Today's football coaches stressed to impress By Greg Bishop
Seattle Times staff reporter
Tom Catlin suffered his first heart attack in March 1991, in Oklahoma City, in a hotel located across the street from a hospital. If he could remember, Catlin would be thankful it happened there. -NFL Football-
He suffered his second heart attack five days later. After doctors pronounced him healthy enough to leave the hospital. On the way back to his room to collect his things. -NFL Football-
Thirty minutes later doctors performed open-heart surgery, a quadruple bypass. One said Catlin's body was the healthiest he ever operated on. -NFL Football-
The scare didn't stop the Seahawks assistant coach from returning to training camp that summer. He started walking, ate the right foods, all the things wife Betty says, "you do after you're scared to death." -NFL Football-
Catlin wanted to coach forever. Instead, he retired in 1996, shortly after doctors diagnosed him with Parkinson's disease. And now, the man with a lifelong football love affair can't remember the score of the game that just flickered off the tube in his Sammamish home. -NFL Football-
Nothing jogs his memory. Now 74, Catlin watches football but doesn't know who's winning, doesn't know the players, doesn't remember much besides the uniforms of his beloved Seattle Seahawks. -NFL Football-
"It's been a rough 15 years," Betty Catlin says. "I'm sure a lot of it had to do with stress." -NFL Football-
Warning: Coaching football can be hazardous to your health. Because of the million-dollar salaries, the long hours, the high turnover and a dozen other reasons, experts say football coaches are among the most stressed-out employees on the planet. -NFL Football-
They are like stockbrokers when the market crashes, police working in inner cities and air-traffic controllers guiding planes, not players, into the right formations. -NFL Football-
Look no further than the Seahawks. -NFL Football-
Coach Mike Holmgren missed part of the team's June minicamp after he went to the hospital with chest discomfort. Defensive coordinator Ray Rhodes missed part of this season after suffering a mild stroke. -NFL Football-
Former defensive coordinator Steve Sidwell suffered a stroke this year, three years into retirement. Another former defensive coordinator, Fritz Shurmer, died of cancer in 1999. -NFL Football-
Bill Parcells, the Dallas Cowboys coach who lost to the Seahawks eight days ago and calls himself the "poster boy for some of this stuff," has undergone four angioplasty procedures and a bypass operation. Rival St. Louis coach Mike Martz won't coach again this season because of heart problems. And ESPN.com reported Sunday that Rams interim head coach Joe Vitt — who spent 10 seasons as a Seahawks assistant — is scheduled to undergo an angioplasty today. -NFL Football-
Betty Catlin says two of her husband's coaching colleagues are afflicted with similar medical problems. She doesn't know if there's a connection there, but she does know this:
"He would do the exact same thing, the exact same way," she says. -NFL Football-
They all would. -NFL Football-
No mistakes allowed
Dan Olsen is not a football coach. But boy, does he ever sound like one. -NFL Football-
He's actually the president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association Local S46 in Seattle. They control traffic for between 1,500 and 1,700 planes a day, enough to register as the 18th-busiest radar facility in the country. -NFL Football-
Olsen has seen controllers melt down on the job. He has seen others lose their medical clearance because of high blood pressure, hypertension and heart attacks. He has seen others suffer heart attacks at work, and the "only thing you can do is jump in and take over." -NFL Football-
"You're pushed right to the limit," Olsen says. "We're all losing our hair. I'm the only one in our family losing hair, and I'm the youngest." -NFL Football-
Like coaches, controllers are Type A personalities. The kind of people who take charge. Three-dimensional thinkers. They have to think 10 minutes ahead — sometimes working 16 airplanes at once, all going different speeds at different altitudes, needing to know where to put the last plane in reference to the first. -NFL Football-
It's Olsen's version of the West Coast offense. -NFL Football-
Like coaches, they can't make too many mistakes in a given period. Like coaches, they require time to unwind after work. Like coaches, most have supportive wives. -NFL Football-
