Marc Greenbaum is a Professor of Law and Co-Director of Labor and Employment Law Concentration at Suffolk University Law School. Professor Greenbaum is an experienced labor arbitrator and remains one of the most sought after neutrals for handling challenging cases. In addition to his own professional accomplishments, he has been instrumental in educating and advising his current and former students – developing an impressive portfolio of success stories along the way.
In an episode of SCI TV, Alex Smolka of Florida Atlantic University cross country and track & field discusses the sports ethic among his student athletes and the balance that today’s student athletes have to manage. Through his experience as a coach, Smolka addresses the norms and challenges that most high performing college athletes encounter.
Defining a Sports Ethic
From high school to college to the professional level, serious athletes often show similar behavior in their sport as initially researched by sociologist Jay Coakley.
These behaviors are 1) Dedication to the game above all else; 2) Winning as marker of achievement and one’s willingness to push limits; 3) Accepting risks and playing through pain to prove self worth; and 4) Avoiding all obstacles to success.
Usually these patterns turn into on field success, but if taken too far they can be damaging to both performance and overall life balance.
In Athlete Transitions
Athlete dedication is often tested in the first year of college, when team expectations are significantly more than in high school.
“The biggest issue is having people transition from high school to college in a responsible way without going down the wrong path,” Smolka said. “If you want to improve, if you want to do well then sometimes you have to make tough choices to maximize how good you can be.”
When to Miss an Event?
Given very a strong sports ethic for most student athletes, missing a practice or competition can be a big deal. For many, family emergencies and serious illness or injury are the only acceptable reasons. But even those can be pushed through, which is why at FAU athletic trainers have last say for participation in practices and competitions.
“I want them to look at their responsibility to the team very similar to taking a another class. Practices and competitions are like midterms and finals,” Smolka said. The message is that they are very important, but not above all else.
Striking a Balance
Smolka thinks the right balance for success at the college level is academics first, athletics second, and social life third. In reality, social life usually gets combined with athletics, making the connections on a team that much more meaningful.
“The lifestyle of a student athlete can be an amazing experience and can be the best four years of your life if it’s done in the right way,” Smolka said.
With so much known about how to properly train the body, increased focus on the importance of mental strength and conditioning is only natural as athletes and coaches seek the next frontier for competitive advantage. In an episode of SCI TV, Matt Belair discuss “Above the Neck” sports performance. Belair, a sport psychology & mental strength coach, explains the importance of mental strength in achieving peak performance. He highlights the key elements athletes should use for optimum performance when it matters most.
Key Elements for Mental Strength
Over the years, Belair has identified key elements for optimizing mental strength. The first main element is mental preparation and practice. Throughout an average day there are many opportunities to be consumed by stresses and pressures to succeed, whether it be at school, work or leading up to athletic competition. It is important to have the ability to relax your mind and visualize what you want.
“The key to everything is to relax your mind. So that’s where meditation can be very useful,” Belair said.
The next step is to pinpoint your internal dialogue; what you are telling yourself. This is where you should identify your perspective and any negativity that might be discouraging or hindering your ability to perform at your best. A wrong or negative perspective can lead to mentally spiraling out of control.
“The biggest thing for any athlete is to learn to master your perspective; what you’re thinking about,” Belair said. “It is very important to take that perspective from the negative of what could go wrong to exactly what you want to happen and focus there.”
The third element that Belair acknowledged as one of the most important is understanding “your own self worth, your self confidence and your belief in yourself.” This step is significant in altering your mindset and, as Belair explains, when you can come to that connection within yourself, then you can express yourself in your sport honestly and to your highest potential.
“What is it that you believe about your ability to be number one? That is the first thing we look at to figure out how much you believe that you have the capacity to win,” Belair said. “And then the next steps are to implementing the right mental programing, including visualization, dieting, training regimen, what your going to say to yourself and what your going to do for recovery.”
What is the Best Mindset?
Mental preparation requires the development of your mindset to prepare you for any given situation. It is important to put yourself in both positive and negative situations mentally. This will help you determine your mindset, or what you want to accomplish, so that when a situation arises you already know how to react.
“Putting yourself there mentally before it happens gives you a very string ability to prepare for that, because that is where that mental game kicks in,” Belair said.
In some situations, you also want to prepare your mind to compete, not against others, but against yourself.
“The goal is the achieve your best,” Belair said. “It is very important to compete against your self, and get the best performance out of yourself that you can and you can use competition as a catalyst to improve that.”
When to Start Mental Training?
Building mental strength is a process that can take some time, which is why Belair recommends that athletes begin mental training as early as possible.
“It should start at the youngest age for everybody. We put some much importance on the physical, but really 99% of sport is mental. All of the lessons that you learn from the mental game, that’s stuff that you can apply everywhere.”
Belair also points out that mental training can benefit all aspects of your life, no just as an athlete.
