when he has a man guarding him, he’s going to have plenty more off the court. Those are the guys I look to for inspiration.

If you do go for your degree, you have to do it for the right reasons. A lot of athletes don’t know that you won’t be taken as seriously in the work force after your playing days are over if you don’t have a degree. The world doesn’t care that you averaged 25 points over 10 years. It doesn’t work like that.

Believe in the opportunity to take your life to the next level through continuing your education. Defy the naysayers the same way you do as an athlete. Put the same time, energy and pride into saying, “I want to be a college graduate” as you do in saying, “I want to be a great athlete,”

and it will happen for you.

Five Steps to Getting Your Degree Online

 1. Do the research

Web sites such as www.worldwidelearn.com are decent places to start, but you still may need someone to help you navigate the wealth of information out there. If you don’t want to go through an official league program, try contacting Dr Cristina Versari (cversari@sduis.edu, 800-234-7041) at the San Diego University for Integrative Studies (SDUIS.EDU). Versari worked for the NBA for over a decade and helped more than 1,000 players get their college degrees. She is now a consultant and personal coach, helping both current and former athletes from all sports succeed in the world of continuing education.

 2. Map out a game plan

When deciding on a school, don’t just throw a dart at the board. Decide which situation would work best with your specific schedule and prior education background. “We often coordinate with the athlete’s original college, if they still have credits,” says Versari. “But each person’s needs are different. We can come up with a degree plan for anybody.”

 3. prepare to commit

According to Versari, all you need to get a degree online is “a laptop and two to three hours of free time per day.” But you do need the motivation to see things through. “Being an athlete doesn’t automatically make you a great student,” warns Rose. “You have to put the work in.”

4. Use your skills

It may not always be obvious, but the skills developed as an athlete—analyzing game tapes, devising strategies, working within a team—often translate pretty well to the classroom. “I used my basketball experience working with different egos to get everybody to work together,” Shaq has said about his online university experience.

5. Exercise diligence

It took Rose six years to get his degree. Alton Lister, the former Golden State Warrior who is now head coach at a community college in Phoenix, worked for 10 years to receive his. Former Sacramento King and Chicago Bull Lawrence Funderburke is on the verge of getting his BA. “Athletes with degrees are taken more seriously in the business community,” Funderburke tells OT. “But like anything else in life and sports, you gotta want it.”

–reporting by Gabe Guarente

Today, at 71, Mix still practices — law, that is, not football. From new offices in Mission Valley, Mix displays only one football memento: high up on a bookcase is his white helmet, emblazoned with the yellow bolt and his number, 74, on the side. It’s safe inside a plastic box, not only heralding an illustrious career, which got him elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1979, but also reminding us that there is life after sport.

Mix says that too many athletes today have “dismal postcareer lives.” There’s a touch of anger if not frustration in his voice. He calls their troubles “startling, sad, pathetic, and outrageous.” He’s speaking of the rise in bankruptcies, marital infidelities, and divorces, as well as legal and personal screwups, the sordidness exposed by our gotcha media. The names in the circus of ex-football clowns are legend: Lawrence Taylor, Ryan Leaf, O.J. Simpson.

How much has changed since his playing days? Nothing and everything. In the 1960s, Mix tells me, athletes prepared for life after football. Unlike today’s players, they worked in the off-season, usually “part-time for a company and setting the foundation to build a career. Or they attended school.” It was, he says, “commonly accepted” that you’d be moving on. Back then, the money was good, “more than the average person made. But we probably spent more too.” After retirement, Mix says, even those who’d saved their money had only enough to live on for a year. Eventually, everyone needed a job.

Among the Chargers he played with, several got law degrees, one became a dentist, others earned degrees in business and education. Perhaps his most famous teammate was Jack Kemp, who died earlier this year and who had a short-lived career with San Diego. Kemp demonstrated an ability to mediate conflicts, helping, along with Mix and others, to establish a players’ association. Within a year of leaving the Buffalo Bills, he was swooped up by New York’s Republican Party, put on the ballot, and elected to Congress.

But then again, the culture of football hasn’t changed much; its problems are perennial. The socioeconomic profile of players, Mix notes, remains the same. Mostly low-income kids, raised by single mothers, with few differences between blacks and whites. Mix grew up in the Russian-Jewish ghetto of Boyle Heights in East Los Angeles. His parents divorced early, and his mother raised the children. “Most of our time was spent on welfare.” Coming from poverty, he says, no one had “business sophistication in my family or in my circle of friends.” Another constant among players: young fatherless men value male role models, especially “coaches. So they grow up to trust adult supervisors.” They learn from these men that “sportsmanship — integrity and fair play — is at the root of the game.” But “the athlete becomes too trusting; he thinks people can be trusted. But that’s not the way of the business world. So he’s susceptible to being fooled and cheated.” Players are an “easy touch” for family and friends, Mix says, because the player is sympathetic to those who are stuck behind in the poor neighborhood.

What’s more, then as now, “Athletes don’t receive a good education in college.” And it’s not because they’re being denied one. Rather, Mix says, “Playing a major sport at a major university is more difficult than if the athlete is working a full-time job and going to school. They take up so much of your time: practice, meetings, games, travel. And injury treatment. If you’re a football player, you semi-live in that training room, before and after practice. Weekends for study? No, there’s a game to be played. What about Sunday? No, there’s injury treatment.”

Without an education, athletes, he says, have no “skills to offer an employer once they retire.” Even if they got their degree, after a pro career they’ve forgotten what they learned, and they’re at a disadvantage, starting out in a field where most of their competition is five to ten years younger.

When Mix retired from football, he practiced civil litigation. Six years ago, a friend, a former National Basketball Association player, told him that he’d been at a conference of retired NBA players and noticed most were limping. His friend asked the wounded warriors why they hadn’t filed workers’ compensation claims. “That was a foreign word to them,” his friend said.

The following year Mix was invited to speak. Recalling the confab now in a slow-measured cadence, the epitome of “don’t get excited,” Mix remembers telling the men that every team buys workers’ compensation insurance. Ex-players who have ongoing injuries can file claims against the team and its insurance carrier. “Nobody gets rich, but it can be significant money. Second-chance money.” An injured ex-pro may receive a tax-free award for permanent disability; a lifetime pension if he is 70 percent or more disabled, roughly $5000 to $10,000 a year; or lifetime medical care focused on the particular hurt. Mix signed up 100 players and came away from that convention “with a law practice,” “a nice little niche.” Since then, he has won every case he’s filed.

One case Mix is working on is that of former Charger star Eric Parker. The agile wide receiver and punt returner signed a five-year deal in 2006 that would have paid him $1.85 million in 2008. But a painful injury to his big toe — requiring three surgeries, and even then a bone in the ball of his foot refused to heal fully — forced him last year “to hang it up.” An end, he tells me by phone, he doesn’t regret. During a short but intense career (between 2003 and 2008, he was third in receptions, with most of his catches from Drew Brees), “I had nothing but smooth sailing with the Chargers.” Parker recalls two concussions as well as injuries to his ankle, back, and shoulder. “Nothing uncommon,” he says. He retired because, as a receiver, “I couldn’t take off on the foot or stop on it like I used to.” He’s hoping his claim will pay for a trauma he’ll always need to nurse, especially in his new job as wide receivers’ coach at Helix High School. The hardest part of retiring for Parker was being unable to compete, which he’d done since age three. “It’s over so fast. Imagine a musician who can’t play anymore, can’t do what he’s so good at. I feel just like that.”

In addition to position-related injuries, Mix says, “All players — and notice I didn’t say ‘some,’ but all — have early degenerative arthritis in all their joints and spine. It comes from what we call ‘cumulative trauma,’ which means wear and tear over their career.” (Eric Parker says he was told at various Charger seminars that most guys would develop arthritis from playing in the NFL.) “The body is subjected,” Mix continues, “to thousands of mini-traumas when players hit and get hit, run, jump, lift weights. Lifting heavy weights is a major contributor.

