The Wisdom of Athlete Cliches

In one of my favorite sport movies Bull Durham, Ebby Calvin “Nuke” LaLoosh, “the million dollar arm with a five cent brain,” asks his grizzled mentor, Crash Davis, to “teach” me more stuff. Crash sits him down on their rickety bus and says, "it’s time to talk about clichés." He begins with “I am just happy to be here.”

How many times have you listened to the same words or variations from athletes as they answer the same hackneyed question for the umpteenth time? Consider that a midlevel major league player would be asked similar questions by multiple reporters over 900 times a year.

Athlete speak seems to involve what Washington, D.C. would call a “non-answer answer.” It sounds like an answer but has absolutely zero content. Now these answers evolve for reasons. First, no athlete wants to call out or publically insult teammates or members of the other team. Athletes have to play every day with each other. Real problems are hashed out in private. Second, no athlete wants to give the other team motivation for a game or insight into a team’s problems. In pro sports, athletes will move across several teams and no player wants to alienate or insult someone who may be a teammate next week or next year.

What do we want them to say? “W botched the double play because he played out of position or X missed the ball because he was not only not playing to the scout or Y misread the trajectory and broke wrong?” He could no more say that Z was out too late with his mistress and not as fully focused as he could be. Come on guys! The need to protect team cohesion and relations, as well as the endless sameness of the questions and situations abrade the answers and wear away all the externals. The clichés gleam like polished rocks eroded and buffed by hot air and weather of media storms.

I believe, however, that athlete speak also contains some strong and consistent wisdom that athletes and coaches do believe and that are worth listening to. At the end of a recent come from behind over time victory, the Seahawks young and very smart quarterback Russell Wilson described the mood in the locker room at the half time after the Seawhawks had been soundly trounced for 30 minutes. Wilson feels not only smart but genuine and is too young to have built up the smooth deflective armor of words and poise that many veterans adopt to protect themselves. Here is what he said:

"The mood in the locker room was unbelievable," he insisted. "We knew that if we could just hang in there, if we could just play one play at a time, stay in the moment...and we did throughout the entire second half."

Now the reality is that most cliches began as and in fact still reflect deep truths. They become cliches by repetition and trained ignoring. Wilson in fact described exactly what the battered but not beaten Seahawks did.

Athletes and trained professionals have worked hard to practice reflectively and train their emotions and cognitive responses. They respond under great pressure with quick decisions that reflect perception of what the situation requires, coordination with fellow players and execution based upon powerful and trained pattern recognition and cognitive and emotionally united instincts. Often the cliches refer to these practices lying below the surface of actions. 

For instance, it is absolutely critical to "play one play at a time." The most dangerous thing an athlete can do is carry the emotional dredges of the past mistakes or success into the next play. This distracts from full attention and can code the execution either with too little or too much optimism. Emotions impact all performance and it is critical to let them go each play. One step at a time matters as a way to live and overcome adversity and stay on track when a person is ahead. The Seahawks, their coaches and their execution focused upon each play without giving up or pressing too hard.

High level performance requires being totally present to each moment. Elite athletic competition requires supreme pattern recognition from players and coaches. Being in the moment means players put aside emotional and physical and external distractions to bring their entire and multi-dimensional attention to bear at each moment of the competition. This can lead to interceptions, stopped plays or break aways or simply superb execution that wins a critical third down on a stalled drive. High performance achievement requires this ability to be entirely present to oneself, call upon one's skills and be present and connected to team mates and the opposition. This being present, playing one play at a time and persevering lay the emotional and psychological foundation of situational awareness that sets timely interceptions, blocks, sacks or brilliant runs.

Finally the Seahawks just kept at it with consistency. They endured mistakes and successes. Did not matter, but they kept present, focused upon execution of each play and gradually built up momentum and scored and chipped away.

Wilson in his thoughtful and balanced way described what many athletes have said thousands fo times and been ignored, but he spoke the truth and told exactly what happened at an attention based focused level.
Athletic wisdom may sound like cliches but it embodies serous wisdom and a way of being in harsh competition.

So professional athletes and most visible elite athletes draw upon a standard repertoire of answer across all sports. Consider:

• We just take it one day at a time.
• I do my best and the good Lord willing, I will get better.
• We just have to go out and try our best each day.
• He’s a competitor and never gives up, so he came through.
• We all have days like this  (could be good or bad).
• The other guys picked me up.
• I want to compliment the other team; they played a great game.
• I couldn’t t have done it without the rest of the team.
• Just go to let it go. Tomorrow is another game.
• Guys are not focused. We have to be focused out there.
• We need to work on that in practice.
• We’re in a groove, on a wave, in the flow and will ride it.
• Sometimes you win. Sometimes you lose. That’s the game.

Each of the phrases divulges a real truth about sport. The fundamental rule of all sport must be to take it one day, one episode, one moment at a time. Sport involve constant failures. If a player lets a dropped pass stay with them or a strikeout or missed jump shot, then the memory and upset from the failure will poison and undermine their next pass, next shot or next strike. Elite athletes must have no memory from one moment to another.