“Learning each of the tools of visualization, dedication, fitness, nutrition and meditation, you can apply that to daily life, your business, financially, and how you feel about yourself,” Belair said. “My hope is to bring it more into the forefront, where mental training is just like physical training and I hope that those two worlds meet as quickly as possible.”
In an episode of SCI TV, Patrick Field of the Consensus Building Institute discusses how to deal with stakeholder engagement in sports. Field is co-author of “Dealing With An Angry Public,” and he covers critical considerations in engaging key stakeholders in highly visible sports scenarios. Field highlights six key elements that help businesses and organizations negotiate, rather than fight, with critics.
Organizations Make Mistakes
From the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill to the government response to Hurricane Katrina to nearly every new sports stadium, organizations often make many mistakes in stakeholder engagement. Field’s interest in public engagement stems from those failures and trying to answer the question, “why do things tend to go so badly?”
There are three major ways the public can feel concerned. 1) they can feel hurt by something already happened; 2) they can be offended by what is being planned; and 3) something happens that causes a conflict in values. All can create animosity and stifle the long term plans of an organization.
Legal and Promotional vs. Engagement
Field stresses that while organizations are most familiar with legal and promotional strategies to address these concerns, ultimately such strategies are not nearly as powerful as real public and stakeholder engagement.
“Big problems can be solved together if people can come around to the same side of the table,” said Field. “It’s a very deliberate approach that takes time and effort; it’s hard to do very quickly.”
There are six principles that “Dealing With An Angry Public” recommends for organizations working with stakeholders: acknowledge concerns, joint fact finding, contingent commitment, accept responsibility, act trustworthy, and focus on long term relationships. Together these steps can turn an adversarial relationship into a partnership.
Stakeholder Engagement in Sports
Field cites the NFL as not being able to implement these principles around the concussion issue, in the process creating a larger credibility issue with fans. Another current example of engagement missteps comes from the Boston 2024 Olympic bid, where flashy venue plans have been bogged down by skeptics, mistrust, and low public support. Organizations often try to market and promote their way out of a situation, and this is especially true in the sports industry.
True stakeholder engagement “takes commitment of leadership to do things differently, training of staff to think about things differently, people like us to help implement these strategies, and integrating this strategy with your public relations, political, or legal strategy.”
NCAA compliance is an area of sports that most people are either unfamiliar with or see only during major headlines and negative media. In an episode of SCI TV, Brad Barnes, Assistant Director of Athletic Compliance at Texas A&M University, discusses issues in NCAA compliance and shares his perspective on where rules and governance within college athletics are headed.
Role of Athletic Compliance
Barnes has experience in NCAA compliance at several universities, from a one person show at Midwestern State University, to the larger but relatively quiet Iowa State University, to currently at powerhouse Texas A&M University.
So what goes into athletic compliance? Dealing major infractions makes headlines but is only one aspect. Eligibility concerns dominate the workload in smaller offices and aligning team and university values is important at every level.
“You have to convince people inside and outside that we want to win, but we want to do so within the rules, complying with our institution’s values,” Barnes said.
The Challenge of Fame
Barnes thinks that one of the greatest challenges in NCAA compliance for institutions is dealing with the consequences of success and winning.
Speaking about Texas A&M football star Johnny Manziel, Barnes says “Dealing with that level of fame and notoriety definitely increases the amount of issues the institution vis-a-vis the student athlete get exposed to.”
Future of NCAA Compliance
Beyond the daily compliance issues, the last year has brought significant attention to the NCAA itself and how college athletics are governed. Changes and legal challenges are in the works that rethink rules around everything from finances to recruiting.
“The NCAA is the membership, it’s not the death star hovering over Indianapolis,” Barnes said. “It’s largely speaking a democracy, so we can work towards changing it.”
He sees member universities wanting more latitude to make decisions, being able to make choices rather than following detailed rules.
“In many respects we are moving towards a more libertarian NCAA, but it’s a hard process when you have a tradition and history of people wanting a rule that said they had to say no,” Barnes says.
In an episode of SCI TV, Martin Bingisser discusses how he transitioned from a competitive collegiate athlete to balancing a successful professional career with being on the Swiss national team. He shares his insights on how the NCAA helped his career – as an athlete, financial adviser, entrepreneur, and coach.
Early Athlete Transitions
Bingisser grew up in the Seattle area and went to school at the University of Washington, competing in the hammer throw and becoming a two-time All American. But before he had success at the collegiate level he had to improve his academics and become more self reliant.
Going from high school to college is an athlete transition that can be challenging, especially to maintain one’s success. Bingisser credits the relative niche of the hammer throw for making him a student of the sport and therefore more independent and better at transitioning to the college level.
“With each step you go there’s a big change in the amount of independence you have,” Bingisser said of making the transition to the next level. “You have a lot more freedom, which can be good in some ways and bad in some ways.”
