Chapter 8
Handling Adversity and Success
I asked God for strength, that I might achieve.
I was made weak, that I might learn humbly to obey.
I asked for health, that I might do great things.
I was given infirmity, that I might do better things.
I asked for riches, that I might be happy.
I was given poverty, that I might be wise.
I asked for power, that I might have the praise of men.
I was given weakness, that I might feel the need of God.
I asked for all things, that I might enjoy life.
I was given life, that I might enjoy all things.
I got nothing I asked for—but everything I had hoped for;
Almost despite myself, my unspoken prayers were answered.
I am, among men, most richly blessed!
Author unknown (often attributed to an unknown Confederate soldier)
With champions, success is never unexpected; it’s a natural result that comes from continuous, unselfish, unrelenting determination to win; never letting down, never letting outside influences into the game.
Harvey Mackay
Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing.
James 1:2-4
I have learned more from losing than I’ve ever learned from winning. As a head coach, an assistant coach, and a player, I learned more from the the defeats than the victories. When you compare the value of the two, it’s not even close. The takeaway value of loss is so much greater.
The same has been true for every team I’ve ever coached. We have learned more over the years from losing than from winning. And the knowledge we have gained from those losses has helped us win more games. That may sound strange, but every coach and player reading this knows exactly what I’m talking about.
On the journey of success, we begin with plans, goals, and dreams. Once we have those figured out, we get to work. In the process, we invariably face hardship and struggle, as well as triumph and achievement. But whether we face success or adversity, we can learn how to not just “handle” it but to take advantage of it. If we want to succeed in life, we must learn how to make the most of both victory and defeat—because we’re certain to encounter both along the way.
In my opinion, it’s a lot more difficult to handle success than adversity. That’s because of a natural human tendency to rest on our laurels when we’ve done well. If we get punched in the nose, we have an instinctual desire to fight back. If we’re knocked down, we get up ready to respond in kind. And if we don’t do well during a day’s work, we steel ourselves and say, “I’m not going to let that happen tomorrow.” When the going gets tough, our internal survival instinct compels us to press on and make things better.
But I’m not sure that instinct works the same way when we’ve been successful. I’ve seen this happen to teams and individuals, and I’ve experienced it myself. When we get accolades and people tell us how great we are, instead of responding with humility and getting back to work, our tendency is to agree with what we’re hearing. We say to ourselves, Well, we’ve certainly arrived. We have this thing figured out now. We’re something, all right. When we get puffed up and believe our own press, we’re ripe for a fall.
In this chapter, we’ll deal with both sides of the coin—adversity and success—because each has a great bearing on the outcome of our lives.
Adversity Is Inevitable—So Be Prepared
Adversity comes to us all—it’s only a matter of when. The real question is not whether we’ll face adversity but how we will respond to it when it comes. If our attitude is one that embraces learning and growing, we’ll treat adversity as a stepping-stone to the success we desire, rather than see it as an insurmountable obstacle. But if we have a negative attitude and become defensive at the first hint of criticism or begin to blame others for our mistakes, we’ll miss the opportunity to develop into the types of people we want to be.
When we’re successful, when we do something well and everyone’s telling us we’re wonderful, it can be difficult to maintain the proper attitude. Our natural reaction is to bask in the glory, when what we ought to be saying is, “If you think that was good, watch this. This will be even better.” But it’s difficult not to get caught up in the celebration and think, Yes! I was right. I did have this all figured out.
We have to be able to make the most of both the positives and the negatives. There will be days when everything goes right and days when it all falls apart. We’ll have stretches where really good things happen, and other stretches when we can’t even remember the good things. Other times we will have a mixture of the two.
This Big Ten Fundamental is one that makes a lot of sense to our players because it’s a constant in their lives. If they get hurt on the field, they have to learn how to handle it. They have to work at rehabbing their injuries. If they want to get back into playing condition, they have to come back not only physically but also mentally. When a tough loss comes their way, they have to handle the media scrutiny and the feelings that accompany criticism—some of it on-target. If a player gets demoted to second team, he has to work through those changes and try to win back his starting spot.
It’s sensible and logical for our guys to understand that’s the way life is in sports. It’s reality, and they have to learn how to walk through the tough parts. There are some great quotes and reminders in the Winners Manual to encourage them during the process. And every player knows that even if things aren’t difficult at the moment, they will be soon enough.