“Those who play sports that involve head contact,” football and soccer (heading the ball), “often have neurological problems. Diminished memory. Inability to focus or concentrate.” Those with head trauma or concussions have, Mix says, “a much higher incidence of early Alzheimer’s disease than the general public.” Confirming this is a just-released study, commissioned by the NFL, that Alzheimer’s and other memory-related diseases occur in ex-players aged 30 to 49 at 19 times the normal rate.

In addition, Mix continues, all players take a lot of anti-inflammatory drugs and pain medications, and “when these are ingested regularly, they can lead to gastrointestinal problems and kidney irregularities.” All these conditions greatly “diminish their ability to compete in a marketplace” against guys who have not endured the battles of the professional athlete.

Mix filed and won his own claim for injury. And, he insists, every player has a “legitimate claim.” All of them should file a claim within a year of retirement. Sadly, he says, the majority don’t. Making it tougher is that none of the players’ associations in the major sports have created programs to help retired players. They have made the financial and medical benefits of active players sweeter. But that’s it. Mix says that current players have no “legal responsibility” to help their ex-brethren. “But they do have a moral responsibility.” He says it’s wise for players now to plan their postcareers. “They may spend 10 years as a player, but they’re going to spend 40 years as a retired player. They’re one injury away from retirement.”

One final myth that Mix likes to deflate is the American belief that “all exercise is good for us” and that a life spent conditioning and training for sport will spell continued health. Not true for the pro. It’s a myth that victimizes athletes the most. They “figure that once they stop playing, the pain will go away,” he says. “But it doesn’t. Degenerative arthritis is progressive. Many of them are surprised when they take a few months off, do nothing, and then feel worse.”

Talk About Feeling Worse

The ongoing effects of wear and tear in the NFL have certainly surprised former Tampa Bay Buccaneer Todd Washington. Though he’s employed as the offensive coordinator with the University of San Diego football program, Washington’s retirement involves much more than simple nostalgia for a career that culminated in a Super Bowl ring. He’s still amazed that he survived eight years as an NFL lineman, where, as one savvy observer put it, every time the ball is snapped, the collision of opposing players is no different from a car crash.

In August, Washington took time out to speak with me just before opening camp for the Toreros. He’s still a big guy, not quite the 317 pounds of his playing days. Once with hair, now without, Washington played from 1998 to 2005. He spent his last three seasons with the Houston Texans. He retired during training camp with the Cleveland Browns in 2006. His first five years (1998–2003) came with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. He was on the 2002 team that beat the Oakland Raiders in Super Bowl XXXVII. Local fans recall that game, played at Qualcomm Stadium, January 26, 2003, when the Bucs collared the Raiders, 48–21.

Prior to the NFL, Washington graduated from Virginia Tech. “I can honestly say that the NFL was a secondary thing for me. My father coached me in high school; teaching and coaching is what I’ve been around all my life. Everything I did during my career at Virginia Tech was geared toward becoming a coach when I graduated.” He knew, going in, that his career would be temporary. Eventually he’d coach college. But not before he suffered major body blows in the NFL.

Washington played some of the game’s toughest positions. Even in the second person, he’s blunt: “Once you start playing in the NFL, your body will never be the same.” His position was offensive lineman, guard and center, and he defended on kickoffs. As a lineman, he crouched down, stood up with the snap, backed up or ran slants, blocked the defense’s charge, all to protect his quarterback and running back.

After five years, he discovered that what had taken him 30 minutes as a young player — dressing for practice and getting his ankles taped — took him two or three times as long. The agility of youth is first to flee. By 2000, “I’m in the training room, stretching, getting massages and heat packs, just to loosen up so I can practice for two and a half hours.” In 2006, at 30, he had just agreed to a contract with the Browns, even though he was pushing the age limit for linemen. After one week of practice, he realized that “I can’t move anybody; on pass protection, I can’t redirect fast enough; running drills and conditioning after practice, I’m the last to finish. That wasn’t the case when I first got to the NFL.” He called his wife and said, “Honey, I’m done.” Then he told the coach: to continue playing at his diminished level would diminish the team’s strength.

For most players, whether they stay the three- or four-year average or they stay longer, as Washington did, wear and tear spells the end. Though he “was blessed” not to have a concussion, he did suffer the typical lineman injuries: sore knees, neck, and shoulders. One position Washington played was blocker for the kickoff return team. Once the kick was in the air, he and three or four other linemen would form a barrier, or wedge. They would block for the kick returner, racing like a Humvee up the field. A 300-pounder, Washington would get “hit by 250-, 260-pound linebackers, coming full speed, headfirst.” (One linebacker described the collision as running all out for 50 yards and smashing into a garage door.) “Concussions were very, very common,” Washington says. “The joke we used to tell in the NFL was, ‘I came in at 6′ 4″, now I’m at 6′ 2.”’ ”

Beginning in 2009, the NFL banned the wedge because of the number of helmet-to-helmet hits that resulted in head trauma. The astonishing statistic for pro football is that there are 5 injuries for every 100 regular plays and 7 for every 100 kick plays; there are many more of the former than the latter. “Unfortunately,” the ban “didn’t happen when I was playing,” Washington says. “Still,” he notes without any bravura, “I did it for eight years.”

(Two years ago, the NFL instituted concussion guidelines. The rules include a neurological baseline test; a policy that instructs coaches that a trainer’s or doctor’s medical decision overrides any competitive consideration; and a whistle-blower system so men can report medical problems anonymously without fear of jeopardizing their careers. The big problem for ex–football players with concussions is depression: according to the American College of Sports Medicine, those with three or more concussions are three times more likely to have depression than those who don’t suffer head trauma.)

Though Washington so far has no symptoms of memory loss or confusion, he says he has seen former teammates “struggle with later effects of head injuries. They’re forgetting things, taking longer to do things, or starting to feel weird.” He says “some doctors,” those who diagnose these injuries, “are not educated about what NFL players go through.” Washington knows guys who are “depressed and have stopped being active. For some of these guys, it’s too late.”

The Virginia native is paying a price for his years of bone-rattling contact. His biggest problem (and the reason he has filed a workers’ compensation claim with Ron Mix) is that at 33 he has degenerative arthritis. Arthritic pain and tightness trouble his neck, wrists, abdomen, fingers, and knees. He wakes up stiff, and it takes him a long time to loosen up. “Things hurt where they’re not supposed to hurt. You can be sitting down and turn your head one way or the other, and you’ll have a sharp pain in your neck.”

Worse, it’s compromised his ability to coach.

“I really take pride in being a hands-on coach. I’ve had coaches in my life who were hands-on. They were actually able to show me how things were done. I’m trying to show the same things to my players, but I have to be careful because I can’t do those things anymore. I can’t run like I used to run. I can’t bend down in the stance. I can’t bend my knees the way I feel comfortable. All these things take their toll. I have to find alternative ways of coaching — whether it’s by words, by video, by diagrams, by handouts. I can’t be hands-on.”

Washington tells me that he hasn’t sought treatment for his arthritis yet, but he does stretch more and uses heat pads. “If it flares up real bad, I’ll rest. I know I’ll seek medical attention in 10 or 15 years. Hopefully, by then, there’s some procedure or treatment that will get the job done.”

Like many players I speak with, blame doesn’t enter his vocabulary. Injury, he says, “is something I have to learn to live with.” He adds that he’s often been asked — and he’s asked himself — would he do it again? “Injuries or not, I’d definitely do it again.”

