Sports Ethics: The Fragility of Athletes

Just a normal jump tangle going for a rebound in a hard fought close game. A Texas A&M player  Derrick Roland went up, lost the rebound to Washington's Quincy Pondexter. Pondexter and the game raced down the floor, but Roland came down wrong. Pondexter recounted, "I heard a loud slap, like his hand hit the floot, but that was the bone break. It's one of the nastiest things I've ever seen in my life."

I watched the game and along with the  Texas A&M bench could hear the break. Two breaks. The bone stuck out of his leg. Doctors and trainors rushed to his side. The 10,000 boisterous fans fell silent for ten minutes. Roland was rushed to Harbourview trauma center where he had major surgery. The moment silenced the crowd and reminded us all of how fragile and dangerous athletic competition can be.

This weekend the magnificent running back at South Carolina Marcus Lattimore was bursting through the line when two  Tennessee players tackled him with perfectly legal and tough hits . His body twisted and his leg twisted in inhuman ways until it flopped out in an unnatural angle. Tennessee players walked out to stand with him and honor him in his injury. Now he lies in a hospital with his season and possibly his career over. I could go on adding on the innumerable athletes in sport after sport whom have seen their game an careers snatched away by one misstep.

One fall. One slip. One tear. One break.One hit. Every athlete lives with the possibility of his or her sports life ending in a micro-second. Everything they have worked for and valued in themselves can be taken away without a moment's notice, usually by accident or chance.

This hovering fragility lies deep inside the minds of every athlete. It infuses the drive for athletic excellence and performance.

Every athlete is incredibly vulnerable to physical injury. The excellence of athletics builds upon the health of the body. All the character and commitment and mastery depend a sound body. Injuries can come from contact with another athlete or from a mistake or bad luck in execution or a mistake in practice; it lurks everywhere. One wrong cut, an ACL blows; one trip, an ankle goes; one wrong swing, a shoulder locks; one missed twist, a knee tears, a shoulder shreds. One greatness of athletic accomplishment lies in how humans can take this frail but resilient mortal coil and transform it into admirable feats of mastery and discipline. How they can overcome physical limitations and pain to achieve these goals.

This physical foundation can collapse in a mini-second. Every elite athlete has struggled through the pain and despair of injury. All athletes are aware of their own physical mortality, even as it means little to them. To a young athlete in superb shape, immortality seems more the norm than mortality, but it shadows them all.

This vulnerability can tear away the dream, path or livelihood in a second. This ever present vulnerability creates a peculiar fragility that generates a compelling  urgency to compete in game time. All  athletes live with the endless  shadow of injury and bodily expiration date hang over them. 

Most athletes ignore it; can't even acknowledge it. When they face injury, they grapple with it, rehab and overcome it. They learn to view their bodies as allies but also dimensions to be mastered, cared for and feared. If they are good they read the bodies well and carefully. But bodies can betray them. Time betrays bodies, but life, accident, one false move or awful collision and bodies can fail.

The quickness with which it can all disappear raises the intensity of the experience of play. The sheer joy of playing, the satisfaction of mastery, the cordial fun of hanging with team and friends, all reinforce and make athletics worth while. They provide motive, reward and renewal for athletes.

This extreme vulnerability infuses the games with the sense of urgency and intensity. Most athletes know that they live on borrowed time. Their own bodies and skills will break down soon enough. Their own skills will fade or be surpassed by the unrelenting competition of each new generation of younger athletes pushing them to get better and pushing to replace them. All this should remind athletes of the gift and privilege of competing.

The fragility of injury just amplifies this urgency and intensity. Few of us perform jobs whose very structure can take the job away from us. Few of us face the unrelenting competition and demands of each day or performance. Dancers and very high risk workers know the same tradeoff and intensity. Athletes who don't get this, fail to develop or flourish. Athletes who do get it can flame out or like a firefighter or dancer learns to meld performance and intensity and just "do my job."

This explains the hunger and drive of athletes as well as the strained morality of players who seek to play through pain or hide their injuries to get to the field, to compete. For some it may be about money in the rarified pro ranks, but for the vast vast majority, intense play challenges themselves, their bodies, their skills and time. Time and injury shadow every moment saturating athletic action with potential depth and energy. This makes the game worth playing.

Athletes are humans and know they possess  limited tim. They want to draw every ounce of satisfaction from the time they have. They want to play and compete. An injury can also lead to a journey of painful recovery, rehabilitation and hopefully self discovery. When an athlete's achievement is stripped from them with injury, they are challenged to discover the depth of their humanity, not just their identity as an athlete.

Athletes live at an edge of loss and accomplishment that makes competing an embodiment of the existential moment of existence. The very exhilaration of that edge, that danger helps them endure the risk for the reward of play.

Then again, all life is vulnerable and saturated with the possibility of loss. As is often the case, sports simply etches large and clear the reality that underlies all our lives.

