KANSAN.COM / THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN / TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2010 / SPORTS
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ASSOCIATED PRESS
Coaches need to stay healthy during season
Texas head coach Mack Brown yells from the sideline during the first half of an NCAA football game against Texas Tech in Lubbock, Texas, Saturday. Sent. 18.2010.
Media attention and gameday pressures abound
ASSOCIATED PRESS
OKLAHOMA CITY — Gary Pinkel likes to get away from a stressful day and sneak in a quick shopping trip with his granddaughters, even it's just for 15 minutes.
He'll push them around in a shopping cart for a while, get them all wired, then drop them back off with his daughter and return his focus to coaching Missouri football.
Even such a brief break is soothing for the 58-year-old Pinkel.
"This job is pressure-packed," Pinkel said Monday on the Big 12 coaches' conference call. "I think it's more pressure-packed than it ever has been because of ESPN, because of the national sports scene, because of the Internet, because of all the instant communication out there and there's so many media avenues now that exist, the amount of money coaches make.
"To me, it's going to get worse, the pressure. It's not going to go the other way"
Michigan State coach Mark Dantonio suffered a mild heart attack Sunday morning not long after an overtime win against Notre Dame, highlighting the health hazards of coaching that were a hot topic after Urban Meyer briefly resigned from Florida following last season.
The health of top college coaches was a hot topic this week. Some admit that taking care of themselves can become an afterthought if they don't carefully plot out some time to exercise and eat right.
"I need to do a better job taking care of myself," Texas coach Mack Brown said. "I do in the offseason, and I feel great. But there's no doubt that you just wear yourself thin trying to win every game in the fall, and there's a lot on your plate."
Leading a football team takes far more than just calling plays for a few hours on Saturdays. Brown rattled off an expansive list of people he has to answer to: high school coaches, lettermen, fans, alumni, regents, administrators, faculty, media and 130 players — each with parents whod like to see their kids get to play.
"I think it's a concern. The intensity level and stress is beyond, I think, what anybody could ever imagine on a head coach," Pinkel said. "I've been a head coach 20 years. You kind of learn to deal with it, but if you're a competitor, that's just the way you are. And you thrive on it, too, a little bit."
Pinkel said he works out three times a week: early on Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings. He and his assistants also schedule in time for dinner with their families, although doing that requires coming in early.
Kansas State's Bill Snyder multitasks by watching game film while he runs on a treadmill after practice. Colorado's Dan Hawkins tries to set aside time for himself and his staff to hit the weight room and sleep.
"Certainly it's a 24/7 operation, not just here but anywhere," Snyder said. "It's easy to overlook a lot of things that are significant in life, not just your health. But you have to carve out and create ways."
At Oklahoma State, Mike Gundy
has allowed new offensive coordinator Dana Holgorsen more control over the game planning. That means at least two less meetings per week for Gundy, but he also thinks it will add years to his life.
"I don't think there's any question that my health is not good during the season," Gundy said. "I exercise, I try to eat right but there's just a lot involved in being a coach. It's not necessarily football. It's the responsibility of the 125 players on your team and their families and their parents and their well-being."
"The intensity level and stress is beyond, I think, what anybody could ever imagine being a head coach."
Michigan coach Rich Rodriguez said it's simply hard to leave the job at work. He said he sleeps about five hours every night.
said he's spared one slice of pressure: That of family, though held love to have one someday. He recalled calling one of his assistants recently and hearing "his two kids just screaming in the back and I hung up the phone and started laughing because I don't know that world.
"I have not slept three hours straight in years," he said.
GARY PINKEL Missouri football coach
Wisconsin coach Bret Bielema
"I think that's one area where for me that avenue is probably a benefit because I don't have that stress," he said.
With all that's going on, Pinkel suggested that coaches should be proactive about their health and
visit a doctor more
visit a doctor more frequently than others might. Better to go there for a check-up than be taken there in bad shape.
"I know that it's a concern for all of us," Gundy said. "You're seeing more of it in the last few years than you ever have before."
Pinkel said every coach has to find his
own system that works, and that process becomes easier over time.
"When I was a first-year head coach, Wednesday night I was ready to play the game — emotionally, physically, everything. I was wired," he said.
"I think through the years I've learned to try to delay that. I still wake up every Saturday morning like it's the national championship game for me. That's just who I am. I guess when I quit feeling that way, then I'll go do something else."
NFL
Ray Rice inspires fans with his kindness off the field
MCCLATCHY-TRIBUNE
BALTIMORE — The man's last wish was to meet his favorite Raven. But, sick with cancer, he never thought Ray Rice would knock on his front door.
So last March, when the running back stepped into Paul Pelfrey's living room, Pelfrey mustered his strength, stood up and gave Rice a hug. The men sat at the dining room table and chatted for 2 hours, said Rice, who shared tales of his own trials.
"I wanted (Pelrefrey) to get to know me as a person, not just about running the football," he said. "I wanted it to be a remembrance that he could take with him. I told him the stuff he was battling was way bigger than anything that I've battled in life."
When they parted, Pelfrey, 51.
a maintenance supervisor for Lockheed Martin, grasped Rice's hand and hugged him again.
"You'll make it to the Hall of Fame," he whispered.
Pelfrey died two weeks later.
Rice
Such acts of kindness are becoming routine for Rice, the team's Pro Bowler runner whose moves off the football field are often as special as those on it.
Few players excite crowds like Rice. His hardscrabble roots, bantam size and obsessive work ethic resonate with fans, who have embraced the third-year back out of Rutgers.
"He's fast, strong and has great balance," Ravens coach John Harbaugh said. "Ray can be as good a back as there is in the NFL."
