College football programs fumble when it comes to building role models

Charlie Strong, the University of Texas’ football coach, recently said that college programs have to do a better job of making future NFL players “the” guy and not “that” guy. “The” guy is a very public and positive role model. “That” guy is running back Ray Rice, who punched his then-fiancée in an elevator, or Adrian Peterson, who whipped his 4-year-old son with a stick.

After a meeting with NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, Strong said college programs have a responsibility to make players as incorruptible as possible before the NFL showers them with wealth, fame and a sense of invincibility.

“You give somebody who has bad character a lot of money, that’s a situation probably you want to avoid,” Strong said during a press conference in September. “We have to do a better job in college of just preparing young men and doing a better job with their character."

But college football programs may be overmatched for the task.

“Character development doesn’t start when you get to college,” said Jim Bauman, a sports psychologist for the University of Virginia and counselor for the U.S. Olympic swim team and Navy Special Warfare Center (which trains the SEALs). “You are dealing with baggage that has been going on for 18 years. In four years we are supposed to miraculously change that? It’s not going to happen.

“Coach Strong told Roger Goodell we have to do a better job preparing people for the NFL, which is true, but we also have to drop down to another level and do that in high school and drop down another level and do that in junior high and drop down another level and do that in grade school.”

The culture of football these days makes the task more difficult. Every day in practice and then in games, coaches exhort players to get into an aggressive mode and play to the edge of violence. The NCAA and NFL have had to legislate in rules on hits to the head to reduce the aggression.  

“You shape up these guys to be aggressive and on the edge of violence on the field, and then there are difficulties with emotional control, and they believe they are above the law,” said Ed Etzel, a sports psychologist and former head rifle coach at West Virginia University and a former Army officer. “When you are outside the field of play, if someone gets in your face, can you shut it down?”

Bauman said men learn how to survive on the battlefield and football field. But they should not take all those survival techniques home or to a bar at 2 a.m.

“We sequester these players the night before a game, and there is such an effort to get them ready for the game,” he said, “and then they are bailing out of the locker room after the game, and you have no idea what they are hitting the streets with.”

Bauman said that if you look at an athlete’s “core values,” how they behave when they leave the field shouldn’t be significantly different — but for some it is. The field is their center of gravity.

In an effort to remediate athletes, college football programs have hired a throng of support staff — tutors, nutritionists, life coaches, counselors, compliance staff, chaplains and strength and conditioning coaches. What good is it, asked Bauman, if the players are strapped to football most of the day with practice, meetings, film work, and injury rehabilitation, not to mention schoolwork?

“We are hiring more and more support staff to come in and take care of all these other issues that nobody took care of when they were younger,” he said. “We have people to keep these kids on track while they are here so they can be passed on to the next level. There is not a lot of time left over to deal with changing their baggage. When do we work on that — 2 a.m.?”

Athletic programs create a bunker mentality that makes it even harder to counsel players on their behavior, Etzel said, no matter what time of day or night.

“They don’t want you to know what’s going on,” he said. “It is extremely controlling, and it is similar to the blue line with the police or with the military or with similar fraternities. It is a swipe card mentality. If you don’t have the card to swipe, you can’t get in. There is social media monitoring and a culture of hazing to enforce discipline.”

Bauman said he is privileged that Virginia coach Mike London, a former policeman, understands the external pressures and allows Bauman to speak frankly with players. Many coaches work hard on swapping bad baggage for good baggage. But they also have to win games to keep their jobs.

Pat Fitzgerald, Northwestern’s football coach, has a remedy for the bad baggage: Don’t check it in in the first place. Investigate players in recruiting, he said.

“We have more opportunity to do that now as coaches from a standpoint of social media, and too many high school kids are making a lot of mistakes thinking those things are not read or not watched or not looked at,” he said. “That is our No. 1 evaluator as far as whether a young man is going to be a fit, after academics and his football ability.”

Fitzgerald also believes, along with Bauman, that character building starts long before a college career.

“As a father of three boys, it starts at the kitchen table,” he said. “Those are things I talk to my three boys about, and those are things my wife talks to our three sons about every single day.”

Gary Pinkel, head football coach at the University of Missouri, said he has changed his routine over the last several seasons to include life skills talks to his players in team meetings.

“We have a bigger responsibility now,” he said. “We have done some different things at the University of Missouri, called Men for Men/Women for Women, and having educational meetings on social issues that kids go through. I had this thing called Men for Men, teaching men about being respectful to women, teaching men about dating women. We did that in meetings before we got into the football part of it. This year we’re talking about virtues you should have as a man.”

Strong has dismissed nine players from the Texas football team for various offenses this season. Mark Richt of the University of Georgia is known as Coach Strict for his lack of patience with consistent rule breakers.

“It’s not too late to make changes. I wouldn’t be in this business I’m in if it was,” Bauman said. “But it gets more difficult the longer you wait. The NFL is concerned about their people, but they have to look farther down the line than just the college level. If you want a different product when someone is 21, you better start working with that early on.”