More than anything, controllers are like coaches in that they seemed destined to do what they do — "aviation was always in my blood," Olsen says — which is why they put up with the hours and the stress. -NFL Football-
"It has its moments," Olsen says. "Moments of relaxation. Moments of sheer panic. Sometimes, it's like, 'Whew, how many times can you take an adrenaline rush?' The average person might get it once a week. We get it two or three times on a shift. If you make a mistake ... " -NFL Football-
He pauses, trailing off. -NFL Football-
"You can't make a mistake. You're dealing with lives." -NFL Football-
Coaches know nothing else
Football isn't life and death. But to a coach, sometimes it sure can seem that way. -NFL Football-
Holmgren remembers hearing about a coach who said he wanted to die on the 50-yard line. Legendary college coach Paul "Bear" Bryant once said he would "croak in a week" after he stopped coaching. He died four weeks after he retired. -NFL Football-
Then there's George Allen, who died at 72, just weeks after coaching his last game at Long Beach State. It has never been proven, but some posit that his death resulted from contracting pneumonia after his final Gatorade postgame shower. -NFL Football-
"To be a successful coach, you need to eat, sleep, live and drink coaching," says Dr. Jim Taylor, a noted authority on coaching stress. "It's not just a job. It's their lives. And unfortunately, there are some significant costs. -NFL Football-
"Let's face it: They're not a very healthy-looking lot." -NFL Football-
Sidwell admits most of his stress was self-inflicted. Before he was fired as defensive coordinator of the Seahawks, he worked 12 to 14 hours a day, "ate like a pig, drank too much and chewed tobacco." Many coaches share those habits, especially in the NFL. -NFL Football-
Tampa Bay coach Jon Gruden famously rises at 3:17 a.m. every day. Parcells needn't worry about getting up on Mondays — he can't sleep the night after a game. Seahawks offensive coordinator Gil Haskell says one team — he won't say which — doesn't start its coaches meeting until midnight. -NFL Football-
Add in coaches' eating habits, which most closely resemble that of college students. The Seahawks try to combat that by catering meals on Monday and Tuesday and ordering pizza for coaches on Wednesday. -NFL Football-
And still, coaches tell stories of colleagues who drink 15 sodas a day, coaches whose kids barely know who they are, coaches who invent work because 105 hours a week sounds better than 100. -NFL Football-
And for what? For another hour of film study, another chance to find one glitch, one weakness, one edge that might or might not pay off. -NFL Football-
"Sometimes, when it gets late in the season and everybody is tired and worn down, it becomes a point of diminishing returns," Sidwell says. "You're so tired I'm not so sure you're seeing what you need to be seeing. But you do it. It's just part of the deal." -NFL Football-
Sidwell says coaches are indoctrinated into that grind. They know nothing else, except the long hours and the stress that are part of coaching football, a part of life. -NFL Football-
Don James, former University of Washington coach, never saw his son play a college football game, but he did see one high-school game — in which his son broke his collarbone. Another daughter is in the Kent State Hall of Fame for field hockey. James never saw a game or a practice. -NFL Football-
He did buy a beach house in 1980, and retired there for a month each year with nothing on the calendar except his family. The 11 other months were reserved for football, a business James sums up in five words: "Be good or be gone." -NFL Football-
"What people don't realize," Haskell says, "is that you work all year. There are few days off. As soon as you walk outside after a win, you start thinking about the next game you're going to play. There's not much free time. Well, there's no free time." -NFL Football-
Part of the job
Dr. Paul Rosch is the founder and president of the American Institute of Stress. He started studying coaching and stress when Chicago Bears coach Mike Ditka suffered a heart attack in 1988. -NFL Football-
Rosch says job stress is "far and away" the leading stress of American adults. He measures it by whether a person perceives they have very little control and very high responsibility and demand. -NFL Football-
"Coaches fall into that category," Rosch says. "It's generally conceded that it has to do with stress, unsympathetic fans, long working hours and tremendous sums of money."
