Gary Williams knows what most college basketball fans must think of him. Especially when the University of Maryland coach launches into one of his glazed-eyes, foaming-at-the-mouth, four-letter-word-flying tirades to which he's been prone throughout his 17-year career.
They've seen it many times: from the crowds at Cole Field House in College Park the past six seasons, to those on the road throughout the Atlantic Coast Conference. They might see it today at the Alamodome in San Antonio, where the seventh-ranked Terrapins play Cincinnati in the first game of this year's 7-Up Shootout doubleheader.
"If they just see me out there coaching and going crazy, they'd probably think I'd be a candidate for burnout," Williams said recently. "But I've always been able to come down after a game."
Yet Williams said he didn't get very much sleep in the hours after his team's recent upset victory over then-top-ranked North Carolina. Nor would he have gotten much rest had Maryland lost to the Tar Heels. Or anyone else for that matter.
But that is pretty much the norm in a profession where your livelihood and reputation depend largely on the performances of 18-to 22-year-olds, not only on the court but also in the classroom and in the context of daily life on campuses across the country.
According to former Virginia coach Terry Holland, coaching is the least of the worries.
"Being the father of one or two teen-age sons is tough enough," said Holland, now the athletic director at Davidson College. "Being a father to 13 to 15 teen-agers is almost an impossible job. But that's what you are."
Holland got out of coaching five years ago, in part because the demands of the job had caused an unreasonable amount of stress even for someone considered as calm and stable as most believed Holland to be.
Those pressures have only increased because the sport's visibility has grown through television, and the salaries of the coaches -- particularly those in high-profile leagues -- have skyrocketed through lucrative shoe contracts and summer camps.
It has prompted seemingly reasonable men to act irrationally, as happened last season when Temple coach John Chaney charged John Calipari of Massachusetts after a game and was heard to say "I'll kill you" and when Northwestern coach Ricky Byrdsong wandered into the stands to watch a game -- while his team was playing.
When Tim Grgurich was hired to replace Rollie Massimino at Nevada-Las Vegas a month before this season, it was a move to relieve the tension created after Massimino was brought in two years ago as Jerry Tarkanian's successor. Early last month, Grgurich was hospitalized for exhaustion. He is back running practices, but has yet to return for games.
"You would think that the more success you have, the more you'd be able to relax," said Holland, who won 418 games in a 20-year career at Davidson and Virginia, and took the Cavaliers to the Final Four twice in the early 1980s. "But when you keep climbing the ladder and see how far down you can drop, you don't want to lose any game."
Said Utah coach Rick Majerus: "In my case, the stress is mostly self-inflicted. It comes from me wanting to win. No matter what else is right in your life at that time, your sense of self is demeaned if you lose."
Two local coaches, Don DeVoe at Navy and Terry Truax at Towson State, don't have the pressure that their peers at larger schools face. But DeVoe said that he has never let the job swallow him up, even when he was at a school like Tennessee.
"A lot of coaches are too sensitive to what's being written about them, and what fans are saying," said DeVoe. "If you're a Division I coach, there's always going to be an overreaction to what you're doing. If you lose four games in a row, they'll want to fire you. If you win four in a row, they'll want to make you the governor."
Said Truax: "A lot of coaches talk about how they're working 18-hour days. But I remember what [former UCLA] Coach John Wooden used to say, 'Don't confuse activity with accomplishment.'"
Williams says he has always believed that he is better off spewing out his emotions like some human Veg-O-Matic rather than keeping them bottled up inside. But some events of the past two years have made him reassess those feelings, if not quite change his behavior.
"As you get older," said Williams, who will turn 50 next month, "you're wondering what you're doing to yourself."
In the past 22 months, Williams has seen one of his contemporaries, former North Carolina State coach Jim Valvano, die from cancer and another, Duke's Mike Krzyzewski, be sidelined for much of this season after trying to return too soon from back surgery.
Though neither situation was tied directly to stress, Williams and others wonder how much the pressures of the job contributed to their physical conditions. Valvano had gone through an intense period in which he was forced to resign after a long NCAA investigation. Krzyzewski had helped the Blue Devils set an unusually high standard, with seven Final Four appearances in nine years, including back-to-back NCAA titles in 1991 and 1992.
"Each season, I say I'm going to work out more and not worry as much," said Williams. "But it's like a coach changing his offense that he's used for many years. You go back to what works. I'd like to think that I won't worry as much, but the responsibilities you have for these kids are so great. When my daughter went to college, if she screwed up a course, it was her fault. If one of my players screws up, it's my fault."