Self Sufficiency
While at Washington Bingisser had four different coaches in four years, forcing him to take responsibility for his training and growth as an athlete.
“At the time I didn’t see it as an advantage, but looking back that really helped my development,” he says. “On the inside you want that structure, but on the outside without that structure you grow into a better athlete and student.”
Prioritization and Time Management
Bingisser became comfortable making tradeoffs between studying and training, and deciding the benefit of an extra hour of each. This was especially important when he was in law school, where being smart isn’t enough to make the grade.
He would ask himself, “How can I better use that time, and more importantly how can I better use that energy?”
Going Professional: full time or balancing a career?
After law school Bingisser took two years to focus solely on being a professional athlete, the idea being that with no other distractions he could reach a new competitive level. Instead he dealt with injury, flat results, and boredom.
“When you’re bored as an athlete, and you’re used to having something to do, then you start overanalyzing what you’re doing. It can spiral down pretty quick. For some athletes it works really well, but for (others) that focus actually destroys them,” he said.
Would you do things differently?
“Looking back on it my path wasn’t perfect but that helped me become a better athlete and student.”
Bingisser’s advice to developing athletes: “Don’t have a lot of regrets, instead look back and see what you can learn from your mistakes, that will make you stronger.”
Follow Martin Bingisser at www.hmmrmedia.com, where he and other coaches write about training, the art of coaching, and how to become a better athlete.
The conventional wisdom is that with the right physical training, recovery, and coaching, athletes and teams can reach peak performance. On SCI TV Jordan Denning of CogSports discusses the importance of character for athletes, highlighting the latest developments in assessing and developing character as part of performance on and off the field.
What is athlete development?
Athlete development is often thought of in terms of physical competencies and motor skills, but Denning and CogSports focus on “above the shoulders” traits and capabilities. These are character attributes like mental toughness, emotional control, integrity, and leadership.
The goal of CogSports is to “identify the intangibles,” helping individual athletes and teams perform at the highest level. As the co-founder of CogSports, Denning helps shape the evolving context of athlete development and fine tune the company’s character evaluation tool.
“We are able to now put metrics next to what was formally that ‘it’ factor,” Denning said, referring to the old approach of a coach’s gut feeling about a player.
Addressing Weaknesses and Strengths
Denning stresses that measuring the intangibles doesn’t have to focus on the negative and can be used to highlight and build on existing strengths. Working with an athlete to develop mental skills can help them realize their full physical potential and perform at their best.
“It’s a new way to evaluate talent,” Denning said of CogSports’ test. “Until recently that didn’t go much beyond your forty time, how much can you bench, how high can you jump. Now it’s almost imperative that you tie in things like character, like emotional control, like coolness under pressure.”
Drafting for Character
Better understanding these intangibles can also help coaches and managers decide how to pick athletes for a team roster. For example, an athlete who might get looked over for their physical skills could be a valuable team asset as a leader and decision maker.
And while major draft decisions attempt to take character into consideration, Denning thinks the future of character assessment will become much more precise and integral to the sports industry.
“Character and leadership, much like other industries, is going to be much more emphasized and critical, not just as a preventative measure, but to be successful,” Denning said.
Sexual harassment and sexual assault are major problems on college campuses, and while Title IX is best known for creating opportunities in women’s athletics, it is now being used to hold universities accountable for sexual assault response and prevention. In an episode of SCI TV, attorney Paul Greene of Global Sports Advocates explains what Title IX means for university administrators dealing with sexual assault and how schools can get in front of this issue to protect students.
What does Title IX do?
In the last 15 years Title IX protections have expanded to include sexual harassment and sexual assault on college campuses. At the end of 2014 there were 94 colleges and universities undergoing Title IX sexual violence investigations ranging from Division I powerhouses to Division III ivies. These incidents involve teachers, coaches and student to student situations.
Under Title IX a university can be held liable for a sexual assault if someone in a leadership role was deliberately indifferent to a sexual predator on campus. Essentially that means universities can’t turn a blind eye to assaults and expect to avoid legal repercussions.
“If the warning signs were there…that indifference is enough to have the school on the hook for liability,” Greene said. “It’s not simply enough to hold up your hands and say we had no idea. That doesn’t work.”
Raising a Red Flag
A culture of sexual harassment within a team or department can also factor into a university’s liability and make it difficult for students to raise concerns or file charges. Greene stresses the importance of making space for students to come forward without fear of reprisal from coaches or the university.
“A student athlete is not going to want to tell their coach something that might affect their ability to stay in the school,” said Greene. “They’ll just keep it to themselves if they’re afraid that telling somebody will end up having negative consequences. These are high stakes things for students.”
