10/22/2002 - Football
Cultivating A Winning Character

By Bob Socci

Perhaps you can recall the scene or remember the line.

It's from the movie Wall Street, when young Bud Fox, played by Charlie Sheen, is being led away from his office by investigators.

Hal Holbrook, wearing the suit of Lou Mannheim - the wise if not wealthy old broker in Fox's firm - pulls Sheen's character aside.

"Man looks into the abyss, there's nothing staring back at him," Mannheim says to Fox. "At that moment, man finds his character. And that is what keeps him out of the abyss."

This week on campuses throughout the country, Lou Mannheim walks the practice fields dressed in coaches' gear.

From Tulsa to West Point, in places like Piscataway and even Syracuse, he prepares a team facing the football abyss of a lengthy losing streak.

Here in Annapolis he happens to speak with a Southern drawl.

Not that Paul Johnson is a graying veteran simply dispensing with wisdom to inspire his players. He is a young man whose Georgia Southern program won 62 of 72 games and a pair of national titles.

But now he must cope with losing for the first time in his head coaching career. This year alone Navy has lost as many games as Georgia Southern during the last three seasons combined.

And while Johnson continues to preach better physical execution each day, he must also try to breed a winning mentality amongst a group of Midshipmen who bear the reflection of six straight losses.

When they look into the recent state of Navy football, they see just two victories, compared to 26 defeats, since the start of 2000. And, thus, Johnson sees the need for a different on-field character - the kind that's consistent with the culture of winning.

After Saturday's 46-21 loss at Boston College, a local reporter asked Johnson how the Mids' seem to handle each defeat emotionally. Another revisited Navy's apparent tendency to perform better once it falls behind by wide margins.

Two different questions, yet their answers related.

"It's almost like, 'Okay. We've thrown away any chance we have to win so now we can just relax,'" Johnson said. "And there's no pressure to make a play, and we play better. That's a mindset that I think you get into when you haven't won very much.

"It's like what you were talking about, how guys take it after a loss. There's a point where I guess they have to build a wall (around them), or else how would you survive losing every year?"

It's what countless coaches mean when they say, "We have to learn how to win."

Cultivating such confidence - if not outright arrogance - is much easier said than done. More so in college. And especially in football.

More than anything else, a team in search of swagger needs a physical presence. At Division I-A, more success starts with more strength and more speed. Or, in fewer words, more talent.

A pro team can reconfigure its roster through trades or free agency. And when the only ingredient lacking is the so-called winning edge, it can acquire the veteran "clubhouse leader."

In other sports, like basketball, a handful of individuals can completely transform a team. Just see Vernon Butler, Doug Wojcik and that tall guy nicknamed 'The Admiral.'

Football, though, relies on numbers - and not just heights, weights and times in the forty. It's a sport of first and second strings, depth charts comprised of upper classmen and under classmen. Eleven positions on offense, eleven on defense. Don't forget special teams.

Already - with support from the Academy administration - the current coaches have shown significant improvement in recruiting. Evidence of their effort to add talent and establish depth in Annapolis exists in Newport, R.I., where the prep school team is enjoying a very solid fall, having already beaten the Mids' junior varsity.

"There are three ways you get better: recruiting, scheduling and commitment," says Johnson. "You don't just snap your fingers and say, 'Okay, we are going to get better today.'"

The subject of scheduling has become very topical as the Mids' growing pains have been made excruciating at times by the presence of several nationally-ranked opponents.

Two of their first five games were against N.C. State and Air Force, who are 9th and 19th, respectively, in the latest Coaches Top 25. After this weekend's trip to Tulane, they encounter No. 6 Notre Dame on Nov. 9.

Furthermore, Boston College is likely bound for a fourth straight bowl appearance, while Tulane and Wake Forest entertain realistic hopes for the postseason.

"If you look at the way that most people have rebuilt a program, scheduling is a huge part of it," Johnson says. "Win some games, build (the program) up, you get better recruits, then you upgrade your schedule."

Softening the schedule - as Navy did when it asked out of a trip to Washington in 2003 in favor of a home game opposite VMI - can benefit the Mids both physically and psychologically.

"Once you start to win some games you can build your program back up," said Johnson. "Which comes first, the horse or the cart?"

For Johnson and his coaches, the cornerstone of this construction project is related to the head coach's comments after an early-season loss to Northwestern.

"We can't be afraid to play, afraid to fumble," Johnson said after the Mids dropped a 49-40 decision stained by turnovers. "That's what I'm trying to get these kids to quit doing, quit being afraid to play."

Players better acquainted with success in the past are more likely to "make big plays" in the present.

Often, they see reward rather than risk. They embody so many coaches' cliches. They "play to win," as opposed to "playing not to lose," and when the game's on the line, "they want the ball in their hands."

And when they do confront failure, they find their character.

There are signs both obvious and subtle that Navy is on its way. As a whole, their effort is unquestioned. Johnson talks of how this player has "the look in his eye" or how that player hates to lose.

In the end, Bud Fox stayed out of the abyss. And in time, the Mids will too.

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