Elite athletes like any of us who seek to strive and succeed, need to remember Kipling’s injunction in IF: “If you can meet with triumph and disaster 
And treat those two imposters just the same.”

The mental and emotional discipline of being focused on each moment, each pitch, each movement of the person you guard, each set and pattern before you defines the attention of a fine athlete. Athletes must be totally present and aware and attuned; they must bring their best attention and effort on each play because at the elite level small mistakes or miscues lead to immense and brutal consequences. So competitors never give up and achievers remain focused.

In competition if athletes let their emotions get the best of them,they lose focus. If they let the other team get into their heads or let their own emotional anger at the other team influence them, it can subtly lower performance or lead to overcompensation. It opens them and their team to being angered or thrown off their concentration by the other team.

Staying focused but also staying connected to their team remain essential. Team members may not like each other but have to trust to commit to their own expertise and place. If a player tries to do too much because they don’t’ trust their team, a player will get out of place and upset a formation or play. A player will leave openings and overcompensate and the other team will adjust and exploit it. So trusting and relying on their teammates and acknowledging them is critical, just as critical as respecting and acknowledging the other team when the opponents play well. That respect and acknowledgement can trump simmering anger or resentment that the other team may seek and exploit.

All of us and all athletes have those moments, those wonderful transcendent moments when we are in the flow. The moment when we are living at our highest potential and our skills and practice and training come together. It can feel like an epiphany, but when we have them, like Crash Davis says you have to “respect the streak” and we have to respect our performance and ourselves.

So we all have days like this and sometimes you win and sometimes you lose, but you carry on, you show up and you do your job. And every athlete does know in his or her heart of heart that Crash is right, “I am just happy to be here.” That is life, not just sport. Trite, but true.

Sports Ethics: No Excuses

“No excuses,” how many times have players heard this from coaches? How many times have good coaches stated this to the media or fans when accepting responsibility for a failure. These two simply words reflect a profound acceptance of responsibility for actions and a commitment to get better that reflect core of professional growth.

We all prefer excuses—“not my fault;” “Mr. Nobody did it;” “the sun was in my eye;” “the ref botched it;” “my partner missed the signal.” I could go on because the ways to duck responsibility stretch endless and tempting. Having an excuse avoids the pain and demands of responsibility. Having an excuse avoids being singled and taking the blame for an action’s consequences. No excuses is the flip side of the buck stops here.

The concept of excuse is old and important. It arose legally to exonerate and justify pardon for actions. A person offers excuses to explain that he or she had reasons to guide their action. The bad consequences of the action really flowed from good reasons and reasonable responses, so they were not guilty of malfeasance.

An excuse is not an apology. An apology accepts responsibility for an action and consequences and seeks forgiveness for acting and the consequences that follow. Apologies accept responsibility as moral core of the action.

Excuses really mean to escape from “cause” of an action—excuses nullify responsibility for actions. Excuses carry huge import in legal and moral assessment of blame. Determining negligence makes them even more important in moral life because if a person has prepared and done due diligence and makes an honest mistake or faces impacts beyond their control, they offer an excuse to avoid charges of negligence.

Excusing oneself possesses serious moral weight. It offers an explanation for why it was reasonable for me to fail and reasonable to make a mistake. It deflects responsibility from my decision making to external influences or deflects it to others. Sometimes we may even have good reasons for our mistaken actions as in “excuse me” when we sneeze or inadvertently insult someone.

No Excuses takes a different tack towards oneself and responsibility for actions. Essentially it refuses to let oneself or team off the hook of responsibility. Maybe one mistake or bad call or luck influenced a game or decision. No excuses, however, means players and coaches look at the entire context of the game, not just one actions. They do not use excuses to release them from seeing their failure and from working to find the causes and working to correct them.

Rejecting excuses puts the onus on players to embrace responsibility. No excuses for oneself or team pushes players to want to take action when under stress. It creates a mindset that motivates players to practice and learn from mistakes. Players, coaches and professionals prepare by practicing scenarios and anticipating future actions.

In professional and sport life publically stating “no excuses” extends responsibility to go back and learn from what happened. It requires a post mortem and sometimes scenario testing to get better. This may mean going back and relearning basics or changing patterns of recognition. Often it involves mental work where individuals and teams refocus intensity or learn how to handle the buffeting of luck and bad calls and maintain their focus despite the slings and arrows of fortune.

Mistakes, losses, blowups all tend to linger in the back of one's mind. People can nag and diffuse focus and intention. Worse, they struggle to rationalize away what happened and are tempted to blame anyone or anything but themselves. No excuses as a team culture does not eliminate this self recrimination, but buffers against it and drives players to the future, not the past. To responsibility to grow and learn, not blame and gnaw on oneself or teammates. 