His experience brings clarity about the pro’s conundrum. “It’s hard to beat running out on the field on game day. Your adrenaline kicks in, and you feel perfectly fine. But as soon as it’s over, your body is back to where it was, and whatever injury you have, it’s worse.”

A Much Deeper Issue

Perhaps the most telling tribute I read in the wake of the death of Steve McNair, a victim of a murder-suicide last July in Nashville, came from his former teammate, Tennessee Titan running back Eddie George. A married man, McNair had purportedly been seeing the woman who shot him. For George, McNair’s end was by no means his friend’s story or legacy. How to explain his murder? The Titan quarterback was lost after retiring from the game he played with such passion.

“I just know from experience,” George said, “that when you’re used to doing something for so long that you love to do, how do you fill that void? You’re in search of something. Most players may go back to things they used to know. They may revert back to drugs, divorce rates go up, obesity. You’re looking for something comforting. For Steve, it was uncharacteristic for him to be out there with this young lady like that. However, he was in search for something. So there’s a much deeper issue here than just Steve and extramarital affairs.”

That deeper issue is summed up by former San Diego State and St. Louis Rams running back Marshall Faulk. “I played 12 years” in the NFL, Faulk told theUnion-Tribune. “You think it’s forever — it’s a blip. You have to find something to do. You’re kind of lost. I was paid to play football, and now I’m paid to talk football. Are you kidding me?”

How Bad Is It?

One of the ex-player’s core problems stems from money, its lack or its misappropriation. Retired players from the NFL, the NBA, and Major League Baseball are “suffering a financial epidemic,” says a recent article in Sports Illustrated. Seventy-eight percent of former NFL players after two years of retirement have significant debt or are facing bankruptcy. Sixty percent of NBA players, five years into retirement, are broke. Joblessness and ongoing medical bills accelerate debt. One near-certain consequence is divorce. Most estimates put the divorce rate for ex-athletes at between 60 and 80 percent.

An explanation for this trend comes from Matt Birk. A veteran offensive lineman, now with the Baltimore Ravens, Birk writes in a July column for Sports Illustrated that many “former players live in physical and mental pain because of injuries suffered while playing — some with symptoms that didn’t manifest until long after their NFL career.” Birk says their savings are exhausted, they can’t find work because of their injuries, they can’t get health care since they have preexisting conditions, and few are getting disability through the league. “I have seen these guys with my own eyes and heard their stories with my own ears. You might not read about this very often, but this problem is real.”

Birk points the broken finger at the NFL Players Association. Team owners, he says, pay a percentage of revenues to the players, and retired players get only 2 percent of that. “The NFLPA wants the money to go to current players because football salaries already lag behind their baseball and basketball counterparts.” Since it was the old players who built the sport to its stratospheric level — by securing such things as “free agency, top-notch medical treatment [for active players], and million-dollar contracts” — he wants current players to shoulder more responsibility for the health of their forebears.

How do players and ex-players lose their money? According to Sports Illustrated,they buy too much risky real estate. They avoid financial planning. They hire unqualified relatives to manage their investments, with disastrous results. They seldom know when to say no to those long-lost friends and their surefire schemes, such as opening a restaurant with their name in lights. They pay the nightclub bills of their entourage. They overspend on frivolous stuff like sport-utility vehicles, private jets, Rolex watches. (NBA guard Kenny Anderson blew $10,000 a month on “hanging out,” lost the $60 million he’d made as a player, and filed for bankruptcy protection in 2005.)

Relationship trouble accompanies the money woes, ex-players and sports psychologists tell me. Players often marry their hometown sweethearts at an early age. Being away half the year, players depend on their wives to do everything with bills, kids, and home, which can lead to resentment in both spouses. Players succumb to the easy availability of women, some of whom, hoping to get pregnant or secure a free ride, want a tryst with any high-profile player. Players father kids whom they can’t support. In postcareer divorces, it’s not uncommon for a player to lose half his fortune to an ex-wife, a girlfriend, and the mother of a child, who are sometimes three different women. Apparently the record is held by former NFL running back Travis Henry, who has fathered 11 children by 10 women. The estimate of his yearly child-support payments is $170,000, his lawyer says he’s broke, and he’s just been sentenced to three years in prison on a charge of trafficking cocaine.

Though conditions may be worsening for ex-players, they are not alone. People like Ron Mix are helping. Whether it’s former players, coaches, or the sports consultant and psychologist, caring people abound for the lost, divorced, depressed, and broke ex-pro.

To the NBA and Back

I’m sitting on bleachers in the Temecula Community Recreation Center, watching former “NBA legend,” as the flyer describes him, Lamond Murray hold a basketball camp. The sounds of the thumping ball, the ringing metal hoop, echo in the high-windowed gym. For more than an hour, Murray’s been running drills and barking orders (“Push it! Push it!”). Now it’s game time. The kids, aged 10 to 16, girls and boys, are impossibly mismatched: midgets versus giants. Towering over all is 6′ 7″ Murray. Though retired, he’s still agile at 36. Game on, I notice right off how every player has his/her NBA moves down pat — the no-look pass, the hand slaps after a foul shot, even the Michael Jordan fadeaway jumper. A dream come true, a few get Murray’s behind-the-back pass. “Shoot!” he yells.

In 1994, the Los Angeles Clippers — ten years after the franchise abandoned fair-weather San Diego — drafted Murray, the seventh pick in the first round. They signed him to a five-year, $13.5 million contract. After he bounced around the league for 12 years, he returned to the Clippers briefly in 2006. Twelve intensely rewarding years as an NBA player, he tells me after camp. So why retire? “It wasn’t my choice,” he says. “When the Clippers let me go, I couldn’t get a job anywhere playing ball. I wasn’t injured. In my mind, I could still play, contribute. My body was maturing. I was a lot smarter. I had better tempo to my game. Everything was a lot easier. The older you get, the easier the game becomes.

“But I guess they wanted younger talent. Once you have over ten years in the NBA, they have to pay you a certain amount of money. They’d rather cut costs because most guys at our age aren’t going to be contributing. Unless you’re a Shaquille O’Neal, who’s a future Hall of Famer,” they’re not interested. “Thirty-five is like a cutoff point.”

I ask Murray, who sports a dapper mustache and well-trimmed goatee, if he prepared himself in college (he played three seasons at Cal) for life after sport. He says he figured, if he went pro, he could always come back to school. He also figured he’d need to earn the money to finish school. Yet it never occurred to him that he could finish college during his career on the court.

While playing, did he think about retiring? “As an athlete,” he says, “you never really want to think about that.” Instead, “Your life begins and ends with ‘Am I starting tonight? How many minutes am I going to play? Will I get my 20 points?’ That’s all you worry about. People in your family tell you, ‘That’s all youneed to worry about.’ ” Guys would “never talk about it,” he says. They’d only talk about investments that would help them in their “transition out of basketball.” But think about it? Not with practice and games and travel. “Never. It was never an issue.”

But, he says, things change. “It doesn’t hit you until you’re out of the game a couple years. Your routine is changed. You’re at home. You don’t have that camaraderie with your teammates.” Leaving was “a shock.” He was used to working out every day. Besides, he’d never been cut from anything. He played at high levels in high school and college. But over time, he says, players “get caught in the shuffle” of management, new coaches, new systems, player trades. Eventually, Murray left Los Angeles, then went to Cleveland, Toronto, New Jersey (his wife and children following him every step of the way).

The hardest part for Murray was losing the structure that basketball gave him. “Practice, team meals, meetings, games. Being a player. Having a role, something I could look forward to when I got up in the morning.” When he retired, he says, “Now what do I do? You get depressed really quick. There’s nothing to do. Even my kids have to go to school.” Speaking of which, Murray at last was a part of his kids’ lives. That took getting used to, “driving them to school, going to school functions.”

