It doesn’t say much about the human animal that it can successfully use the same motivational tactic — one oft based on a lie — again and again.Yes, I’m talking about teams playing the “We (I) don’t get no respect” card.
The latest to use the emotional ruse are the Baltimore Ravens, looking for an edge in Saturday’s AFC playoff game against Tennessee.
“Nobody has respected this team until right now, and that’s fine with us,” defensive coordinator Rex Ryan said Sunday after the Ravens dismantled the Miami Dolphins. “Tough on everybody else, just right for us.”
Just right for them because coaches know how to feed the “disrespect” slop to their players, who hungrily devour every drop, like baby birds taking disgorged worms from Mama.
Why? Well, it works.
“It’s effective,” sports psychologist Eric Morse told Childs Walker for a Baltimore Sun article. “Coaches and players look for bulletin-board material, and if it’s not there, sometimes they drum it up. It’s one of the few ways to tap into athletes’ internal motivation for doing what they do.”
“I think it makes it personal,” Joe Fish, another sports psychologist, told Walker. “Athletes have a lot of pride, and athletes like to compete, so it can give a real emotional boost to a player or team.”
No one was better at this, Walker points out, than Michael Jordan, who would seize any critical comment, no matter how slight, to psych himself up. If no slight was forthcoming, he would invent one.
Just as the Ravens have.
Jeff Fisher played both college and pro ball and has coached in the NFL since 1985, so he’s seen (and undoubtedly used) the tactic more than once. Now the Titans head man seems bored with it, suggesting that any Raven feeling dissed “needs to read the paper or watch TV.”
“Obviously, they got plenty of respect from us. You know, if that’s the way you want to handle and motivate, then so be it.”
In other words, if you really need to psych yourself up with a lie to get ready to play, well, more power to you.
Yes, as Fish notes, athletes have a lot of pride — and, as I note, often more pride than self-awareness.
I know this from my own days as a (very) small-time athlete when I, too, used this ploy when seeking an edge. Now, like Fisher, I find it tiresome. So I’ll be rooting for the Titans come Saturday.
After all, the Ravens’ belief that the nation’s media will swallow the idea they truly have been slighted is disrespectful to our intelligence.
In fact, as a member of the press, I feel insulted.
I am SO ready for kickoff.
Contact Jim Gordon at gjames43@msn.com.
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