The Real College Recruiting Action is among Assistant Coaches

This time of year the sports sites like Rivals focus breathlessly upon the commitment wars among schools for elite student athletes. You can follow the preferences and visits of athletes and live through their waffling and changes and commitments. But to my mind, these seasons have become as much about recruiting and changes among assistant coaches at the college level. The influx of conference money, the increasing sophistication of playbooks as well as the need to get top recruiters has meant that assistant college coaching football salaries have risen faster than the head coaches in recent years.

My Washington Huskies provide an interesting but common case study. Steve Sarkesian, the dynamic young Head Coach of Washington, had held together his 9 coaches for three seasons, almost unheard of in the modern world of college coaching. Suddenly inside of two  months, the Husky’s wide receiver coach Demetrice  Martin left to join Jim Mora’s new staff at UCLA. After the high scoring Alamo Bowl screamer, Sarkesian fired the defensive coordinator, the defensive line coach and the defensive backs coach. Suddenly a stable coaching staff missed four important assistants. Then Doug Nussmeier, the Husky’s highly respected offensive coordinator left to join Nick Saban’s national champion Alabama team.

Now the team was reduced during the height of recruiting season to four coaches, and the stability shattered. This has become the norm in college athletics and the Husky’s response illustrates the speed of movement and the ripple effect.

Sarkesian acted decisively. First, he hired a new Defensive Coordinator Justin Wilcox from Tenessee for 750,000 dollars per year for a three year contract. Peter Sirman followed Wilcox from Tenessee for 225,000 and two years as linebacker coach. Both are successful, aggressive and good recruiters who are returning to their northwest home areas.

Sarkesian then raided California and persuaded Eric Kiseau to be offensive coordinators for 375,000 and Tosh Lupoi as Defensive line coach for 350,000. Both have very strong recruiting reputations on the west coast as well as great skill sets. Lastly Keith Heyward moved north from Oregon State University to be defensive backs coach for $150,000.

In addition Sarkesian reconfigured the positions, titles and salaries of the remaining coaches. For instance Dan Cozzetto, their formidable and widely respected offensive line coach became “run-game coordinator” and Jimmy Dougherty, the wide receiver’s coach added the title “pass-game coordinator.”

Now California must find two coaches, Oregon State one and Tennessee two which in turn will ripple out and impact other schools.

Several aspect of the Husky whirlwind illustrate the new world of Assistant College Coaching. First, all the coaches left for more money, often significant. Sometimes this is added to a chance to to return to home town turf. Second, all involved increases in responsibility and expansion of skill. Third, being a successful recruiter has become almost as important as technical expertise. Fourth, assistant coaches often start out working for very little either as graduate assistants or at lower level schools, but at elite schools they now command not just better salaries but multi-year contracts. This softens the brutal uncertainty of their jobs.

Coaching is a profession, not an obsession. Fans forget this and often feel jilted when a head or assistant coach bolts for another job. Of course fans forget that if a coach falters the fans will turn on the coach and call for his or her head.

Every college coach is a paid professional in a very insecure and unstable profession.  By their early thirties most of them have been fired or cleaned out with a coaching change or seen it happen to their good friends. They have had to scramble to find a new job and move family and kids to another town on the spur of the moment. A professional coach knows the fickleness of fans and the tenuousness of any job.

A good assistant will try to maximize their income given the uncertainty surrounding their jobs. So the moves from California to Washington make perfect sense for the California coaches. The Tennessee coaches make comparable salaries but get more responsibility and also a chance to return closer to home, a rare opportunity for coaches. The move to multi-year contracts is a huge boon to the younger coaches and their families.

But coaching also has a career path. Many aspire to be head coaches or coordinators. This means a progression: They succeed where they are; they take on more responsibility there or move to another school to get more responsibility; they often look to move to a higher ranked school in terms of talent and visibility.

Doug Nussmeier, a wonderful coach and person, exhibits the pattern. He served as offensive co-ordinator and QB coach at Fresno State. He moved to same position at a much better school in a higher ranked conference, Washington. I believe he is ready to be a head coach right now, but he reasonably took the job of offensive coordinator under one of the game’s great coaches, Lou Saban, at the national championship team. He will be a head coach soon and exemplify the classic career progression.

Sakesian’s restructuring of responsibilities for his remaining coaches also fits the career path. He permitted internal staff growth where coaches can acquire higher levels of training and responsibility at the same school. All are preparing for more responsibility at better places.

A good and ambitious assistant coach then seeks good money and stable employment. But stability is rare, so the money must go up to compensate. In addition, they want to grow in responsibility and expertise. Often they will look to work with particular coaches who have created coaching trees and know how to train and groom coaches for better position as Tedford at California and Saban at Alabama does. I believe Sarkesian is growing into the same type of teacher coach.

Today while the news hounds focus on the kids, some of the most critical recruiting and hiring occurs among assistant coaches. Keep your eyes open.