It’s a little more difficult on the success side of the coin because we normally don’t think of success as a challenge. But how many stories have you heard about people who have enjoyed some success, only to see it snowball into something bad in their lives? I really believe that handling success is harder than facing adversity. I’m not sure that our country has handled its affluence and “success” well at times. Sometimes our churches don’t handle it well. We get off track a little bit to celebrate, and before we know it, we’ve forgotten the mission and the goal.
There’s a fine line between enjoying our success and resting in our accomplishments. If we can’t be happy about the success we’ve achieved, or be content with it, when are we ever going to relax? We’ll always be chasing the next championship and never be satisfied, and that’s no way to live. We must learn how to celebrate our success without being caught up in it.
The Potential Pitfalls of Success
Great character is the cumulative result when great pain and great disappointment intersect in a man with a teachable spirit.
The media have a habit of asking which team was my favorite or which win was my most important. Honestly, I’ve never stepped back and said, “You know, I constantly think of that ’91 championship team.” Certainly, there are times when I’m in more of a reflective mood and I think about a particular team and some great wins. But usually I’m concentrating on the current team and how to mold them. When you’ve got a group of kids ready to train and a lot of things to accomplish, you don’t have much time to let success suffocate you.
In 1991, CBS televised the Division I-AA national-championship game between Youngstown State and Marshall. We were up against a good team that included Troy Brown, who has since won some Super Bowls with the New England Patriots. Troy was a standout on that Marshall team.
With about a minute to go in the game, we were up 25-17 and had a fourth-down situation with the ball deep in our own territory. We knew that if Troy Brown was playing up on the line, he was going to try to block the punt. So we called time out, and I said to our punter, “This is what they’re going to do, so just get the punt off.” He got off a pretty good kick, leaving Marshall with a long field and not much time left on the clock. They threw one Hail Mary pass that was incomplete, and then the game was over. That was my first national championship, and it made my dad and me the first father/son champions in NCAA history, because my dad had won a national championship with Baldwin-Wallace in 1978.
I went out to midfield to shake hands with Jim Donnan, the Marshall coach, and it was bedlam on the field, with people running everywhere. A guy from CBS hustled up to me and said, “You have to get to the end zone. We only have a minute left on the air, and we want to present the trophy.”
As I was scuttling down to the end zone, another media guy ran up beside me, stuck a microphone in front of me, and said, “Do you think you’ll repeat?”
Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising every time we fall.
Confucius
I kind of slowed down and looked at him. “Well, I don’t know. We haven’t gotten the first trophy yet, and we can’t repeat until we get the first one.”
That’s an extreme example of expectations, but those in the media invariably want to know after the game what we’re going to do the next week or the next season. But we don’t know yet. First we have to go back and learn from today, from both the failures and the successes. We study the film. We look at what needs to be adjusted, what planning needs to be different, and then learn how to do it the right way. Then we practice, all the time visualizing or rehearsing it until the next time we get to do it. That’s the best way to repeat.
Microsoft founder Bill Gates has said, “Success is a lousy teacher. It makes smart people think they can’t lose.” I love that quote because it puts so many things in perspective. When “smart people” think they can’t lose, there’s an upset brewing. That’s when David beats Goliath and the underdog triumphs. It’s why many leading companies end up behind in the market. At one time, they were on top of things, happy with their growth and profits, but when someone suggested they needed to change in some way to remain competitive, their leaders said, in one way or another, “No, we’re a winning company. We’ve got our market and our technology; we’re not going to change anything.” Then, all of a sudden, three other companies are serving the same market better, and the first company is trying to catch up. So when that statement comes from a guy like Bill Gates, who has been so successful, it makes the point even better.
Whenever we hear something in the media about our having “the best defense in the country,” or other similar praise, our coaches remind our players what John Wooden, the legendary UCLA basketball coach, said about handling criticism and praise. His words are hanging in the lockers of many of our defensive players. Here’s what Coach Wooden had to say about dealing with the “talk” surrounding a team:
Success does things to you that adversity doesn’t. It adds more things to your plate. Take this book, for example. If we hadn’t won as many games as we’ve won, no one would care about my definition of a winner or want to know what system we use with our players. No publisher would be interested in marketing a book by a coach who had won 73 games and lost 208. I wouldn’t get invited to speak at banquets, and I wouldn’t have gone to the White House with my team, as we did after winning the national championship in 2002.
Success also adds a lot of people to your life—from media reps wanting answers, to friends who want tickets to the big game, to others who simply want to be seen with you.
But for everything that success adds to your schedule, it takes something else away. Whether it’s from your exercise time, your spiritual time, your family time, or your students’ academic time, success takes away time and can distract you from your goals and plans.