I believe no excuses makes sense as a public position for players and coaches and one worth internalizing for high performing teams. I think, however, that in private relations among professionals excuses matter profoundly and need to be acknowledged. For instance, players often play with injuries or at limited strength. This debilitation constitutes a reasonable excuse by any moral standards, and coaches and fellow teammates need to understand this. People have “brain farts” as they say. Sometimes luck intervenes or bad calls happen. Sometimes despite preparation the other team is more talented and focused and the team struggles to make a game of it.

Coaches, players and professionals need to acknowledge and integrate these assessments of themselves and teammates in assessing blame and praise. Inside the team, people need room for support, mercy and pain. A player who plays through pain and injury may deserve as much praise as excuse.

No excuses not only isolates responsibility and obligations to learn, but it generates another imperative. Once admitting “I contributed,” no excuses helps players and teams move on. 

This approach demands honest recognition of what happened and people’s contributions to it. But it insists that once this has been done, people have to let go and move on. As Nick Saban likes to preach, “last race doesn’t matter.”

High achievement and learning requires being full present to the moment and open to seeing the patterns and needs of a moment. To learn requires total presence and focus on technique and situational awareness. Players cannot afford to have the past nagging and shadowing their action. Acknowledge, learn, let go.

Players, teams and coaches have to “let go” of the past to be present to the future. Offering and accepting no excuses lets this happen.

Sports Ethics: The Problem with "It is What It Is."

I hear it is what it is all the time from my students and children. It ends discussions and often ends effort to change something or revisit a screw-up or mistake (depending upon how nice you want to be). The phrase has migrated into business use and even sports now. Coaches will shrug after a loss or commenting on a bad bad call, “it is what it is.” I think coaches and players are trying to be profound as are business leaders when they use it.  In 2004 it was voted the cliche of the year.  I am struck by the phrase can be so problematic in sport life.

If you think about it, “it is what it is” sounds remarkably fatalistic. The expression reeks of giving up and accepting a condition that somehow cannot be changed. Giving up and accepting unchangeable conditions makes a great counsel of resignation and fatalism, but does not really belong in the world of sports or high performing teams or organizations. So how did so many athletes and coaches end up spouting its pseudo-wisdom.

I think the saying can help athletes and teams “let go” of an action over which they have not control. How many times do we simmer and stay angry over our own mistake or a mistake made by a referee or even our boss/coach.

Successful action entails intense focus on what we are doing. It requires situational awarenss of the relevant variables and people in motion around us. If we are still angry or ticked off over a call, if out minds are chewing out a referee or teammate, if we are chiding ourselves or fighting with our coach, even if only in our minds, we distort our alertness. We miss vital nuances around us because our mind and focus is divided between the emotion we are carrying with us and the raging changing context around us.

In theory it could mean. I can't change it and I am moving on. Or it can mean, "just F'it." But at its best is seems to exhort the user to himself or others to just say:

“Let Go Of It.” This is good sound advice for any athlete/coach/professional when they harbor mixed attention diffused by lingering emotions anchored to a past action.

Letting go involves action and decision. A player becomes conscious of their divided attention and actively changes focus. They redirect their concentration on issues at hand, immediately at hand. A good athlete and professional attend to what matters and learn from the mistake; they don’t hold tight to their anger and distorted focus.

“It is what it is.’ Carries a very different implications.

First, it suggest that what occurred may be opaque and cannot be understood, sort of a mystery. This urges the player to let it go. 

Second, it alludes to what happened cannot be changed. Period. It is over, done, kaput. No space time paradoxes will enable a person to go back and rectify the mistake. Again, it implies that the person let go of their embrace of the event’s emotional import.

Third, both the opaque and definitive done/gone approach mean it does not good to ruminate and torture oneself about what happened. This again directs the player/coach to let go of it.

The opacity and historicity behind the phrase undercuts the most important lesson people gain from mistakes—how can we learn from them.

James Collins in his great work on leadership argues that one crucial aspect of being high performing teams is the necessity to face the “brutal facts.”

Brutal facts is a hard phrase, but an accurate one. When we or others screw up, we need to look at the tape, check with others and learn what went wrong. Post mortems teach us to grow whether we want to or not.

Maybe we made no mistake Maybe our opponents just played better or had a better game plan. Maybe the referees blew a call. Maybe our team imploded.  Maybe the lesson becomes not to blowup over a miscue. A mess, loss, surprise, mistake demands that we face it and learn from it. High performers, athletes and professionals, live by that rubric.

Often coaches and athletes deploy this recent truism to address an injury. “It is what it is” is supposed to calm or reassure and athlete. It should move them to let go of their anger, fear and resentment about the loss. The fatalism hypothetically motivates the athlete.

What the athlete really needs is realism, not fatalism. They need to know the brutal facts and straight realities. From this  knowledge emerges a plan designed with doctors and trainers to treat and rehab the injury. Athletes and teams don’t need fatalism; they need realism, hope and prudent plans. “It is what it is” does neither for a wounded player.

Good teams, good athletes, good professionals learn.

Athletics like life  throws mistakes, implosions, surprises and luck at them to challenge them. I cannot think of a worse approach then “it is what it is.”