Tuesday Morning Quarterback

Health: Above All Else
by: Richard Scott
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Have another bowl of big ice cream. Make it a big one. Pour on some of that chocolate syrup, too. Have another fast-food cheeseburger. Make it a double cheeseburger, with extra cheese. And fries. Or better yet, onion rings. How about some fried chicken?

How about more caffeine? Choose your poison: coffee or cola. How about a few too many beers? Maybe a few too many mixed drinks? Or perhaps a big dip of smokeless tobacco? Or a cigarette or two ... or three ... or four ... or more

And while we’re at it, who needs sleep? Or exercise? Or a break from the daily grind? Stress is one of the biggest reasons why we reach for comfort feeds or old familiar vices, and the coaching profession is overloaded with the kind of pressure that leads a man to bad habits. And, of course, those are the kinds of lifestyle mistakes that also lead to heart
attacks, cancer and other physical ailments that can end your career ... and your life.
But it’s not going to happen to you, right? Maybe somebody else, but not you. You’re the exception. You’re fine. You can handle it.

You’re fooling yourself. So was Chan Gailey. And David Cutcliffe. And Pat Sullivan. Gailey, one of the finest men you could ever meet, doesn’t smoke or drink. But ice cream? The man is the Will Rogers of ice cream. He never met a bowl of ice cream he didn’t like. Now, after Gailey suffered a heart attack in March, the doctor has issued some new dietary instructions for the 53-year-old Georgia Tech head coach: no more foods high in calories and fat grams. And that means no more ice cream.

“They let me eat fat-free and yogurt-type stuff,” Gailey said. The doctor also told him to give up his daily racquetball game in favor of some time on the treadmill or stationary bike – anything to help an artery that suffered a 100-perent blockage and required an angioplasty to remove the blockage.

“I don’t have high blood pressure. I don’t have high cholesterol. I was exercising. It was almost a 1-in-1,000 or a 1-in-10,000 or a 1-in-a-million shot what happened to me,” Gailey said. “It was more of a blood clot than a bunch of gunk in there. None of my other arteries are close to being blocked.”

Gailey was lucky. It could have been worse. Cutcliffe, the former Ole Miss head coach who recently resigned as assistant head coach and quarterbacks coach at Notre Dame, can say the same thing after returning to his Mississippi home in March for spring break and decided to see a doctor after experiencing chest pain. Tests revealed his main artery was 99 percent blocked and Cutcliffe needed immediate triple-bypass surgery.

So what makes Gailey and Cutcliffe any different from any other coach? Well, maybe they’re a little older, wiser and more successful than the average coach, but other than that, they’re just men, like the rest of us. Get the point? Georgia coach Mark Richt says he got it when Cutcliffe and Gailey had their heart surgeries within the same five-day period.

“I know both guys and like them very much,” Richt said. “When they’re doing the same thing you’re doing, and they’ve got an issue with their health, you’ve got to look at what you’re doing.”

Coaches should also take note of Sullivan’s situation. The 1971 Heisman Trophy winner appeared to be the picture of health until he developed problems with his throat that turned out to be cancer. After surgery to remove three lumps in his neck, doctors told him he had a 65-70 percent chance of survival. Months of chemo treatments nearly wiped him out, but they also saved him and put him back on the road to recovery.

Now he’s back on the UAB sidelines, coaching quarterbacks and running the offense, but the one thing he is not doing is putting a little pinch between his cheek and gum during practice – not after doctors told him smokeless tobacco most likely led to his cancer.

“I will never (dip) again,” Sullivan said. “I’ll be a strong advocate for not using it. We all think we are invincible, but we’re not.”

Like Gailey and Cutcliffe, Sullivan has some big reasons to change his habits, and the biggest and best reasons have nothing to do with football: his wife, Jean, their three children and their five grandchildren.

“No human being ought to have to go through the treatments I had to,” Sullivan said. “To be where I’m at today I know the good Lord took care of me and my family. I talk to people every day from all over the country who are in various stages. So many of them are not like I am in my recovery.”

How can you guarantee you’ll be that fortunate? Realistically, you can’t. However, you can improve your odds of avoiding the kind of medical problems that will hurt your family and your career. Soon after Cutcliffe and Gailey had surgery, Arkansas coach Houston Nutt sent all of his coaches to visit doctors.

“I think it just reemphasizes the importance of (exercise),” Nutt. “For the first time, I made all of our coaches go have a physical; a thorough checkup.” Of course, knowing the right thing and doing the right are two different things. The more stress we face, the more worn down we become, the more tempted we are to reach for those familiar comfort foods and other vices.

“I tend to do a real good job in off-season,” Richt said. “And a real good job in the beginning of the season. But somewhere in October, something goes awry and I don’t run as much as I need to. Sometimes, I’m not as disciplined as I need to be.”

Working proper exercise and diet and healthy lifestyle habits into your daily routine doesn’t have to hurt your dedication to your job. If anything, it should give you more energy and focus and help you make the most of your time in the office and on the practice field. We’re not asking you to stop working and coaching hard. We’re just asking you to do it right and not put your family or your career at risk.

“My job is to do the very best that I can and whatever that is, is all that is,” Gailey said. “I can’t do any more or any less. I won’t let myself do less and I can’t do any more.”

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