One of the biggest stories of the 2009 college football season was the health of Florida Head Coach Urban Meyer, who was hospitalized with chest pains shortly after the Gators lost the Southeastern Conference title game to Alabama. Meyer announced on Dec. 26 that he would resign as head coach after the Sugar Bowl, played on New Year’s Day, due to health concerns, but then reversed course the next day and announced he would instead take an indefinite leave of absence. He returned to his position full-time this past Mar. 17 for the start of spring practice.
Well, it seems this story may be on the verge of repeating itself. Early Sunday morning, Michigan State head coach Mark Dantonio was hospitalized after suffering a mild heart attack following his team’s victory over Notre Dame. Michigan State athletic director Mark Hollis said in a statement that when Dantonio was admitted to the hospital, “his immediate concern was to his family and then to the football program.”
And that’s exactly the problem. The bulk of the NCAA rulebook is dedicated to protecting the health of players—as it should be—but what about the men who play such integral roles in these players’ lives? It’s time for the NCAA to start protecting coaches from themselves.
While by no means the only sport experiencing this problem—recall the fatal heart attack suffered by Wake Forest men’s basketball coach Skip Prosser three years ago—football is arguably the biggest offender. It’s easy to see why. The relentless pressure of the “win at all costs” mentality of Division I-A (ok, “Bowl Subdivision”) football has created a lifestyle that brings new meaning to the overused cliché “living dangerously.” Some coaches devote over 20 hours a day—no joke—to watching film, game planning, recruiting, and doing everything else in their power to make sure they meet the expectations of their rabid fan base: an undefeated season and BCS title every year.
Don’t get me wrong. The primary job of a coach is to build and maintain a successful program, and this obviously requires a substantial time commitment. But there’s a difference between commendable devotion to a job and borderline insanity, a line that many big-time college football coaches have long since crossed.
To be fair, the NCAA has enacted some rules that, regardless of their intent, have brought the big-time recruiting scene under control. While the proliferation of text messaging and social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter has expanded the recruiting game to a whole new realm, coaches now face strict limits on their ability to contact recruits—how many calls they can make, how many text messages they can send, when they are permitted to contact recruits, and so on.
But this only takes care of half of the equation. What about the countless hours coaches spend in the film room? Or brainstorming and diagramming new plays with assistants? Again, it’s natural to expect that coaches will often work well into the night on such matters. But a growing number of D-I head coaches are now placing couches in their offices to avoid the time lost by traveling to and from the office—this way, they can game plan until three in the morning, sleep for four hours, then wake up and get right back to the film room. That’s an unreasonable expectation to heap upon coaches, and it’s exactly the sort of thing that’s contributing to the increasing incidence of stress-related health problems among D-I coaches.
So what do we do about this? Many big-time sports schools are also public institutions, and as you may have heard, the Great Recession has taken its toll on state and local budgets. As state employees, coaches are not exempt from the deficit-trimming measures enacted by these localities—including mandatory unpaid furlough days. Not surprisingly, though, few if any coaches took advantage of the day off.
But what if the NCAA were to impose its own version of mandatory furlough days—for example, limiting the amount of hours in a given day or days in or out of season that coaches can spend on sport-related activities.?Threaten rule-breakers with the dreaded “lack of institutional control” tag, and you’ve got yourself a necessary solution to an urgent problem.
Former UConn men’s basketball standout Caron Butler once said of Huskies head coach Jim Calhoun, “He’s the closest thing to a father I’ve ever had.” The NCAA needs to recognize how widespread Butler’s sentiments are, and place as much of a priority on protecting its coaches as it does their de facto offspring.
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