There are about a million different reasons that a player
can excel and a player can fail. In my last few blogs I have talked about the
pressure to perform in sports. Many of these points run together. The contracts
and trade deadlines both play a role in how well an athlete will do. I have
already covered the previous two but there are still some much more that goes
into whether a player will ultimately be a boom or a bust. The short answer for this main question is all these variables creates a very unpredictable situation. However I would like to go more in-depth and I will discuss three
of these variables.
Lets start with the draft. When a player gets drafted and
where he goes can completely change how the player will perform. There is a
huge expectation difference between an early first rounder, later first rounder
and a late round pick. The player that is picked first overall always has the
biggest expectations to perform immediately. This is a big deal. The players
that played well in college but can’t handle the pressure to perform at the
higher level will fail like Vince Young or Jamarcus Russell did in the past.
There are also the busts from the draft that are later in the first round of
the draft. The first guy that comes to mind here is Brady Quinn. He was pretty
successful during his college career, however he was drafted to a team that had
very little support. He didn’t have quality weapons or a quality line to
protect him. After a few years of just getting beaten down it started to wear
mentally and his development suffered. By the time he fell out of favor with
the team and was traded it was too late for him and he will be a career back
up. There is also an issue when a quarterback goes to the wrong team with the
system or the team does not adapt to the quarterback. When this happens it
affects the quarterbacks mentality to perform. He believes he cannot adapt and
no longer has the success he was used to. The final point on the quarterbacks
is best put by Steve Young when recently interviewing Andrew Luck, “in college
every wide receiver is open where as in the pros none of them are.” This is a
big deal because if they can not adapt to no having as much success, they will
not be able to cut it.
There are also players like wide receivers or running backs
who can never get on the same page as the quarterback or coach and fall out of
grace and then soon get traded or released, can handle it and just fall apart
all together. Finally on the defense side a bust on the line are used to
plowing through the offensive line but then move to the pros and the line is
not as easy to get through. Once again the player cannot handle the increased
difficulty and can’t get over the mental blocks. As for defensive backs they are
used to covering wide outs that are mediocre and they look stellar. Now they
cover big time receivers and can no longer keep up. This gets to them mentally
and cannot handle no being great anymore. Some do get over this and excel but
others do not.
The second variable that could make a difference whether a
player is a boom or bust is the term regression to the mean. Regression to the
mean is when an athlete has a great season, great week, or great game that is
abnormal for the athlete and then they go back to their average level of play.
It is easier to see these trends when an athlete only has one good game or a
good week. It gets more difficult when they excel for an entire season. This is
also difficult when they are coming out of college because they may not have
too many seasons to compare to. This is one of the primary reasons I believe
people end up being busts. Some athletes like in the NFL or NBA only play for
one year. Then they ship off to the pro level where the expectations will never
meet the athletes abilities, they were just good for a small mount of time. In
the NFL this was pretty apparent with Vince Young. It was initially believe
that Matt Leinert was going to be the best quarterback chosen in the draft
until the national championship for that year. Texas beat USC and after that
game Vince Young became the highest quarterback drafted. Now as it turns out
they were both busts and the only player this is a starter in the NFL was the
player taken after them (Jay Cutler). The point here is Vince Young had a good
season but it was his great performance during the championship but that was
about it. He performed average in the NFL and now struggles to keep a back up
role. Players will often perform great for a year and then fall back to their average
play. This is deceiving to teams looking to draft players because they may
appear to be great but is actually average. This occurs all the time in every sport and at different
points in a player’s career. This is often what happens when a player who was
not a starter gets the chance, does well and then falls back to average.
The third variable is injury risk. I will not address this
fully in this blog as my next one will be all about injury. However I will say
that an injury could ruin a player. There are the players that have known
injury problems because they were injury prone during their college careers.
However, sometimes it is not their fault. A player may incur an injury for the
first time and does not know how to deal with it mentally. They may come back
and play timid and with fear of re-injury. This causes problems because
athletes have to be fearless when they play at that high of a level. Therefore
it is sometimes an accident that a team doesn’t think about that causes the
bust. Teams often do not test an athlete for mental stability in the chance
that they do have a serious injury. They also do not test for emotional
intelligence. Both of these factors could influence an athletes ability to come
back from an injury.
Finally lets talk about the most recent fall from grace. The
player that has been in the news lately names Matt Bush. He was a former #1
pick of the San Diego Padres back in 2004. Now if anyone knows anything about
baseball, it’s that you rarely hear from draft picks immediately in this
league. Even big shot Bryce Harper did not go strait to the majors. Well Matt
Bush did not make it too far before crashing hard back to earth. He was just
recently arrested for a DUI and a hit and run. After running from the scene of
the crime, being tackled and hog-tied he yelled, “I don’t care” and then
appeared to cry. So what happened here in this tragic case? We will never know
for sure but it appeared to be a case of pressure induced self-abuse and
self-fulfilling prophecy. I am going to take a guess that after 8 years after
being a #1 pick and not playing a single major league game that he was feeling
the pressure. What typically seems to happen in these cases are the player
crumbles and starts abusing themselves, whether its drugs or alcohol. Also, the
fear of failure and being labeled a bust is setting in and he wants something
to blame it on other than his ability to play baseball, because an athlete’s
ability is their identity. Therefore he went and caused this scene landing him
in big trouble and as a result being labeled a bust and failure. However, he
didn’t fail because he failed at baseball, but because he could not handle
outside pressures. This let him keep his baseball identity but also led him
down the road he set himself up for.
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