It takes a year or two to make the adjustment, he says. It takes longer for “guys without kids or a stable family. They want to go right back into coaching because that’s all they know. ‘I want to be on the bus. I want to be around the guys.’ But everybody can’t coach. There’s only so many jobs out there.” Murray, surprising me, compares the player to an alcoholic. “You’ve done something for so many years, and you have other ‘alcoholics’ you deal with, and suddenly that’s taken away, you have no one who’s at the same level as you. Who do you talk to? Guys lose it. They want to kill themselves, self-sabotage with drinking, drugs, food. I’ve seen a lot of retired ballplayers who blow up to 300 or 400 pounds because they just sit on a couch.”

As a young player, Murray was bored, chin in palm, whenever the NBA threw programs at him about managing his life or saving his money. The lightbulb went on when he watched a few teammates, journeymen players, paying serious attention. He realized that he should have been listening so that at retirement he’d be ready. During his four preseason games with the Clippers in 2006, “I could feel something changing in me,” he recalls. That was incandescent, a realization that has led him to want to help other players avoid going through what he did.

Murray’s goal, once he finishes his degree in sports psychology, is to become a paid staffer in an NBA organization as head of player relations, helping rookies transition into the league, teaching them things that “their parents, their agents, their teams are not going to tell them.” The main thing players don’t know, he says, is that pro ball is a business. No one told him that his name is a brand, that his behavior could affect his brand, that he needed to protect his image. Too, teams don’t tell players enough about the “day-to-day grind. Social issues. How to deal with women. How to deal with other players. How players are different from each other. That’s the new frontier. The NBA does everything for you physically. But there’s not enough to help you mentally.” In short, players, both active and retired, need mentors. He cites Sam Perkins, who runs a mentorship program with the Indiana Pacers and is now their vice president for player relations. Murray hopes to be one of those mentors because “I’m living proof there’s life after the game.”

A Degree in Sports Psychology

Lamond Murray is one of dozens of ex-players who have studied psychology with Dr. Cristina Versari, a Brazilian who founded and directs the San Diego University for Integrative Studies. For the past 20 years, she has made it her business to study the psychology of pro athletes. “No one else is doing this,” she tells me in her Old Town office. “That’s why I started this school.” Part of the school’s mission is to train a new generation of sports psychologists who will answer this question: Why is the transition to a second life so hard?

In 1989, Versari was hired by the National Basketball Association to counsel its players. The youthful-looking former swimmer says that, before her, no one helped athletes prepare for a second career, a different lifestyle, or a college degree. “During their active career, they have small problems,” she says. “They have a lot of people taking care of them: trainers, massage therapists, managers. Once they retire, everything is taken from them overnight. The structure that kept them together is gone. That’s when they really have problems.”

Retired players, she says, typically move back to their hometowns, and they lose contact with the organizations and team. The active players don’t have any contact with retired players. “It’s a strange dynamic,” she says. “Overnight, people who used to call stop calling.” Players find themselves suddenly friendless. They have no support system. Since most have played for several teams, they and their families have been uprooted often, which adds to the isolation in retirement. “There’s nothing outside of sport that makes them feel the way they’re feeling when they’re playing. Nothing.”

As a way to understand the psychology of basketball players, Versari uses the Myers-Briggs personality assessment test. She has found, by studying more than 1000 players, that basketball players are predominantly introverts. They are sensing types who focus on the present and on concrete information. They are analytic thinkers and have an organized approach to life. She uses this data to help coaches and players understand who they are as players but more importantly how their personality traits might be harnessed for a second career. (She has studied 22 sports and found that basketball and baseball players are alike, while swimmers and wrestlers are extroverted, intuitive, and sensitive. Because of the many different positions in football, tests on players as to their personality type are so far inconclusive.)

During two long stints with the NBA, the last ending five years ago, Versari has found that almost every current player has “one focus — to stay.” In 2009, the NBA drafted 60 players. According to Versari, after the first season, typically half of those drafted are gone. “They are cut, and we don’t even notice. Their careers are over.” A few go to Europe, but not many. These young men have spent half their lives preparing for a career, “and it only lasts one season.”

She understands why most players are “in denial about their future. They have to focus on staying.” This gives birth to the rampant NBA fantasy: “I’m going to play one more year.” Active players always think they’ve got one more year to play, even if they don’t have a contract.

When the career is ending (the average stay in the NBA is a bit more than five years), “I get the phone call. They’ve been cut. They’ve been injured. They’ve been traded. They get a cold, and being sick makes them think, ‘What am I going to do if I can’t play anymore?’ That’s when they call me. When they’re ready. They’re not in denial anymore.”

Though many ex–NBA players go back to college and finish their degree, they don’t do it for the money. “They do it,” she says, “because they have promised their mothers.” Some NBA players, who haven’t blown their stash, don’t need a degree because they don’t need a career. It makes no sense for a player making $20 million a year “to go to college and graduate three years later so he can make $40,000 a year.” Instead, they have promised Mom because Mom has insisted that they get a degree when their sports lives are over. Hanging the diploma on the wall means Mom beams and the kids are motivated to take school seriously.

Retiring players face a fast adjustment with their wives. Versari compares an NBA wife to a military spouse, keeping the home fires burning while the husband/boyfriend is away. During the player’s career, his wife has managed everything: children and school, the home environment, holidays and parties, finances, the sudden move prompted by a trade. For her part, the wife can lose interest in the man when he becomes a “nobody at home,” Versari says.

But the major problem is depression. “Without exception, they all go through it.” The adjustment takes four to eight years. “They eat more. They eat less. They sleep more or they can’t sleep. It’s a very long process.” Most don’t know they’re depressed, she says. They think they are alone: their friendship circle or network of support has dwindled so much they become frightened by their isolation and loneliness. They feel estranged from the game, from wives, from children they don’t really know. It’s rare for former NBA players to go into therapy. They’ll only go, Versari says, if “someone else [in the family] needs help. A son or a daughter.”

The psychological profile Versari is now working with she calls ADD: athlete development deficiency. “Players do not develop other parts of themselves.” She describes the teenage Kobe Bryant, a megastar with the Los Angeles Lakers the past ten years. He “spent every Saturday at home” as a teenager, “watching videotapes of basketball games.” He didn’t develop social skills; he didn’t develop his ego. He ate, slept, and dreamed basketball. “When players retire, they have to go back and build those other parts of themselves, parts that are missing and were never developed. It’s developmental arrest. The same thing happens to people on alcohol and drugs.”

The Paradox of Awareness

What’s curious about Marc Sagal, a professional soccer player turned sports psychologist and consultant, is how he balances his knowledge of the athlete’s mind with an honesty about his own. Over lunch, he tells me right off, his fingers poised above a chunk of salmon, that his message to clients is that he can help them “perform more effectively under pressure.” He and two partners at Winning Mind counsel 50 clients. Be it in business (corporate executives), military (Navy SEALs), or sports (pros from around the world), we “understand the psychological characteristics that successful people need to have to stay focused and remain calm in pressure situations.”

Sagal’s journey to consultant began with his career in soccer: “I was one of the first American soccer players to play professionally overseas.” After college (a Phi Beta Kappa in philosophy at Colorado College), he played for a team in Sweden. Of Sweden’s many leagues, Sagal was in a “mid-tier” league, “down a notch or two from the top.” Though he never reached the fame and fortune of the top, he did three years as a pro. But barely. His career was shortened, or better, compromised, by an injury he had even before he got to Sweden.

In his last game in college in 1989, he was hit from the side and suffered a meniscal tear in his knee. Though he “played hurt” the rest of the game (he doesn’t remember if anyone told him not to), it was a moment “I’ll never forget.” (I prod Sagal about the injury; at one point he laughs and says, “You’re making me relive something I don’t want to.”) Sagal thinks that he didn’t realize the severity of what had happened. In fact, he would not have realized it as long as he had an opportunity to play. The injury might have been worsened by his playing that day. He’s not sure. He’s had several operations, and part of the meniscus has been cut out, a procedure that’s not recommended nowadays.

