Boo-ers read this. Saban's column on miamidolphins.com

[Avalanche of Wins]

good compromise

 

[ajajaj]

How could you be giving your heart and soul to a team but at the same time leave when times get rough? Sounds like an oxymoron to me.

:yeahthat:

 

[pwn3dyo]

If your going to boo and leave the game dont come at all, your not wanted, find another team

Simple as that to me

well said.

 

[footballphin]

You sure about this or did you make this up cuz it sounded intuitive?

My wife would laugh her head off at this suggestion. No, intuitive for me is to carp and complain just like most of the pro-booers here. I'm talking about standard behavior modification techniques.

There was a great article in the New York Times a few weeks ago. It was all about how this woman wanted her husband to change and was always giving him negative feedback to no avail. Then she had the opportunity to study animal trainers and started using their positive feedback techniques on him and found that they worked. (As it did for him when he turned the tables on her.)

The study you cited was a) about people who aren't used to performing in front of an audience and b) not about sports teams. In that study, people got nervous and tried too hard when the audience was supportive. In my experience that's not the dynamic at most football games. You see that behavior sometimes in big games but I think that's just because the game means more. A hostile crowd can be a motivator but I've only ever seen that work in a hostile stadium. I've never seen a football team get booed by the home crowd and then improve their performance. Apparently Nick Saban hasn't either.

 

[ckb2001]

My wife would laugh her head off at this suggestion. No, intuitive for me is to carp and complain just like most of the pro-booers here. I'm talking about standard behavior modification techniques.

There was a great article in the New York Times a few weeks ago. It was all about how this woman wanted her husband to change and was always giving him negative feedback to no avail. Then she had the opportunity to study animal trainers and started using their positive feedback techniques on him and found that they worked. (As it did for him when he turned the tables on her.)

The study you cited was a) about people who aren't used to performing in front of an audience and b) not about sports teams. In that study, people got nervous and tried too hard when the audience was supportive. In my experience that's not the dynamic at most football games. You see that behavior sometimes in big games but I think that's just because the game means more. A hostile crowd can be a motivator but I've only ever seen that work in a hostile stadium. I've never seen a football team get booed by the home crowd and then improve their performance. Apparently Nick Saban hasn't either.

Well, I'd still like to see some evidence back this up (not saying you're wrong, but you only stated what you think is true based on your experience right? - so "intuitive" for you). What people perceive to be true is often deceptively false, so it's nice to have some academic studies back this up.

As far as the woman in the NYTimes article is concerned, that has even less to do with sports and booing than what I quoted does (what I quoted does have a specific reference to "booing": "You'd think that a booing crowd would kill performance."), so we can forget that example.

The main problem with behaviorism is it doesn't require an investigation into the underlying mechanisms between the stimuli and response, so its explanatory power is severely limited to a small class of cases (in which it does very well usually). I've never heard responses to booing were so obviously conditioned as you seem to imply (but maybe it is - I'd just like some evidence for it, not personal experience).

Oh, and Saban is a great football coach, not a recognized researcher on the effects of booing - it's likely he's stating what seems intuitive too.

 

[DolphinsFan23]

I'm certainly not an expert on motivating football players. Saban is far more experienced at that than I am. I hear he also has a sports psychologist from Michigan or somewhere who helps the team too. Between the two of them and the other coaches, I bet they have a good idea about how to keep the team fired up and ready to play at their highest levels.

They say in the pros everyone is so good physically that the thing that often separates the winners from the losers is the mental part of the game. Saban made a pretty good analogy about golf in his column. Great golf players like Tiger Woods are good at overcoming adversity and staying focused and "in the flow" even if he's 8 strokes behind the leader and he just made a bad shot into the trees or something.

I read a book called "Flow" several years ago. I remember Troy Aikman talking about it when the Cowboys were really good in 90s. I think that's the ideal state of mind that you want to try to get your players into. I don't know if the fans can help them "get in the groove" or "in the flow", but it seems to me that having positive fans yelling their heads off at games is probably the better way to go about 95% of the time. Maybe a little bit of booing by a few people would help wake them up ...but only if most of the team is really screwing up badly and not even trying to turn things around ...if the majority of the team is "loafing", etc.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0880118768/sr=8-1/qid=1155729634/ref=pd_bbs_1/104-9318172-9554311?ie=UTF8

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0060920432/sr=8-1/qid=1155730881/ref=pd_bbs_1/104-9318172-9554311?ie=UTF8

 

[inFINSible]

People are going to boo, it will happen. The only way to avoid it is to play well. Don't kid yourself into thinking that people are going to not voice their displeasure, when they feel it. It's too bad, it's selfish, yet it WILL happen and the more Saban gets his players prepared to deal with that FACT of sporting life, the better off he'll be.

Look, Nick, it's not as if the stadium erupts in boos after every bad play, it's only after a succession of bad plays do the first boos pop up, and then it takes a massively putrid effort on the part of the home team to get the whole stadium booing, and at that point it's hard to argue that it isn't called for.

 

[TampaFinsFan01]

How would you feel if you worked very hard to do your job well and every time you made a mistake everyone in your office booed you? Would you start to feel nervous and too focused on being perfect because everyone was watching you just waiting for you to mess up? And how do you think that would effect your performance?

Would you take your kid to one of his games and boo him every time he did something wrong? Do you think that pressure would make him better or make him terrified to make a mistake?

I think it is very counterproductive to boo. The whole idea that Saban puts forward is to move on to the next play, clear your mind of a bad play and move forward to the next. That isn't so easy to do if you feel 70,000 people breathing down your neck grinding your mistake home. Why would you want to make it more likely that a player continues to make mistakes just so you can feel better and relieved of your frustration?

Boo if you want to, but at least understand that it does nothing but make the person being booed more insecure and likely to mess up more. Just think about how it would make you feel if that was the way you were treated at your job.

Very weak analogy comparing fans booing in the stands to coworkers booing at work. That would be akin to players booing other players, which is a different point entirely.

If I am being watched at work by people who make 5% of what I make, I couldn't care less what they do or what they think. I would only be responsible to myself, my coworkers and my boss. To hell with the "underlings" who don't know what is required and might not understand it if I explained it to them. I certainly wouldn't say they don't have a right to express themselves.

My real exception here is with the fans who think they can define who is a "true-fan".

 

[BigDogsHunt]

Don't disagree with you at all BigDogsHunt.. and I realise you may not have meant that directed at me - but please don't imply I've condemned anyone who sees this differently in any of my posts - I've made it quite clear I don't, and I've actually enjoyed this thread to help me see and understand other people's perspectives. All I've said is that I can't fully understand those who don't see it like me (although I am getting closer to it now), whereas I do identify with those that DO see it like me.

(And if you haven't; please read my really lengthy post that inFINS and I were referring to to understand the one you quoted, it was in direct reference to 'my argument' not a general point).

If everyone thought identically to me, we wouldn't have much of a thread here, so I'm rather glad they don't! :D

Not directed at you at all......I should have used the word "One" inplace of "you" for clarification. As in "One cant expect or One shouldnt expect".

I liked the passion you brought to the debate.