Head Game

Acknowledgments

It’s an age-old question in the academic world: should something be written solo, or in conjunction with another author? For us, the answer appeared quite simply: neither of us could have accomplished it alone. One of us had focused heavily on sports media; the other on health stigma in media. What happens when those cultures and issues collide? By working together, we hope we have revealed some answers.

We initially conceived of this project in 2019. It was pre-pandemic. Pre-Naomi Osaka. Pre-Simone Biles. Even then, our sense was that sports media was experiencing a mental health moment. We were right: the time for such a book was, indeed, prescient. We were also wrong: these subjects were being discussed in far more than a moment. When do enough moments accumulate to the point that the culture is irrevocably altered? We are not sure, but we are hoping that mental health in sports media has now reached such a “critical mass” level of distinction. There’s no going back. Nor should athletes, teams, leagues, and larger sports entities wish to do so.

We must thank Niall Kennedy and his colleagues at Peter Lang Publishing for shepherding this book project. We also wish to thank Lawrence Wenner and Marie Hardin for their guidance and ultimate placement of this volume within the Communication, Sport, and Society series. We’re honored to be a part of ←vii | viii→it. We are also grateful for the athletes, journalists, broadcasters, and industry leaders that were part of this interview-heavy process. You gave us the words; we just had to translate them. Finally, we thank our families, including a pair of extremely understanding wives who understood when the evening must be interrupted so we could conduct yet another Zoom interview.

Head Game: An Introduction

The head game.

In sport, the phrase summons images of extraordinary focus and mental jousting among competitors: a pitcher stepping off the mound and calling for the sign to disrupt a batter; a shooting guard leaving an arched palm hanging to remind her defender she just got schooled; a placekicker tuning out 100,000 screaming fans as the clock reads 0:01, then nodding for the snap.

Despite all the talk about physicality in sport, the weight rooms and work outs, Tommy Johns and twisted ankles, the world of athletic competition is one whose outcome is often decided by the mind. Athletes must be able to block out distraction, focus on the goal at hand, and out strategize the competition. In 1989, during his final Super Bowl-winning drive, San Francisco 49ers quarterback Joe Montana famously used valuable seconds in the huddle to gesture to the stands and calmly ask his teammates: “Look, isn’t that John Candy?” THAT was the legend of a player known as “Joe Cool.”

A few months later, professional golfer Scott Hoch was faced with a tap-in putt—less than two feet to win the U.S. Open—and missed. His nickname? Scott Choke.

While their true expertise lay on the courts and the fields and the pitches, athletes are powerful persuaders of public opinion. Professional athletes’ disclosures might be inspirational for fans (and even non-fans), nurturing heightened awareness of resources, treatment, and the commonality of mental illness. The importance of such dialogue cannot be understated, especially given the context of professional sport in which athletes are trained to be “tough” from a young age. In this book, professional athletes describe their own experiences with mental illness, including the challenges and opportunities they encountered in the locker room, field of play, and mass media. The athletes, who represent a spectrum of ←2 | 3→professional sports, describe their decisions to disclose and their recommendations for current—and future—generations of athletes.

Consider Zack Greinke. In 2006, the major league pitcher took a break from spring training for the Kansas City Royals, generating attention from reporters. Ultimately it came to light that Greinke experienced depression and anxiety, illnesses that were threatening his love for the game. Greinke told reporters that the conditions never bothered him on the mound, adding that medication helped. Still, pundits and fans have dissected Greinke’s mental health throughout his career with the Royals, Dodgers, and Astros. Others even went so far as to use the conditions as verbal weapons. The president of the San Diego Padres called Greinke “Rain Man,” referencing a movie whose title character has autism. Yankees fans taunted Greinke as he warmed up in the 2019 American League ←3 | 4→playoffs, making fun of him for experiencing social anxiety.1 Fans saw a chink in his armor and attacked. All is fair in love and war—and playoffs are war.

Or, consider the case of Kevin Love, All-Star power forward for the Cleveland Cavaliers. Love left the court before the final buzzer twice during the 2017 season, experiencing panic attacks so strong he thought he “might die.” Beyond anxiety, Love also faced ridicule from high-profile teammates who described him as malingering. In March 2018, Love published an essay with The Players’ Tribune in which he publicly shared his experiences with depression and anxiety. “Mental health is an invisible thing, but it touches all of us at some point or another,” he wrote. “It’s part of life.” When he committed an on-court blunder in 2021, lackadaisically in-bounding the ball to have it easily stolen, media narratives were infused with Love’s admission about mental health. Be careful here, even his advocates would note, seemingly treating him as though he might fall apart.

As stories in this book illustrate, an athlete’s decision to disclose their experience with mental illness is sometimes forced by the mass media. Tennis phenom Naomi Osaka, a four-time Grand Slam winner, announced before the 2021 French Open that she would not participate in interviews with international media during the event. Citing mental health issues while writing on Instagram, she wrote that “I’ve often felt that people have no regard for athletes (sic) mental health and this rings very true whenever I see a press conference or partake in one.” Athletes, she said, are often asked the same questions again and again, introducing (or reinforcing) doubt within the competitor, and the “whole situation is kicking a person while they’re down.”

While some professional athletes praised the 23-year-old, others criticized her decision, saying media interviews were part of a professional athlete’s commitment. Fearing a mass exodus of players who felt similarly, French Open officials and organizers of the Grand Slam fined Osaka and threatened her with sanctions should she refuse to talk to the media. The Twitter account for Roland-Garros, where the tournament was being held, posted a photograph of other athletes ←4 | 5→completing press interviews with the statement, “They understood the assignment.” The next day, Osaka withdrew from the event.