Rice's reputation spills over into his private life.
"It's nothing for Ray to go into a store and walk up to a poor kid who's eyeing a $70 video game," said Bryan Shannon, Rice's cousin. "First, he ask the kid how he's doing in school. If he's doing OK, Ray will buy him the game — and autograph it."
Rice's response is always the same, Shannon said.
"He'll say, 'Man, that felt good.'"
Rice doesn't trumpet these outings, some of which he has roped other Ravens into.
"He has phoned me from hospitals and had me talk to people he's visiting there," offensive lineman Michael Oher said.
Once, Rice was even asked to autograph some football paraphernalia for a deceased fan who wanted to be buried with it. Rice did it willingly.
These favors he does gratis. His success (2,041 yards gained from scrimmage in 2009, second best in the league) and upbeat demeanor have landed him endorsement deals with M&T Bank, Verizon, BGE, Carbiz and others that will earn Rice about $500,000 this year. That's a tidy sum for a player who's not quite 5 feet 9.
"There's a good vibe around him," said Ben Renzin, his marketing representative. "Ray's personality just lights up a room. Kids
look up to him, his energy level is high and his drive to be one of the best is amazing."
Rice, 23, said he knows where he's headed.
"One thing I know about life is that you build an image for yourself," he said. "I want to read my name in the books one day. I want to be one of the greatest.
"I want to be known as a guy who made it — and gave back."
--red-and-black
Huffy, and rode it over makehift wooden ramps on a nearby playground.
It wasn't a typical birth. Rice came into the world six weeks early, legs churning. His mother, then 23, was glad he came early.
"He kicked all the time, from four months on." lanet Rice said. "Ridiculous. Every time I tried to sleep, Ray would kick. And the kicks kept getting stronger."
He grew up poor, sleeping two to a bed in a scruffy neighborhood called "The Hollow" in New Rochelle, N.Y., where guns and gangs were rife. His father died when Ray was 1, killed by mistake in a drive-by shooting in 1988. All Rice knows of Calvin Reed are some old photos, and what his mom has told him. "Slick" Reed was a supermarket stock clerk, a sharp dresser and an avid bodybuilder.
"At 9 months, he walked very fast," his mother said. "By 1, Ray was potty-trained. He told me that he wanted to wear underwear, and I haven't had to put Pampers on him since."
"My little dare-devil," his mother叫他， and kept the Bactine and Band-Aids handy.
At 2, Rice graduated to a two-
At 3, he did pull-ups on the water pipes in
the hall outside their public housing apartment.
"I want to be known as a guy who made it—and gave back."
"I watched him," said James Wagstaff, an older cousin. "I lifted Ray up, near the ceiling where the cold pipes were, to see if he could one pull-up. He did 20.
By 5; Rice begged to play football with kids twice his age on that concrete playground.
"It was crazy, an obstacle course, with monkey bars, swing sets and metal sprinkler heads sticking up out of the ground — but we wanted to play," said another cousin, Khalid Rice.
In third grade, Rice got a job sweeping floors at the Big Three Barber Shop on Main Street. There, at 7, he learned to work the crowd.
RAY RICE
Raven's running back
me out along the way?
The older kids took note of Rice, calling him "man-child."
He had muscles at 5" Janet Rice said. "Ray looked like a little body-builder, but he had a big head. I'd tell him, 'Boy, if your body don't catch up to your head..."
"I didn't just clean people up, I entertained," he said. "I told (the customers), I'm gonna be somethin' someday, and you can help
"Ray loved to hit. He was really, really aggressive," cousin Anthony Rice said. "He declared guys, knocked them off their feet. Other teams' moms cried and asked the refs, 'Could you please take (Rice) out of the game?' And the refs said, 'Ma'm, he's younger than almost everyone on the field.'
Pound for pound, no one was tougher than the stocky 10-year-old who played alongside him. Anthony Rice said.
Rice's football face was something else. In youth league play, the smallest kid on the field was the one most feared.
"They'd give me a dollar, or a five. I loved the fives. I made the fives last."
"During games, Ray would say, 'Anthony! Anthony! I'm gonna hurt somebody right now!' And on the next play, he'd hit some guy and, sure enough, he'd be hurt. Ray wasn't a dirty player. He hit you straight up — but hard."
Rice grew up determined to prove himself.
"When people said he was too small or too slow, too this or too that, it made him work harder," said Courtney Greene, the Jacksonville Jaguars' safety who grew up with Rice. "Once, when we were 10 and playing in the same backfield, he asked me to miss my block on purpose so he could run this dude over. I tripped, looked up and saw Ray step on the guy — and go 40 yards for a touchdown."
He prepared for games "like a commando" said David Richards.
a childhood friend.
"He ran the stairs to his sixth-floor apartment over and over," he said, "and then did pull-ups on the monkey bars outside."
In their 12-year-old title game, Richards said, Rice played nose guard and slammed the opposing quarterback to the ground so hard that he was
ejected from the contest. In the first quarter.
"The ref threw a flag and said, "This kid is entirely too strong to play in the championship." Richards said. "Ray was just doing his job. We blew the other team out, and he sat there and watched the rest of the game with a smile on his face."
In middle school, Rice began feeling the pressures of the neighborhood.
"I had to get away," Rice said.
But he couldn't always escape. In eight grade, facing peer problems, he slipped a pellet gun into his backpack and went off to school. Security guards found it, and police surrounded the place.
Rice's sentence: one week's suspension, a year's probation, exclusion from his middle school graduation and 100 hours of community service.
"Our mother took away everything possible from Ray, including football, for a while," said Markell Rice, his younger brother. "It was strong punishment."
Lesson learned.
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