There is no education like adversity.
Benjamin Disraeli
It’s interesting that adversity has the opposite effect. When you meet with adversity, you can often find yourself alone. No one’s calling to ask you to speak at a banquet. No one’s interested in your opinion about success. You don’t have people clamoring for your time, so you have more time to yourself.
I remember when we went to the national-championship game for four straight years at Youngstown State. That was four straight fifteen-game seasons, counting the regular season and play-offs. It was a great run, and there was such excitement about the team. But then in 1995, one year after we finished 14-0-1 and beat Boise State for our third national championship, our record fell to 3-8, and obviously, we didn’t go to the play-offs. Our ticket staff got a break from all the postseason activity. Our equipment manager’s season ended earlier. Our administration didn’t have to plan trips to the different games. We didn’t have to do commemorative posters and mugs. When the regular season was over, everybody was forced to take a bit of a breather.
Now, I’m not going to lie to you. From an ego standpoint, I hated the fact that we weren’t playing in the postseason. And the players who had experienced success in the previous years didn’t like it that we were staying home while other teams were still playing. But from a real-life perspective, it was like a breath of fresh air. I had a little more time for myself. I was able to work on other parts of my life rather than be on the treadmill from one award ceremony to the next or from this speaking engagement to that banquet. Of course, I don’t want to miss the postseason every year. One year is about enough—for a lifetime!
The following season, we were able to turn things around and go 8-3, and we won the national championship again the year after that. But the point is that, whatever scenario you have with your team, whether you’re winning or losing, you have to handle it, learn from it, and grow from it.
I’ve often said that those championship postseasons are hard because you already have an impossible number of things you need to do. But then a bunch of things are added, and you don’t want to miss out on a single one. Let’s face it, how many opportunities are you going to have to take your players to the White House? You have to take advantage of that. And of course you’ll have a celebration at the stadium to honor your achievement, or maybe a parade through town, but it takes two or three days to plan and execute those events.
My point is that whether you have success or failure, you have a challenge ahead of you. If you’ve had a good year and you’re out recruiting, the prospects may be better, but you’re still going to have to deal with the rigorous travel that makes it difficult to take care of some of your needs. You have to adjust, whether the ball bounces your way or not. Everything that happens during the course of your journey is part of life, and you have to adjust.
Learning from Adversity
Success is a lousy teacher. It makes smart people think they can’t lose.
Bill Gates
When something goes wrong on the field, our tendency is to kick ourselves, or to berate the player who made the mistake. But if we do that, we don’t learn from the mistake; we don’t use the adversity for ultimate good. To avoid this trap, we came up with a three-step process that ensures we will respond in a positive way to adversity on the field:
1. Learn from it.
2. Learn specifically what the right way is.
3. Practice visualizing the right way until your consciousness accepts a picture of yourself performing correctly.
After every play, I need to take a moment and ask myself, What just happened? How did they go to that coverage? What’s the right thing for the quarterback to do? What play do we need to check for? What route adjustment does the receiver need to make against that coverage?
After I figure out the answers to those questions, I visualize the right way to do my job and see myself walking through the steps to make that happen.
All of that happens within twenty-five seconds between plays, but it works on the field as well as in the classroom and in life. If you’re having a problem in the workplace, if you’re having a relationship difficulty with your spouse, if you’re off track spiritually, discover what you’re doing wrong, learn the right way, and then practice doing it over and over. Performing it correctly with practice is the key to making it part of your daily game plan.
A gem cannot be polished without friction, nor man perfected without trials.
Chinese Proverb
The “Woohitike (Bravery)” story is one of my favorite pages in the Winners Manual. So often we look at adversity as something we simply need to slog through. I heard of a pastor who believed greatly in the sovereignty of God, that every step of life is ordered and chosen by God. After a particularly tough round of golf, he threw his bag of clubs in the trunk, slammed the door, and said, “I’m glad that’s over.” Sometimes, even if we believe our steps are ordered, we don’t see a purpose in the pain we’re going through at the moment.
When we talk about winning, it’s counterintuitive to say that adversity is a key component of success, but it’s true. That’s because it’s not the adversity that does the work in us; it’s how we respond to that adversity.
In every phase of life, you’re going to face opposition. There will be times when your diet is going great, your exercise program is fantastic, and you feel healthy and look great. Every morning, you get up on time, and you’ve hit a routine that works for you. Then something happens to derail your train, and the reasons may be legitimate. Your mother gets sick, and you’re driving back and forth three hours each way, and you have no time to exercise. And because you’re constantly on the road, your diet suffers because you’re eating fast food just to survive. That’s a reality for many people.