Off-season, “I pushed myself to get playing again. When you’re young, you don’t think about the consequences of real proper recovery.” He rehabbed the knee, went to Sweden, and was on the field every other day. “The coaches and other players were aware I was managing the pain,” he recalls. “Honestly, I think I played hurt every single time I went on the field.”

I ask Sagal whether he uses his experience to help his clients. Not much, he says. “It’s funny, but when I thought about talking to you, I didn’t include myself.” And yet here he is, the consummate wounded warrior and, so common in our sports-obsessed age, the wounded healer. Advising others in whom he sees himself.

What does he see? For the injured player, it’s a combination of several things: competitiveness — “They want to get back on the field as soon as possible because that’s what they love to do”; “aggressiveness,” a macho thing; and “immaturity.” Add to that a medical staff that “knows what an acceptable amount of pushing [the injury] is.” But here the athlete takes the blame. He will downplay pain to get back in the game. Doctors and trainers, Sagal says, must give the okay, but too often they are roped in by the athlete’s avidity, a horse who just wants to run, bum leg or not.

In college Sagal had terrific medical care, but he also had enough “freedom to push my irresponsibility more than I should have.” The dilemma is, when to put the reins on an athlete whose greatest asset is his native aggressiveness, which, though it may have got him injured and contributes to an inadequate recovery, also drives him to win.

Reviewing his MRIs with orthopedic surgeons, Sagal realized that “there was nothing to be done.” His doctors were “surprised I could even play.” Since leaving the sport, he’s had two more surgeries. He can no longer run, and he can barely walk. He’s a candidate for knee-replacement surgery. His story is not uncommon. He thinks that about one-third of soccer players have “some kind of injury they’re managing.” Depending on the psychology of the athletes and their awareness, “Some guys can just put it out of their mind, while others are constantly aware of the difficulty.” In that spectrum, Sagal says he was one of those “unfortunately aware of my injury.” He was constantly thinking, “How am I feeling? Am I okay?” But that awareness, though it did begin to impact his playing, also got him to listen to his body and to realize that he should hang it up.

It’s paradoxical, Sagal says, for an athlete to have an “intellectual orientation” because it goes against his training, which tells him not to think but to lose himself in the sport or activity. That “desire to solve problems,” in the midst of the game, is what gets you into trouble.

To help athletes think about themselves as people and not about themselves as performers — that’s the hardest part, he says.

When Is It Time?

Another consultant at Winning Mind is Geoff Miller. At 35, Miller has been a “mental skills” coach for five years with the Pittsburgh Pirates. Miller lives in San Diego but is on the road constantly, traveling with the Pirates and their eight minor-league teams, spring, summer, and fall. Anyone who knows Pirate baseball knows that the team must rely on its young players because it doesn’t have the money to buy expensive players. A lot like the Padres.

Miller, in his knit shirt and khaki pants, accentuates the positive. Over iced tea, he refrains from using the term “psychological,” for it connotes a problem. He employs the word “mental” to focus on learned behaviors: “Mental is, do I know what to do, and can I do it when it counts?” The applications on the diamond are many. One weapon in the arsenal of mental skills is to get young hitters to understand “what is happening when they’re failing.” Failure might be defined as follows: say a kid from Rancho Bernardo hits .490 in high school, then hits .260 in the minors; he hears from his coaches, “That’s a good average.” How’s he supposed to respond? The pros are typically a comedown from high school or college glory, so players must learn how their performance is valued and adjust accordingly.

The way to get players to “redefine failure” is to get them to focus on the bigger picture: to think life more than career, career more than season, and a season more than an at-bat. “I give them a process. It’s a transformation from seeking the results you want to seeking a process that will bring you the results.”

This process orientation is key to career- and life-building, says Miller. It’s inevitable that a successful ballplayer, whether or not he makes it to the “bigs,” will begin to think about his life after baseball, to ask the question, “When is it time?” (The average career for the major leaguer is a tad under five years.) This is important because even though the minor leagues have room for an awful lot of players (some 1500 are drafted every year), very few get to the majors. One estimate is that only 10 percent of players who sign a minor-league contract play one game in Major League Baseball. So, for our kid from Rancho Bernardo, the career that he aspired to and worked so hard at from Little League to PONY league, from high school to college, from the minors to the majors, will most likely be over when he reaches 27.

Five factors compel ballplayers to start the transition.

Pay: during a player’s first contract season, according to the Minor League Baseball website, he makes $1100 a month.

School: to coach baseball in college or high school requires a degree.

Options: players, whose discipline is a plus for any employer, get offers from businesspeople to move on.

Calling: Miller says there’s a lot of Christianity in baseball; at times, players feel called by God to stop playing and go in a new direction.

Women: ballplayers are hit on a lot by women, who make themselves available not for the money but to hitch themselves to a future star (remember Bull Durham?). Leaving baseball allows the player to find the right person who’ll love him for more than his fielding ability.

It drives Miller bonkers to hear about prima donnas like Alex Rodriguez or Manny Ramirez, high-maintenance celebrity hitters who’ve both admitted to using steroids. His experience has been with players who are just the opposite: “Most professional athletes are responsible, they care, they live good lives, and they end up getting lumped in with guys who make headlines.”

One of those good guys, who’s been counseled by Miller, is Dan Schwartzbauer. Schwartzbauer retired from professional baseball two years ago at 25. When he made his intention to retire known, his coaches and fellow players all said, “What, are you crazy?” Even his father, who came to every game it seemed, was “disappointed.” Only Miller helped him know “when it was time.” Schwartzbauer had played ball since he was 7. In college, he studied finance and investment management but kept his eye on the prize — baseball every day, even indoor practice sessions during winters. At 21, he entered A ball with the Pittsburgh Pirates. One team he played with was the Hickory Crawdads in Hickory, North Carolina. In 2007, he learned, just as spring training was breaking, that his hoped-for move to a second-base opening in AA ball had fallen through: a major leaguer was sent down to AAA, and the AAA player who was sent to AA got Schwartzbauer’s slot. He was devastated.

It occurred to him that he had spent his baseball life never thinking about his postcareer. “There was no room mentally for me not to think about baseball.” When Schwartzbauer announced his retirement to his manager, the man said, “What in the world are you going to do?” Schwartzbauer replied, “I don’t know. I guess I’ll go get a job.”

Even now, Schwartzbauer still gets calls to play with semipro teams. And, he says, “I don’t have a good reason why I don’t want to do it.” In our long conversation, he sounds as if he’s struggling to let go as much as the sport won’t let him go — when teams, coaches, and former players keep hounding him: why did you dump the dream? His business degree, something that most of the guys he played with do not have, cushioned his leaving.

But most guys, he says, take a long time to hang it up, some barnstorming well into their 30s. For his teammates, playing ball “may not be something they know they’re going to do forever, but they don’t know what else to do.” They get to the point where they cannot face that “it won’t work,” so they end up doing “whatever it takes” to stay.

In a culture that billboards the idea that everyone should pursue a dream, Schwartzbauer says he gave little thought to a second career. Why think about something he didn’t want to do when he was spending most days doing exactly what he wanted to do?

Today, Schwartzbauer knows what else to do. He sells orthopedic medical supplies.