Having the Right Policy in Place
To be effective, The Sports Lawyers Association recommends policies addressing sexual assault meet the following criteria: strong confidentiality, timeliness in reporting incidents, multiple ways to report an incident, ability to talk to police and neutral officials, no contact between victim and the accused, protection of evidence, and a campus hearing parallel to a formal investigation.
“You don’t want anyone to say the school botched the investigation after it ended,” Greene said.
When a situation arises, a sexual assault policy is only as effective as how well university staff are trained to respond.
“Maybe it’s on a piece of paper, but they don’t have a game plan in place or they don’t practice what would happen,” Greene said. “It’s not that easy when you have a high stakes emotional situation to make sure that everything is done properly.”
Hosting the Olympics can transcend sport and unite a city, but first come the hurdles of infrastructure, security, and billion dollar budgets. Theses challenges turn an Olympic bid into a marathon, and the City of Boston is currently wrestling with these public issues. Boston Globe reporters Joan Vennochi and Joanna Weiss recently joined SCI TV to discuss the aspirations and potential problems of a Boston Olympics bid for 2024.
Idea Behind Boston Olympics
Vennochi and Weiss have been covering Boston’s Olympic stirrings from the organizing committee’s initial talks with the U.S. Olympic Committee to the current debates and public opinion approaching the November 2016 ballot referendum.
“The idea is how do you use the Olympics to better the city in the long run,” Weiss said. “The question from opponents is how do you do that without having taxpayers holding the bag in the end?”
Skepticism over Costs and Process
Polling data from National Public Radio affiliate WBUR and MassInc showed 51% of Boston voters supported the Olympic bid in January, but only 36% were in favor by March. That number steadied to 40% approval in April.
Boston is known as a very politically engaged city with a historical tradition of questioning every issue, especially those that involve big public expenditures.
“There is a lot of scepticism about the cost,” Vennochi said. “(Boston2024) was totally unprepared for the idea that people weren’t going to embrace this and pick up the torch and run down to Boston Common. Do we need an Olympics to say we’re world class? Some people say no.”
A Host of Public Concerns
Vennochi and Weiss see a weak case for hosting the Olympics, lack of grassroots effort, and skepticism around the organizing committee’s finances. A changing political landscape with a new governor hasn’t helped the initial bid either.
Weiss thinks the skepticism around Boston2024’s money can be summed up as “well connected people feeding each other but maybe not benefiting the public.”
Vennochi describes the public process and debate as “doing it backwards,” the committee taking plans to communities without soliciting and listening to new ideas.
How to Shift Momentum?
Both Globe reporters think that to shift the tide Boston2024 will need to show solid financial numbers, better listening to community concerns, and more operational transparency.
Those changes will need to bring poll numbers above 50% by the referendum in November 2016 when voters will decide whether they want their city in consideration for the Olympics or not.
“They haven’t shown that what Boston needs is the same thing as what the Olympics want,” Vennochi said. “They really have to win hearts and minds and they have a ways to go on that.”
More than most public figures, elite athletes capture the limelight for better or worse. With constant media attention personal issues become public affairs and can damage or ruin careers. In a recent episode of SCI TV, industry expert Katharine Nohr discusses how to approach risk management in sports, covering high profile athletes Justin Gatlin and Michael Phelps. With a background in insurance defense litigation, Nohr’s love of triathlon led her to start her own company, Nohr Sports Risk Management. She is the author of the industry leading book “Managing Risk in Sport and Recreation” and speaks around the world on these topics.
What is Risk Management in Sports?
Nohr advises professional and Olympic athletes on ways to prevent personal issues from affecting their brand and marketability. The issues she encounters range from performance enhancing drugs, relationship troubles, and substance abuse.
“There are so many areas where an athlete could have problems,” Nohr said. “Risk management occurs before and after incidents. You’re always working on it.”
When elite athletes minimize the personal risks in their life it can help the conversation with prospective teams and sponsors. Sometimes issues need deeper intervention such as counseling and life coaching.
“You’re looking at who they hang around with, what they’re doing in their lives to make them the most viable, attractive product essentially,” said Nohr. “The bottom line is that everyone is a brand. It’s important to understand what brand everyone is.”
Different Approaches from Sponsors
Nohr believes that no matter the sport, public perception of an athlete’s character is important. Sponsors vary on their approach to risk management in sports however. In 2009 when photos of swimmer Michael Phelps using marijuana became public Kellogg’s canceled his sponsorship because they thought the incident would damage their brand and target audience.
“The public does appreciate athletes that provide a very positive example for children,” Nohr said.
Nike has come under recent scrutiny for signing track star and convicted doper Justin Gatlin. The former Olympic Champion served a drug ban from 2006 to 2010 and has returned to the sport winning medals and setting records, but not without controversy.
“Nike has made a business decision,” Nohr said. “If most of the press is regarding his drug use, it could backfire. On the other hand if he gets gold medals and is the hero of the Olympics then it could go well.”