In every phase of life and in every component of the Block O, there will be good pressures and bad pressures on your life. You have to learn how to handle those and respond well. If you’re aware of the pressures, if you’re present and are able to think through what you did wrong (identify), you can also figure out how to do it right (improve), and then practice the right steps to improve (implement). If you follow this three-step process—identify, improve, and implement—you’ll not only “cope” with adversity, but you’ll also move forward stronger and with more passion toward your goals.
Riding the Roller Coaster
We finished 2004 at Ohio State pretty strong, but we were a very young team. Looking ahead to the 2005 season, all the pundits and prognosticators were saying we were among the top teams in the nation. Another top-ranked team was Texas, and the Longhorns were scheduled to come to our stadium for the second game of the season. You can imagine how much excitement there was about that game.
We won our first game, and so did Texas, and now the eyes of the sporting world were on Ohio Stadium to see what was about to unfold. Vince Young was the quarterback for Texas, and A. J. Hawk was our premiere defender. It was almost like watching an NFL game, just a year or two early.
It was a beautiful night and a great game. With a little more than five minutes to go in the fourth quarter, we were ahead by six, and we missed a field goal, giving the Longhorns the ball back on their own 33 yard line. The stadium was going berserk, and you couldn’t communicate—or even think—because of the noise. Texas was sixty-seven yards away from our end zone, and we had arguably one of the best defenses in the nation, with guys like A. J. Hawk, Bobby Carpenter, Nate Salley, and so many others. Other than being able to keep the ball ourselves and run out the clock, we were exactly where we wanted to be at that point in the game. If we could stop the Longhorns, we would be able to run out the clock for a win.
Vince Young had played an excellent game for Texas. We probably defended against him better than anyone else did that entire year, but on that final drive, he made a play here and a play there, their running back broke a tackle, and all of a sudden, with only two and a half minutes to go in the game, Young threw a twenty-four-yard touchdown pass, and we were down by a point. On our final possession of the game, our quarterback was sacked in the end zone for a safety, so we lost 25-22. It was a tough loss at home and on the national stage.
There is no strength where there is no struggle.
It’s important to remember that every Saturday, half the teams playing college football lose their games. It’s just a fact of life. Our game against Texas in 2005 was a marquee matchup—the second game of the year, number two against number four, and the first time the two schools had ever played each other. With all the buildup and the national television audience, it was a game that everyone wanted to see.
And we lost.
So what did we do? Did we pack up and say, “No way we’re going to win the national championship this year. We might as well focus on 2006”?
The question wasn’t whether we had won or lost; the question was, What are we going to do now that the situation is clear? How will we respond to that outcome?
Well, we bounced back and won our next two games before heading to Penn State for our first away game of the year. The top picks that year in the Big Ten were Penn State, Michigan, and Ohio State, so we knew we faced a big challenge in Happy Valley. We played a whale of a game but gave up a crucial interception and lost 17-10.
It was a really tough loss for us because we knew we were a good team, but after five games, our record was 3-2, which was not where we thought we would be at that point in the season. We had a lot of seniors with a lot of promise, and a ton of talent on that team, but the results on the field didn’t reflect that.
We had set a goal of being Big Ten champions, but the loss to Penn State was a league game. We had wanted to be national champions, but now we were sitting with two losses, so there was no way that could become a reality.
Again, what did we do? How did we react?
The team really came together, and it was marvelous to see the leadership of that group. Guys such as Rob Sims, Santonio Holmes, A. J. Hawk, Bobby Carpenter, Nate Salley, and Nick Mangold really lit a fire under their teammates. Five players on that team would be drafted in the first round of the 2006 NFL draft, and they proved themselves the rest of the season as we reeled off seven wins in a row, beating ranked teams such as Michigan State, Minnesota, and Northwestern and winning a thriller in the final moments against seventeenth-ranked Michigan in Ann Arbor.
It is a rough road that leads to heights of greatness.
Seneca
Our guys could easily have coasted the rest of the year, focusing on their own stats, making sure they didn’t get hurt, concentrating on making it to the next level, the NFL. But they didn’t. They wanted to become as good as they could be, and they were going to play every game 100 percent, regardless of our record. They wanted to feel good about their journey.
