Mental toughness

[SBG]

I was talking about this with a co-worker, but the biggest hurdle in most sports is mental toughness.

Golf is the epitome of mental toughness. How many times have you guys had one bad shot that led to another, and another, and another? Tiger is one of the bests because of how he could close. No one could match it. Look at the guy who missed the easy putt this year to win his first (and probably) only major. A 5 foot putt that he is 99% at in practice.

Speaking of practice, I have no doubt there's a different team that shows up on Tuesday than Saturday. When there's no pressure, no parents watching, no girls watching, no friends watching, no risk, but also no reward you can play relaxed. It's a lot more difficult to do so when you have 50K screaming fans watching your every move, even if you are the home team.

This team is soft as hell. Sure, youth explains some of it, but definitely not all of it. It's why when we were up 28 at KU we couldn't close. The playcalling was bad and the QBs stats were being padded, but we still should have won going away.

Goodson muffs the punt against CSU and the team implodes after that. Do I blame Goodson? He screwed up, make no doubt, but what about how the team reacted to it in the 2nd half?

It's why a Jim Harbough led Stanford team beat a USC team as 40.5 dogs because there is no way in hell they should have won. It's why a bad Sacramento State team beat us (again, along with playcalling). We thought we could win by just showing up and gave up when we were up 14.

We played tough against USC (in the first quarter last year, but we don't have the horses...that happens) and Utah last year. We lost so many games when the team walked out for the coin flip. The only previous time I remember us hitting people in the mouth was Hawk's first year (that defense deserved better than to have BJax at QB) and against OU and TT (because of senior led Dizon and TWheat).

This was reflected in the "The team that ended the stream photo" last year. Seriously?! They were proud to stop the streak?

 

[CenturyBuff]

Nik stated in his review, this team is "Fake Tough."

I always like golf analogies, just because I love to play golf.

Tom Weiskopf said about Nicklaus:

"Jack knew he was going to beat you. You knew Jack was going to beat you. And Jack knew that you knew that he was going to beat you."

That seems to be this team's attitude (in reverse) when it's come to so many ****** losses since 2006:

"The other team knows their going to beat us. We know they're going to beat us. And they know that we know they're going to beat us."

 

[SBG]

It doesn't seem like we have a go to guy either. If you are lucky that's your QB.

A guy that can put the team on his back and isn't afraid to lose. Do you think MJ or Kobe or any bball legend not want the last shot to win the game? You miss that and you'll hang your head in your towel in the locker room and everyone will say you suck. Hell, until this past year I would have said that Lebron wasn't playing to his potential (what he did on the Oly team was outstanding!). The GOATs are defined by how they react to adversity (combined with talent and a ****load of hard, hard work). You can cower and make excuses or you can learn to battle through it.

The team is playing with fear. Who's going to be the one in the huddle that tells the QB to pass/give it to him? Who's the OL that says to run behind me because I'm going to crush my guy. Sometimes that comes from the coaches and sometimes it comes from the players; since a lot of our players are green it's definitely up to the coaches to bring out that leadership and mental toughness we need.