The lure of retirement
Williams said he thinks that many coaches will get out before they are ready rather than stay around as long as the legendary Dean Smith, who at 64 and in his 34th year at North Carolina, doesn't show any sign of slowing down. Even Indiana's Bob Knight has given hints this season of retiring.
One of the reasons some might have that option is the fact that compensation has increased substantially, with many coaches earning more than $300,000 a year and a few making as much as $1 million. There is a feeling on many campuses that a coach's won-loss record should be commensurate with his salary.
"The focus is always on the coach, not on anybody else on the campus," said former Southern Cal coach George Raveling. "But psychology professors are tenured; coaches are not. The coach's life expectancy is a lot shorter. It's like a construction worker who gets paid more for working on the higher buildings. There's a lot more risks involved. The psychology professor doesn't have 16,000 people critiquing his lectures."
This is the worst time of year for coaches. The pressure mounts for teams looking to get into the NCAA tournament as well as for those needing victories to be seeded high. The pressure mounts for coaches to the point where eating and sleeping become unnecessary distractions.
The madness of March
"This is the time of year I start looking like a ghost," said Virginia Tech coach Bill Foster, who "retired" at age 54 after the 1989-90 season when he coached at the University of Miami, only to return to take over the Hokies nine months later.
"Even though I'm looking like Cool Hand Luke," said Foster, "my insides are going like a washing machine."
Majerus goes the other route. A man whose appetite is legendary among his peers, Majerus will head for a restaurant or the refrigerator if the stress gets to be too much. Six games into his first year at Utah, Majerus suffered chest pains. He was diagnosed with blocked arteries and underwent major bypass surgery.
That was in December 1989.
"Every doctor I have would prefer I get out of coaching," said Majerus, 45. "But I can't. I'm a gym rat. I love the game. I love practicing better than playing. I don' t have a wife and a family. This is it. It's kind of like a drug. I get high off coaching."
It took a life-threatening automobile accident last fall for Raveling to quit, something he now says he'd been thinking about for the last five years.
Out and relieved
"To tell you the truth, I didn't have the intestinal fortitude to do it," said Raveling, whose 31-year career included head coaching stints at Washington State and Iowa as well as being one of Lefty Driesell's assistants at Maryland. "But most guys don't know what they would do if they got out."
Nearly recovered from the severe injuries he suffered in the accident, Raveling has recently returned to the game as a television analyst.
"I like where I am in February a lot more than where I'd be if I were still coaching," said Raveling, 57. "I feel better about myself. I've had a lot of coaches, including the coach of a top-five team, tell me they'd love to be in my position. It's too bad it took what I went through to get where I am."
Time off can help
Sometimes, being forced out of a job is the best thing for a coach. Foster said that the two years he spent away from coaching helped him from both a physical and mental standpoint when he returned.
"Most guys would last a lot longer if they took a year off," said Foster. "I'm all for guys switching jobs every five years."
Even at a middle-level program like Virginia Tech, Foster has seen an enormous change in the past decade. The advent of radio call-in shows has given fans access to coaches. The academic scrutiny all teams face is more intense. And Dick Vitale, a former college coach himself, is now a guru.
"You used to be able to make mistakes and nobody knew," said Foster. "Now if you or one of your players makes one, you hear about it almost immediately."
Foster and Holland recalled talking about how coaching a Division I team would be a perfect job for two people, not one. One could handle the coaching responsibilities, the other could handle the administrative part of the job and they could share in the recruiting duties. Every other year, they'd switch.
"That was 15 years ago," said Holland, "and things have gotten a lot worse."
When Holland was approached in 1989 by Kentucky athletic director C. M. Newton about taking over a program infamous for its overzealous boosters, Holland said that he might consider taking the job if Newton, a former coach at Alabama and Vanderbilt, did all of his extracurricular scheduling. Rick Pitino wound up getting the job.
"Somebody somewhere has to set the parameters to allow a coach to do what he's supposed to do -- coach," said Holland.
But that is unlikely to change.
Pressure may mount
The one constant in college basketball is the coaches, with a revolving cast of players. With more players turning pro before their eligibility runs out, the profile of the coaches and the demands will likely only increase.
Some coaches privately fear that they will wind up like Tommy Joe Eagles, the former Auburn coach who, in seemingly perfect health, collapsed and died during a pickup game from a heart attack last spring shortly after taking the job at New Orleans. He was 45.
Williams said that he went for a physical last spring, but only because he took out a life insurance policy when his daughter was about to get married. Williams said he's like most coaches who are hesitant about hearing what their jobs are doing to their health.
"You're afraid to, but you go," said Williams.
How was his blood pressure?
"It's fine," he said. "But I'd hate to have it done during the season."