“I Blew Out My Knee”

That’s how James Grossman pinpoints his sudden leap from jock to what he calls “human being,” recalling the blow that ended his four-year minor-league baseball career. “Today, that’s a six-month rehab. At the time,” 20 years ago, “it was 2 years,” to which he said no thanks. Still, that wasn’t what spurred his interest in helping ex-athletes, which he does now with his consulting firm Legacy Sports. Playing football at the University of Arizona, Grossman tells me, he had a 6′ 9″, 255-pound roommate who bought the “false mythology” of being an athlete forever “who sacrifices everything to get there. There were 110 lockers in that locker room, and even the 110th guy thought that he would have a career in the NFL if he could show everyone what he was capable of doing.” (Of the 9000 college-level players, only 215 get chosen for the NFL each year.) Consequently, for most of these guys, Grossman says, education was “secondary.”

After Grossman’s stint in minor-league baseball, he worked with basketball coach John Thompson of Georgetown University, who started aiding ex-players. Later, Grossman helped implement the National Hockey League’s Life After Hockey program. Over time, his advocacy has been met with opposition. One lockstep thought is prevalent: throwing money at players “will cure their problems. In reality, money brings a different set of problems, and money brings a certain leverage to those problems that makes them larger.” More money for guys who don’t know how to manage money “is inappropriate.”

Grossman argues with league authorities that players “are not commodities” but should be seen in terms “of their humanity.” His voice rises testily, and he tells me that he “has to apologize; there’s a lot of water behind the dam.” League authorities say, in reply, that “we’re in a business, we pay them a lot of money, and that’s our exchange value.” Grossman eventually realized a “commodity” approach to the problem: he tells the bosses that by not taking care “of their athletes” after retirement and by not providing them options, their brand will suffer. That gets them to listen.

Few I interview have Grossman’s insight. “I would argue that the greatest challenge of the athlete’s life is the day he realizes he can’t be an athlete anymore. Here’s the challenge: first, very few people in this world identify a dream to pursue; second, have the opportunity to pursue it; third, realize that dream; and fourth, are confronted with the task of now having to replace it. That is monumental.”

In short, it is near impossible for an ex-athlete to find a calling that will summon him the way his pro career did.

Still young in his 40s, Grossman is searching for how to respond to the conundrums ex-athletes face. He says he knows guys in their 50s and 60s who “are still lost.” One described retirement like this: I was riding in a car down the freeway, and someone just threw me out the door. “The blessing is, to have lived a life filled with passion is extraordinary,” says Grossman. “But the curse is, when it’s gone, you understand what it was like to live with passion — and you can’t go back.”

The answer to your question includes various components that encompass the field of Sport Psychology. If you would like to write your paper providing an overview of sport psychology and its relevance and application to the field of professional and non-professional sport, you can use the following books and articles listed at the end of the page as reference.

In addition to the books and articles listed here, I suggest that you conduct some internet research, like using google, and search the topic. You can find interesting articles and books on sport psychology and its application to professional and non-professional sports.

Another way of gathering information for your paper is by interviewing experts in the field of sport psychology, coaches and athletes. The sports professionals can talk about their own experience in the field, and tell you how psychology can help them in areas such as performance enhancement, career transition and athletic retirement, team building, stress management, and other areas concerning athletes and teams.

Good luck on your research/paper.

Books: For Athletic Research

1995- Weinberg, R. & Gould, D.
Foundations of Sport and Exercise Psychology.
Human Kinetic Publishers, Champaign, Illinois

1984- Silva III, John M. & Weinberg, R.
Psychological Foundations of Sport.
Human Kinetics Publishers, Champaign, Illinois.

1982- Loehr, J.E.
Athletic Excellence: Mental Toghness Training for Sports.
Denver; Forum Publishing Co.

1976- Nideffer, R.M.
The Inner Athlete: Mind plus Muscle for Winning. NY:
Crowell.

Articles: For Athletic Research

1996- Mascari-Bott, P.
Sports Psychology Brings Coaches, Players Closer.
The San Diego Union-Tribune, Jan 9, Sports, p.1.San Diego, CA.

1992- Newberg, D.
Performance Enhancement: Toward a Working Definition.
Contemporary Thought on Performance Enhancement, 1:10-25

1991- Sachs, M. L.
Reading List in Applied Sport Psychology: Psychological Skills Training.
The Sport Psychologist, 51:88-91.

1988- McGowan, R.W.
Who Needs Sport Psychology?
Scholastic Coach, May/June 98-99.

About the Author:

Cristina B. Versari, Ph.D. is a sport psychology and career consultant specializing in performance enhancement, career and life planning, and team building. She counseled professional athletes from 13 NBA teams in the areas of career and education, and was the psychologist for the Brazilian Men’s Basketball Team for the 1992 Olympics and 1994 World Championship of Basketball. She is the president of the National Sports Counseling Network and a seminar speaker. Dr Versari has been studying the personality profile of elite athletes and designing training programs for peak performance for over ten years.

For information on training programs or consulting, she can be reached at: phone and fax (619) 658 0204, or P.O. BOX 22961, San Diego, California, 92122.

In December of 1997 the NBA’s league commissioner David Stern suspended Golden State Warrior Latrell Sprewell for one year because of his attack on head coach P.J. Carlesimo. Sprewell also lost his $32 million contract with the Warriors and his shoe contract with Converse.

Actions that are being taken against professional athletes involving violent acts both on and off the court are becoming more prominent in recent years. Longer suspensions, higher fines, and now even the thought of being suspended for a year have become the ways in which leagues are dealing with their professional athletes.

Even though many players have had to pay the price of committing acts of violence, is this type of punishment really going to change things in the long run?

Athletes who hold the same opinion as Charles Barkley are the ones who make finding a solution difficult. “I don’t care if I get fined. I make $3 million. What’s a couple of thousand dollars?” Attitudes like this may soon be changing due to the actions that were taken against Latrell Sprewell.

What are other ways of reducing the number of incidents that involve violence in sport? The focus should be on the ways of counteracting aggression.

In reviewing the literature four main components that impact sport behavior and can create changes in the field were identified: management, media, coaches, and athletes. The solution to the problem of violence in sport is not a simple one.

It involves many components, but researchers’ recommendations proposed in the literature, and by The International Society of Sport Psychology, if implemented, can start the process of keeping violence out of sports or at least reduce the problem of violence and aggression in the athletic domain.

The International Society of Sport Psychology has made nine recommendations to reduce sports violence: 

Recommendation 1: Management should make fundamental penalty revisions so the rule-violating behavior results in punishments that have greater punitive value than potential reinforcement.

Recommendation 2: Management must ensure proper coaching of teams, particularly at junior levels, which emphasizes a fair play code-of-conduct among all participants.

Recommendation 3: Management should ban the use of alcoholic beverages at sporting events.

Recommendation 4: Management must make sure facilities are adequate regarding catering and spacing needs and the provision of modern amenities.

Recommendation 5: The media must place in proper perspective the isolated incidents of aggression that occur in sport rather than make them “highlights.”

Recommendation 6: The media should promote a campaign to decrease violence and hostile aggression in sport which will also involve the participation and commitment of athletes, coaches, management, officials, and spectators.

Recommendation 7: Coaches, managers, athletes, media, officials, and authority figures should take part in workshops on aggression and violence to ensure they understand the topic of aggression, why it occurs, the cost of aggressive acts, and how aggressive behavior can be controlled.

Recommendation 8: Coaches, managers, officials, and the media should encourage athletes to engage in prosocial behavior and punish those who perform acts of hostility.

Recommendation 9: Athletes should take part in programs aimed at helping them reduce behavioral tendencies toward aggression. The tightening of rules, imposing of harsher penalties, and changing of reinforcement patterns are only part of the answer to inhibiting aggression in sport. Ultimately, the athlete must assume responsibility for his or her behavior.

By incorporating these ideas with the development of an athlete the focus can be on the skills that it takes to be successful without the use of violence. Outside of wartime, sports is the only setting where violence and aggression are not only tolerated but also encouraged and rewarded by members of the society.

