For those playing in Sunday’s Super Bowl, the game represents the opportunity of a lifetime, the chance to take home the ultimate prize. But for some, it can also be a hurdle too tall to climb. For this year’s participants, the question remains: How can you be at your best when it matters most?
It’s not easy. Already headlines are coming out that could distract a locker room. A week before the big game, news dropped that Seattle’s coveted offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak is set to take the open head coaching position with the Las Vegas Raiders (a team that just recently fired another former Seattle coach).
In today’s media environment, it’s easy to imagine how that story could send shockwaves through a franchise. Some players might be happy for their play-caller to get a head job. Others may wonder why the news couldn’t keep until after Sunday. If nothing else, it’s a headline that can’t help but draw attention away from the all-important gameplan.
Those prone to conspiracy theories could even begin to weave a yarn connecting dots between the hire and Raiders co-owner Tom Brady, a former New England Patriots QB, who might be trying to cause a distraction in Seattle’s locker room as the Seahawks prepare to play the Pats in a rematch of the 2015 Super Bowl. Yeesh.
To be clear, I don’t believe in that theory at all. But if repeated enough, who knows what it could do to a team trying to focus on the task at hand. Imagine being asked about it on media day just 100 hours before kickoff? You think Sam Darnold wants that noise in his head? Of course not.
But how can you avoid it? What strategies can you take to tune out the unnecessary and stay focused on what’s important? Well, whenever I’m faced with an important goal, I think about the words John Wooden once told me. Likely the greatest coach in the history of sports, Coach Wooden won 10 NCAA titles in 12 years with the UCLA Bruins.
That number includes seven in a row and an 88-game winning streak. And both Seattle and New England would be wise to read about the former men’s college basketball coach and what he offered about earning a victory when you needed it most. It’s something he and I spoke about at length in our time together writing the book, A Game Plan for Life.
“Greatness is being at your best when your best is needed,” Wooden explained to me, as I sat across a desk from him during our regular conversations. Too often, he said, teams or players peak too early. Then they lose momentum never to regain it. Neither Seattle nor New England wants to say that their last game was their best of the season.
No, they want to say they played their best during Sunday’s Super Bowl, climaxing at the perfect time in the biggest game possible. But of course that doesn’t always happen. In fact, it rarely does. To peak at the proper time is an art form, just as Coach Wooden explained. Sadly, we see the opposite too often.
Think of the 2004 presidential candidate Howard Dean. Everything looked good for him and his campaign, until the famous “Dean Scream”, which showed him red-faced and strangely angry in a moment of celebration, derailed him. Similarly, NBA fans will remember the Phoenix Suns earning a 2-0 lead in the 2021 Finals, only to lose the next four to the Milwaukee Bucks.
For Coach Wooden, to peak at the right time—indeed, to be at your best when your best is needed—requires diligent preparation, patience, and balance. “Be quick, but don’t hurry,” the famed coach told his players. He wanted them focused and measured, but also ready, on the balls of their feet.
But the biggest key for Coach Wooden was to always keep a sense of constant improvement. If you were continuously getting better, you would never risk peaking too soon. No need to celebrate too early—no need for the Dean Scream. Instead, keep your eye on the prize and make sure your chest cuts through the tape at the end of the race.
On Sunday, sports fans around the world will see just who understands Wooden’s words. Will it be the young up-and-comer Drake Maye? Or the veteran who salvaged his reputation and may cap it off with a storybook ending in Sam Darnold? We’ll see by about 9 PM that night just who was at their best when it was needed the most.
13-Time New York Times Bestselling Author and Hall of Fame Keynote Speaker
Don Yaeger
