During a University of Miami baseball game this past season, former Hurricanes Coach Ron Fraser wore an odd wire-and-box contraption on his arm. A few players mistook the box for a radio or beeper, but for the most part it went unnoticed.
What the little box did was monitor Fraser’s blood pressure. And occasionally it seemed on the verge of blowing up.
Fraser, 56, recalls facing his cardiologist and the medical staff-an unsettled group-afterward.
“They told me times when my blood pressure went nuts,” Fraser said. “Ten forty-five, that was the end of the game. They asked me, `What happened at 10:45?’ I must have really given one hell of a speech because they said the reading nearly went off the meter.
“They wanted to know what happened at certain times, what happened at 9:45. I’m thinking, `What happened at 9:45? Something went wrong? Somebody missed a sign?’ “
A missed sign. A missed tackle. A missed free throw. Such mishaps get a coach’s blood pressure going fast in the wrong direction. Add demanding fans and alumni, bad calls, job insecurity and-even if the team wins-a coach has reason for distress.
But many coaches are taking measures to beat the tension. They believe they must.
“The emotional highs and lows you face are indescribable,” Miami Heat Coach Kevin Loughery, 52, said.
“These guys have bursts of stress; it’s a very up-and-down kind of thing,” said Dr. Jay Alexander, who treated former Bears coach Mike Ditka after he had a heart attack in 1988. “I think it’s an abnormal amount of stress. Very disruptive to a normal lifestyle.”
Certainly other factors contributed, but stress helped send Ditka, former New York Giants coach Bill Parcells and Broncos coach Dan Reeves to hospitals with heart problems. Former Oakland Raiders coach John Madden got an ulcer. University of Missouri basketball coach Norm Stewart got eight ulcers. Former Eagles coach Dick Vermeil nearly had a nervous breakdown.
Fraser had a stomach aneurysm and suffered from exhaustion. University of Miami coach Dennis Erickson has had stomach problems and developed fever blisters around his mouth before a 1990 game against Notre Dame. Dallas Cowboys coach Jimmy Johnson, Erickson’s predecessor at Miami, is constantly displaying one nervous habit or another on the sideline.
After Fraser’s stomach aneurysm was discovered last January, a medical team from Healthsouth Doctors’ Hospital in Coral Gables began to monitor his health. They suggested he wear the blood pressure gauge during several games. As it became evident that coaching was running Fraser too hard, he retired-he says he would have anyway-after 30 years.
“When you see what’s happening, guys getting heart attacks in your profession, obviously you think about it,” Erickson said.
Besides thinking, however, many coaches are doing. Three years ago, Erickson, 45, did not exercise regularly. Now he does. Parcells said if he got back into coaching he would change at least one thing: “I would try to have a period of time during the week where I would eliminate myself from football for five or six hours.”
Call it rest. Time to recapture one’s sanity. A slower pace.
“I think there’s more awareness today,” Fraser said. “The old school of thought was that nothing can hurt me; I’m going to be all right. Now coaches seem to think more about themselves and their families. Any coach who has been through it a long time realizes, `Hey, I have to get away.’ “
Even Miami Dolphins coach Don Shula, 63, who has coached for 29 years, has trouble sleeping after losses. He will wake up after a fitful couple of hours and go over the entire game in his mind before exhaustion shuts his eyes again.
Vermeil, who retired from coaching after the 1982 season, got to the point he felt he didn’t have time to sleep. Far too often, he was getting just two or three hours a night.
“I just kept adding an hour or two to the day to see if I couldn’t find a better way to prepare my team for that weekend’s ballgame,” Vermeil said.
A coach’s eating habits often are disturbed during the season. Some overeat, others can’t get interested in food. Erickson loses 12 to 15 pounds every fall. Florida State football Coach Bobby Bowden, 63, tends to gain about that much.
“I’ll never have an ulcer,” Bowden said. “I keep my stomach full of nervous food. On Fridays, I just get the urge to eat, eat, eat everything I can find. I’ll be full and I’ll still want to eat.”
Coaches climb different fences to get over stress. Erickson, Shula and University of Florida football coach Steve Spurrier, 47, run almost daily. Loughery plays golf and tennis. Bowden takes naps, 15 to 40 minutes a day right before practice.
Bowden locks his office door and tells his secretary to hold his calls. Then he gets cozy in his big office chair and snoozes.
“I could sleep right before kickoff if I had some place to do it,” Bowden said. “If we were fixing to play Miami, I could fall down to sleep until the time we hit the field. I have control of my life enough that I won’t let it fatigue me. I’ll go to sleep before it fatigues me.”
Loughery tries to play golf several times a week-even during the season. Years ago, he said, golf and other recreational activities were frowned upon by coaches who thought you weren’t doing your job if you weren’t doing it all the time. “Stress” was not even a common term back then.
“You must have a hobby,” Loughery said. “You have to have an outlet outside your family that allows you to get away. It could be collecting stamps-it doesn’t have to be physical.”
Whatever works. For Shula, it has been relaxation during the off-season, post-practice runs-a few miles-and experience.
“I think I’ve learned through the years how to temper some things that bothered me in the early years: dealing with losses, dealing with pressure,” Shula said. “My emotions on the sidelines I think I have better control of.”
Better control of one’s emotions does not mean squelching them. For a coach, yelling-within reason-is fine. Preferred, even, according to Alexander.
“I just don’t keep a lot inside,” said Shula, who is in perfect health. “I think that helps a lot as far as overall stress.”
“What you want to do is yell during a game to relieve the tension,” Stewart said. “Even if you’re yelling your own name, just yell.”
Stress relief measures notwithstanding, coaches’ lifestyles are far from ideal.
“My personal feeling is that no doctor should have more than one coach in a lifetime to take care of,” Alexander said. “One is enough.”