In recent years violence in sport has become a social problem and should be treated as such. If Latrell Sprewell worked at any other job and had assaulted his boss, he would be in jail. Violence should not be tolerated in the NBA or any other setting.

How Can Sports Psychologists Help?
Results of psychological assessment and personality profile of athletes conducted by team sport psychologists can help coaches and management in the selection process and team building. Some personality types have more of a tendency to have impulsive, aggressive behaviors than others.

A recent study conducted by Dr. Cristina Versari, a sport psychologist and career consultant, demonstrated that the personality type of athletes can help predict players behavior and performance. Her study included professional basketball players, olympic, and high school athletes.

Involving sport psychologists in the area of sports violence would not only be beneficial to the athletes, but also to the players and management. Helping to predict behavior and implementing certain methods that would help with team building would have a positive impact on the entire organization.

About the Author:

Clair Alvies is currently attending The University For Humanistic Studies in Solana Beach, California and is in the process of completing requirements for a Ph.D. in Sports Psychology. She received her Bachelor’s from U.C.S.D. While attending U.C.S.D. she played on the intercollegiate softball team. Wanting to stay active in the sports scene, she coached the Varsity Softball Team at Clairemont High School last season.

One caveat, make sure to read all the information that’s available at any one particular site first. Your chances of getting a useful response will be much greater if you ask questions for which the answers have not already been given. Following are a few of the resources and information available to athletes on the internet.

Sport Research Articles:

• In 1989, Dr. Nideffer published an article in The Sport Psychologist titled Psychological Services for the U.S. Olympic Track and Field Team (Nideffer,1989). You might have read that article. If you did, and if you had a question, you had no place to go. To get in touch with Dr. Nideffer would have taken a great deal of effort, contacting the publisher, etc. That article, however is also available on the world wide web:

  At http://www.enhanced-performance.com/nideffer/article6.html you can find an article by Dr. Nideffer titled “Psychological Services for the U.S. Olympic Track and Field Team.”

• Our very own “Self-help and Psychology Magazine” regularly carries articles of interest to coaches and athletes in this Sport Psychology Department. By opening the files for the other articles listed in this department. You will find information on gender issues in sport, how to use sport psychology and even an interview with an olympic gold medalist. Answers to some of your questions are given by Dr. Cristina Versari, our Sport Psychology Editor.
• Information on how the concepts from the martial arts relate to the breathing and centering and arousal control can be found at:http://www.aikiweb.com/ A tremendous amount of material including pictures, articles, and books canalso be found at that site.
• To examine your concentration skills go to: http://www.enhanced-performance.com/nideffer/TAISsport.html There is a questionnaire that will help you do that. You can copy this demonstration program from the web site to your computer. The program will help you begin to identify your concentration skills and provide you with some suggestions for improving those skills.
• By typing in the address: http://www.usatoday.com/, you can not only read the USA Today sports page (for free), you can watch it get updated while you are reading.
• CBS Sports is located at: http://www.cbs.com/sports. Once you are connected you can find out what sports programs are on for the week, you can email questions to the CBS Sports Show, and you can even see video highlights of big events like the 1996 Fiesta Bowl.
• Interested in womens sports? Go to: http://fiat.gslis.utexas.edu/~lewisa/womsprt.html, Once there, you can read articles on gender and equality issues. You can connect with fan clubs like Gabriela Sabatini’s, or Katarina Witt. There you can ask questions, get pictures, and read stories.
• Want to know how the field hockey team at the University of Connecticut did this week, or how the University of Tennessee did in basketball? A click of the mouse will tell you. You can check out the sports and colleges of your choice before you enroll.Want up to the minute information about sports around the world? Go to the Sports Line at: http://www.sportsline.com
• No Golf enthusiast should miss The 19th Hole located at: http://www.sport.net/golf/

Sports on the internet can go beyond sport research.  Imagine you’re a baseball pitcher and you’re walking back out onto the mound to pitch in the bottom of the ninth inning. You’re playing a game in New York and we’ve been watching on TV back in San Diego. We noticed that in the eighth inning you began to tighten up and started guiding the ball.

We send you an email telling you to remember what we talked about, reminding you to take a deep breath, exhale slowly and say to yourself “I’m in control,” just before you go into your windup. You turn on your portable computer in the dugout, read my message and smile. You go back out and strike out the side.

The examples we have provided help to illustrate the types of information that can be transferred from the experts to you, in a matter of seconds. Without getting on the internet, however, you won’t know what you are missing.

Nideffer, R.M. (1989). Psychological services for the U.S. Olympic Track and Field Team. The Sport Psychologist, 3, 350-357.

About the Author:

Robert Nideffer, Ph.D. is an internationally recognized sport psychologist. He is the CEO and Founder of Enhanced Performance Systems (EPS) and lives in San Diego.

Marc-Simon ‘Chip’ Sagal received his masters degree in Sport Psychology from San Diego State and works at EPS with Dr. Nideffer.

The Global Conference has become an important venue for thought leaders in a wide range of disciplines to present their views before an informed, influential audience and the news media. Discussions focus on finding solutions to some of our most serious global challenges, from climate change to reducing our dependence on oil. Among the participants were hundreds of CEOs from the world’s top-tier companies, senior elected and appointed foreign and U.S. government officials, high-level executives in the American and foreign capital markets, global academic experts and leaders in education, health care and philanthropy.

ESP President Everett Glenn joined friend and colleague, Dale Davis, who headed up The Urban Champions Panel-Professional Athletes Reinvesting in Inner Cities for a pre-conference gathering atCrustacean’s in Beverly Hills. Davis is founder of Pro Player Holdings, a private equity investment fund with an asset base pooled by more than 70 colleagues in professional sports, participated in the Conference. Throughout his 16-year NBA career as a power forward and center, Davis positioned himself for business success. Over the past decade, while playing with the Cleveland Cavaliers, the Indiana Pacers, the New Orleans Hornets, the Portland Trailblazers and the Golden State Warriors, Davis has developed a variety of business enterprises in the fields of media, technology, music, real estate and education. His philanthropic endeavors include the creation of the Dale Davis Inner City At-Risk Youth Foundation, which awards scholarships and administers programs in seven cities. A former NBA All-Star, Davis is a co-owner of R&J Racing, which competes in the NASCAR Nextel Cup Series. Davis felt that former athletes should mentor those currently playing professional sports, helping them to understand insurance, mortgages and other realities of life. “It’s tough for an athlete to be connected to the financial world.”

The Urban Champions Panel was moderated by Larry Carroll of KFWBand included former Connecticut and Nets star Tate George, President, CEO and Chairman of The George Group. George has established a stable and substantial development portfolio of more than $500 million, and has raised capital for a variety of clients in commercial development, real estate development, international finance, entertainment and sports.George noted that there are gaps in the social development of many athletes and a sense of entitlement. According to George, many 30-year-old athletes act with the social capacity of 16-year-olds. This creates hardships for them in pursuing other avenues of wealth to make a living after they retire. Tate felt that professional sports thrusts a system upon its players, allowing them luxuries while they play the game but tossing them to the curb after their services are no longer needed.

Donald Latson, former Dallas Maverick, is founder of the Atlanta-based World Entertainment & Technologies which specializes in the development of innovative hip hop-inspired electronic products and services. The firm plans to challenge the market dominance of Apple’s iPod with the soon-to-be released “BlingTune.” Latson holds multiple U.S. and foreign patents, he developed a digital transcription and wireless transmission technology that still leads the industry. Latson noted that athletes have a divorce rate of 73 percent, a shorter life expectancy (62 years) and a high failure rate after retirement.