When the season was over, we accepted a bid to play Notre Dame in the Fiesta Bowl. We won decisively, and I was so proud of that group of guys. They had lost two tough games early in the season and could have let that disappointment spoil their entire year, but they handled it well, and they are revered as much as any group that has ever been through the Ohio State program. It was extraordinary watching them lead and not let the younger players get down.
They were disappointed, no doubt, but not so disappointed that it kept them from plowing ahead and becoming the best they could be. By the end of the year, no other defense had held Vince Young and the Texas Longhorns under forty points. At the end of our game against Texas, I had told their coach, Mack Brown, “I’m rooting for you guys, because if you can come into our stadium, against our defense, and put together a drive like that, you can go all the way. That was a championship drive.”
Though we had to handle disappointment and adversity, the key for Texas was handling their success. And they did that quite well, going undefeated the entire year. But in neither case was the final verdict in, after that second game of the season. We still had nine games to go. And that’s the way it is in life. You’re going to have some major disappointments. And you’re going to enjoy some success. You have to face both with equal tenacity, with equal heart. To me, that 2005 team was a great example of how to handle adversity. The 2002 team that won every game was a great example of how to handle success.
Staying in the Moment
Face adversity promptly and without flinching, and you will reduce its impact. Never run from anything and never ever quit.
Winston Churchill
In 2002, we opened the season against Texas Tech and won 45-21. After we beat Kent State and seventh-ranked Washington State, we were 3-0. In the fourth game, we played Cincinnati at Paul Brown Stadium, in a game we were supposed to win—and we did, but we probably didn’t deserve it. It was as poor a game as we had played in years.
We righted ourselves the next week and, led by our defense, rolled through the schedule until week eleven, when we nudged Purdue 10-6 in the Craig Krenzel, fourth-and-two, “great call by the coach” game I described in chapter 4. The following week, we went into overtime to defeat Illinois, and the week after that was a battle royal against Michigan that yielded a 14-9 win. Through it all, our guys weren’t affected by the fact that we were 4-0, 7-0, or 10-0. They just kept going out, putting their heads down, and making plays.
As we prepared for the BCS national-championship game against Miami, the defending champions, people were saying we didn’t have a chance because the Hurricanes were just so good. Others were telling our guys that we were the best because of our undefeated record. Our players did such a great job of handling the pressure. They didn’t waver in their mission; they didn’t waver in their preparation and study and training and getting their rest and eating right. They didn’t let success derail what they knew they needed to do. And when it was all said and done, after four full quarters and two overtime periods, they were national champions.
The greater the obstacle, the more glory in overcoming it.
Molière
I’ve seen groups that can’t handle newfound success, but our guys did a great job of staying in the moment and handling their accomplishments.
In attacking adversity, only a positive attitude, alertness, and regrouping to basics can launch a comeback.
Pat Riley
I have learned more from losses than I’ve ever learned from wins, but you can learn good life lessons from both. Don’t let adversity or success derail your goals and dreams. Let them propel you forward.
Questions for Reflection
1. Do you agree that you can learn more from a loss than from a win? Why or why not?
2. How does having an extremely competitive environment, with the possibility of failure, aid a person’s growth?
3. What life situations pop into your mind when you think about adversity and success? What have you learned from both?
4. Has there ever been a situation where you simply wanted to give up but you hung in there? What good things came from that experience?
The toughest thing about being a success is that you’ve got to keep being a success.
Irving Berlin
Your Personal Game Plan
1. Personal/Family: Adversity and success can take a lot of different forms in a family or in your personal life. What success can you envision happening in the future, and how can you plan now to handle the impact on yourself and your family?
2. Spiritual/Moral: Adversity can make us think of eternal things, or it can drive us away from God. Has there been a time when either has happened to you? Why do you think you reacted the way you did?
3. Caring/Giving: It’s sometimes easier to reach out to a person who has gone through difficult times than it is to rejoice with someone experiencing success. Is there someone in either category whom you can encourage today?
4. Health/Fitness: Caring for your health means more than just exercising and eating well. What if a debilitating illness were to hit you in the next month? How would you handle that adversity? Are you prepared for that possibility with insurance for your family? How long has it been since you’ve had a checkup?
5. Your Team: How you handle adversity affects your entire team. Do you know someone who has handled success or adversity well? Tell that person how much you appreciate his or her good example.
6. Academics/Career: Choose one thing in your career life that you regret. Using the three-step process mentioned in the chapter, write down how you will (1) learn from it, (2) learn specifically what the right way is, and (3) practice visualizing that right way until your consciousness accepts a picture of yourself performing correctly.