There's an interesting intersection between this Orlando Sentinel article on sports psychology -- specifically re: bridging the gap between young players and aging coaches -- and the indispensable Smart Football's take on the split-second decisions athletes have to make more or less without consciously thinking. Chris's post should strike a chord with anyone who, like me, has tried to play a sport while lacking not only size and speed but also, at least as importantly, total abandon, that instinctive, subconscious ability real athletes have to make their bodies do what they want them to do with no hint of the hesitation, uncertainty and regard for their own well-being that prevents normal people from being good at, say, dragging another person to the ground without his consent. The most remarkable thing about real athletes is that, for all the intricacy of strategies and techniques, they never seem to be thinking about what they're doing at all, only acting, which can seem like a kind of vacuousness but is actually what I think is meant by focus. (A state with which I cannot identify in any respect and doubt sports psychologists, despite their confidence, can actually teach. But that is not a scientific skepticism.)

The Sentinel's generation gap, though, that the shrinks seem to have a better hold on -- at least, with most of their clients, if they're willing to admit (like Kentucky's Rich Brooks, who laments the modern player's "sense of entitlement") that their charges have changed over the years. With others, though, getting through may be slightly more difficult (emphasis added):

"These kids come into my office, players, whether it's 55 years ago or last week, (a) player walks into my office, I look at him ... (it's the) same sweet kid," [Bobby] Bowden said recently during one of his spring booster tour stops. "Same sweet, innocent boy. You know it? Only his hair is longer. Or he's got earrings ... and he wears his underwear outside instead of inside.

"But he's still the same sweet kid (as) that kid I had 50 years ago."

I'm not really up on the styles of Florida teens, but unless Bowden has been belatedly recruiting Rey Maualuga -- who, in addition to his, uh, personal style, certainly understands the concept of "abandon," even if only subconsciously -- it seems Bobby has grossly misinterpreted his players' fashion choices. (Not that there's anything wrong with that, as long as they remain such sweet, innocent boys.)

Note also that Bowden apparently once called for a win by forfeit after losing to an ineligible quarterback. But those were totally different circumstances than Florida State's current appeal to keep victories vacated for use of ineligible players. Totally different. What was that first stage of grief, again, doc?

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Hat tip: Blutarsky.