The panelists are utilizing their past experience to help athletes transition from sports to business. Latson said that one of the biggest fears for athletes “is not knowing what to do.” He felt that parents should offer their children a wider range of choices. “The biggest blessing was being reared in a loving environment. My parents prepared me for life after sports.” The panelists all agreed that many athletes never have the options available to make the right decision. George mentioned a study showing that professional athletes are less equipped to develop a successful strategy for a sustainable life than athletes who stop playing in college.

The focus of the panelists is on empowering their fellow athletes and pursuing business and philanthropy ventures that give back to inner cities. George noted that urban communities can adapt to offer children better choices in life, and these neighborhoods can offer athletes the ability to go home and reestablish their life when their playing days are over.

Finally, Latson noted that, “Oftentimes people in our position don’t make ourselves accessible or available.” Davis offers mentoring to athletes, teaching them how to build character and prepare for success in life after sports. “The hardest thing for some athletes is to transition to being successful off-field. We help them do that. “

Here is a look at what some of the attendees had to say about the Global Conference:

“The Global Conference is a thought-provoking, highly productive and truly unique annual gathering of leaders from all parts of the world. I look forward to attending each year so that I can meet and hear from so many individuals with different perspectives, values and ideas than my own.”
– David M. Rubenstein, Managing Director, The Carlyle Group

“With so many changes taking place in the world, the Global Conference is an invaluable resource. It’s an impressive gathering of global leaders, who leave you with a greater understanding of the future and the opportunities it holds.”
– Rupert Murdoch, Chairman and CEO, News Corporation

“The Milken Institute brings together an extraordinary group of people, including CEOs from a variety of industries and money managers representing hundreds of billions of dollars in assets, for a great snapshot of today’s global economy.”
– Maria Bartiromo, Anchor, “Closing Bell with Maria Bartiromo”

“The Global Conference has such an amazing blend of business leaders, thought leaders, market makers and academic leaders all in one place at one time that it has become a valuable tool when managing a multi-billion-dollar portfolio.”
– Christopher Ailman, Chief Investment Officer, California State Teachers’ Retirement System (CalSTRS)

“The Global Conference is an outstanding gathering of leaders, experts and innovators from across the world.”
– Thomas Donohue, President and CEO, U.S. Chamber of Commerce

“The Global Conference is a great gathering and an amazing anomaly. It not only brings together world leaders, who are extremely passionate about what they do, but also gives them a challenging forum for innovative thinking and lively debate.”
– Sumner M. Redstone, Executive Chairman, Viacom

“It’s a remarkable event. Over the course of a few days, I had a chance to talk to a lot of very bright people, whose knowledge and experiences gave me fresh ideas on how to improve our company.”
– David Neeleman, Chairman and CEO, JetBlue Airways Corporation

“It is an indispensable conference – a real ‘catch-up and look ahead’ event.”
– General Wesley Clark, U.S. Army (ret.); former Commander, NATO

“I was very impressed by the quality of the event – from the high-caliber panelists and attendees to the substantive discussions that take place throughout the conference. It’s an excellent place to gain new insights about where the world is headed.”
– Thomas “Mack” McLarty, III, President, Kissinger McLarty Associates; former Chief of Staff, Clinton Administration

“The Global Conference represents a unique environment where accomplished individuals from disparate fields get to cross-pollinate ideas and solutions.”
– Sam Zell, Chairman, Equity Group Investments, LLC

“It’s an amazing gathering. I rarely see such an assemblage of incredibly powerful, incredibly smart people all in one place at one time.”
– Dennis Kneale, Managing Editor, Forbes Magazine

“It’s not just brain food, it’s a call to action.”
– Rafael Pastor, Chairman and CEO, Vistage International, Inc.

“The Global Conference offers insightful perspectives on today’s trends and helps business people understand the forces of finance, commerce and technology that are shaping the future of America and the world.”
– Robert Hormats, Managing Director, Vice Chairman, Goldman Sachs & Co.

“The Global Conference is one of the best resources in the country for new ideas, bridging current information and innovative solutions to future problems.”
– Nancy Brinker, Founder, Susan G. Komen for the Cure

“The Global Conference is a perennial winner. The presenters are a great mix of thoughtfulness, preparation and expertise, and there is always an incredible range of important, interesting and timely topics for attendees to choose from. The Global Conference is well organized and attracts a great mix of leaders and engaged individuals from business, academia and the public sector.”
– Jay Wintrob, President, CEO & COO, AIG/SunAmerica Inc.

“Year after year, the Milken Institute Global Conference manages to explore the day’s fundamental social, political and economic issues in a dynamic way that brings together some of the world’s greatest minds for compelling, provocative discussion. It’s a unique event and one I never miss.”
– Peter Chernin, President, Chief Operating Officer, News Corporation

“The conference always brings a fresh and multi-dimensional perspective to global affairs. Anyone pressed into the service of disciplined forward-thinking management ought to attend.”
– Sharon L. Allen, Chairman of the Board, Deloitte & Touche USA LLP

“The Milken Institute Global Conference is a terrific forum to discuss how American businesses fit within a global context, and learn what business leaders need to know to adapt to the ever-changing world in which we live. Participants gain keen insights from respected experts into how we are affected by economic, political and technological change around the world.”
– J. Terrence Lanni, Chairman and CEO, MGM MIRAGE

“This was a transformative event. It’s a terrific educational and inspirational conference in which a related community of people driven by passion and business savvy are determined to make a difference as fast as possible.”
– John Fraser, Executive Director, Office of IP Development & Commercialization, Florida State University

David Beckham became the latest player to wear his heart on his sleeve on Sunday when he announced he was standing down as England captain after his country’s quarter-final defeat to Portugal.
Such displays of emotion were once regarded as the almost exclusive preserve of Latin teams. Eusebio, the great Portuguese striker, famously wept tears of anguish at the World Cup 40 years ago when his country lost to England in the semi-finals.

A generation on, though, sobbing soccer stars the world over are no strangers to spectators in victory as well as defeat.

Ludovic Magnin of stoic Switzerland was reduced to tears when his team went out to Ukraine in the second round while the veteran midfielder Hidetoshi Nakata of normally inscrutable Japan sobbed in the changing room after his last professional game ended in defeat by Brazil.

Mexico’s goalkeeper Oswaldo Sanchez had even more cause to break down in tears after his side beat Iran 3-1 in the first round. His exceptional performance in goal occurred only a day after he had attended his father’s funeral.

Professor Bernard Capp, a historian at the University of Warwick who has studied what makes it alright for men to cry in his native England, the land of the “stiff upper lip”, says there is more to it than just the soccer.

“It partly reflects changes in gender roles. It is now much more acceptable for men to be open about their emotions,” Capp said by telephone.

Just as importantly, he added, soccer had become so much more than a game, with the atmosphere at a big match akin to that at a “religious revival meeting”, a factor that lent the sport an importance which made it acceptable for men to cry.

“It’s no longer about just winning,” Capp said.

Dr Cristina Versari, a sports psychologist based in San Diego, California, said the emotional aspects of high profile sports were driven as much these days by commercial and other considerations as by the competitive passions of the players.

“The investment is much greater so you have more to lose than you ever had,” Versari, a Brazilian who works with professional NBA basketball players, said, citing the huge amounts of money riding on success or failure.

Versari said she had studied the contrasting behaviours of Brazilian and American judo athletes for her doctorate 25 years ago and found the greatest difference to be a higher degree of overt emotions among the Brazilians.

That was now changing, she said, and it was no bad thing that men in more countries felt able to show their emotions.

Britain’s Mental Health Foundation agreed. Though research it published on the eve of the World Cup finals in Germany found more than half of the men it surveyed would feel embarrassed to be seen crying during a match, soccer helped them open up.

“It is encouraging that football makes it easier for men to talk about their feelings as traditionally men are far less likely than women to share their innermost thoughts,” the agency’s chief executive, Dr Andrew McCulloch, said.