And this. -NFL Football-
"Quite frankly," Parcells says, "the media has a lot to do with it." -NFL Football-
Rosch points to studies that confirm a sense of not having control, of unreasonable expectations, of outside influences, of problems with the media. -NFL Football-
"Stress can't be defined," Rosch says. "It's different for each of us. But remember, the No. 1 job description of any coach is to make life miserable for other coaches." -NFL Football-
Sidwell agrees. -NFL Football-
"I just dug my foxhole a little deeper every time something didn't go the way we wanted it to," he says. "Most of it was of my own making. Others handle it much better." -NFL Football-
Taylor, the coaching stress expert, has worked with NFL and college coaches. He has also worked with people in the military, businessmen and surgeons. He has found similar stress levels. The difference is most those professions deal with physical life and death. Coaches have only their financial lives and egos on the line. -NFL Football-
"There is a high presence of control freaks in the NFL," Taylor says. "Mike Holmgren is a good example of one. They're not just taking their own responsibility, they're taking responsibility for everybody else. Overload comes from trying to do everybody else's job. -NFL Football-
"Coaching is stressful, but it has to be balanced. Unfortunately, balance and NFL coaching typically don't go together." -NFL Football-
Taylor says employing his techniques for a half-hour a day can keep coaches from "going off the deep end." He uses nutritionists and conditioning coaches, puts treadmills in coaches' offices and hopes teams will impose rules to keep coaches healthier and protect their investments. -NFL Football-
"It's like they're on the rat's wheel," Taylor says. "They get on that, and they think they can't get off."
Family tradition
Mike Mora comes from a coaching family — his father, Jim Mora Sr., coached in the NFL, and his brother, Jim Mora Jr., coaches the Atlanta Falcons. -NFL Football-
He praises his father's parenting skills, noting Jim Mora Sr. moved from coaching in college to coaching in the pros partly because he didn't want to miss his sons' high-school football games on Friday nights. But Mike Mora also sees the flaws.
Like James, he wonders why more coaches aren't fit. When James coached at Washington, he says his staff remained conscious of its image. He wonders why "four or five coaches in Division I are so incredibly fat and heavy, and still ask their players to be disciplined." -NFL Football-
With some of the best medical care available to coaches in the NFL, Mike Mora wonders the same thing. He says he would "kill to have some of that available in my office."
"They've created this culture where they all work really long hours," Mike Mora says. "It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. I'm an architect [in Seattle]. We do the same thing.
"My dad is a Type A guy, the eldest son of a somewhat dysfunctional family. You see it a lot. Those are the guys who make sure they don't do anything wrong. They have no release valve. By the time they're 60 years old, they just snap. They could be investment bankers or generals in the Army, and you'd have the same thing. All to direct guys wearing little tight pants and shoulder pads." -NFL Football-
Jim Mora Sr. is retired now. He works as an analyst for the NFL Network. He says he doesn't feel any healthier, but he feels less tired, less stressed. He remembers what friends would say as each season neared the end.
"You look really tired. You look bad." -NFL Football-
"I worry about my son," Jim Mora Sr. says. "Sometimes, he'll say, 'Boy, I'm really tired.' I can appreciate that. I can understand that. I've been there. But I worry, sure I do."
He's not alone. Even at the high-school level, coaches are stressed out, and they have to teach during the day and deal with parents at night. -NFL Football-
Archbishop Murphy's Terry Ennis is one of the most successful high-school coaches in state history. He says "being around young people helps my health," a notion seconded by Snohomish coach Mark Perry, who says, "Making a difference for young people makes it worth it."
Ennis admits to being similarly obsessed — he scheduled surgery for prostate cancer in the summer of 2003 so he could be back in time for the first day of football practice. He's not alone.
"You think you've always been a healthy guy," Haskell says. "And then, all of a sudden, something happens, like with Ray [Rhodes], and it knocks you on your fanny." -NFL Football-
Haskell used to run regularly before he took the offensive coordinator job at Carolina in 1998. When asked why he stopped, he responded the same way most coaches do. -NFL Football-
"I had to spend more time behind my desk," he says. "That's just the way it is." -NFL Football-
Greg Bishop: 206-464-3191 or gbishop@seattletimes.com
Copyright © 2005 The Seattle Times Company
