Stay in the moment, visualize, don’t dwell on past failure or on letting your team down if you screw up again, remember what you did when you were doing well, accentuate the positive, cast out the negative, believe in yourself, breathe deeply. There needs to be a profession to state this?

The sports psychologist is another example of uselessness masquerading as value. What could this person possibly have to say that is going to make an athlete perform even marginally better? Beyond those fleeting moments right after the career-changing psychological chat, that illusory period when an athlete thinks he is new and improved, beyond that temporary emotional boost, he is still who he was. Yet it is de rigueur for individuals and teams to have sports psychologists. Let me state this, if your team needs a sports psychologist, it’s not going to win. It may well have one, but if it needs one, forget it.

An athlete naturally gains confidence as he ages, as he holds his own against his peers, as he experiences success, as he trains, learns, and works hard. Friends, coaches, other players, those who have known him for a significant period, can all contribute to his development and confidence as a player.

In professional team sports, the mumbo jumbo starts before the player even knows where he is going to play. To be considered in a professional draft, applicants must undergo psychological testing. It’s bad enough that they are subjected to physical testing, which is hyped but pointless, doesn’t change minds and yields little of consequence about how an athlete will perform under pressure. But psychological testing? I’m waiting for the day when one of the best prospects declines to be probed. Will they refuse to draft him? Ha!

Psychological testing consists of answering inquiries about your personality and based on those responses, having a highly trained stranger tell a bunch of people you’ve met once, or never, who you are. Are there correct replies to these questions? The options never read quite right, never really get to an answer you like. Still, you’re obligated to make a choice. Isn’t life more nuanced than shading a circle that makes only slightly more sense than the ones you don’t fill in? As Woody Allen opined about psychiatry, “If it’s not one thing, it’s your mother.”

“Let’s suppose that you are in the state of Morelia Mexico watching the annual migration of the Monarch Butterfly when you read that the New York Mets signed the top ranked free agent reliever, while in Abruzzo Italy, Paolo the Pig, sniffed out the biggest white truffle found in the last decade. How would you react?”

The way you answer that question will apparently help someone decide whether you are a first or fourth round pick, or maybe an also eligible. Less important is the fact that you just finished a season in junior where you scored 60 goals, 35 of them even strength, your coach and teammates say you are a good guy who works hard, and you train like a triathlete.

What does an interview with a sports psychologist prove? An athlete trying to get drafted is going to be all gussied up and on his best comportment. The mafia looks innocent in court. Ah yes, but the psychologist is qualified to see through the guise. Well, just by living and getting to where they are in a pro sports organization, so are most managers, coaches, and scouts. If they can’t make decisions based on what they’ve observed of a player over months and years, they shouldn’t be in those roles.

Shouldn’t the person making claims that may decide your future have a larger picture of your life than a brief conversation? It’s how you prepare, what you do on the field or court or ice, what kind of teammate you are, how you react to winning and losing that says who you are. It’s the little things that good scouts see, and lousy ones don’t, that should hint at your capability to play. That any weight in the decision-making process is given to what you say, or how you appear, to a person who wanders into your life for a few minutes in a controlled situation, is counter intuitive.

In no way does psychological testing improve the odds of a team making a good selection. If sports psychologists were forced to make their player opinions public, I’m sure the whole charade would be discredited, and given up as a bad idea. Yet such is our drive to conformity, a pro team wouldn’t want to be viewed as out of step by keeping the quacks out of the pond. You want to be a progressive manager? Treat your team shrink as an old manager used to instruct his coach when it can time to release a player – “Give him an apple and a road map.”

Had mind probing existed historically, it would be interesting to have seen the psych take on past greats. What would the oracles have said about Ted Williams, Derek Sanderson, Ken Stabler and Bill Russell? I doubt any of them would have tolerated the intrusion.  

What would psychologists have of Alonso Quijano, aka Don Quixote? Was he mad or playing at madness? Was he brave or ludicrous or both? Was he happier as the lunatic knight-errant, or when he recovered his senses, saddened, and died? Would he have been drafted in the first round? Scholars and laymen alike have been attempting to understand Don Quixote for centuries. Opinions vary to extremes. If it’s hard to know him after hundreds of years of reading and re-reading his adventures, analyzing his behavior, examining his decisions, it seems improbable that someone could claim to comprehend him after a fleeting interview or a few multiple-choice questions.

If sports psychologists make such a difference, why do the same persons, or teams, win so often? Are there only a few good sports psychologists who happen to be advising those with the most talent? Too bad the head doctors on the other side can’t convince their charges to win. It’s about talent, effort, and chance, not about minimizing people, or airily trying to quantify their behavior.

If you’re an athlete in an individual sport, motivate yourself to work hard, minimize, but don’t fear mistakes, don’t fret about what your parents, the fans, or press think, and do the best you can on a given day. Spend less time analyzing the force, and more letting it be with you.

If you’re in charge of putting a team together, find intense competitors who can think, who want to go deep into the playoffs, and who don’t need a lot of sessions with Dr. Phil, Tony Robbins, or other mountebanks.  
 
The study of the brain is in its infancy. The best admit they don’t know much. How is it then that we ended up with so many experts when the brightest are just starting out?

Copyright © 2009 Paul Heno,