JohnFMurray.com

Kaeding’s failure topped off an already growing number of unforgettable missed kicks during the playoffs in the preceding week, including two by Cincinnati’s Shayne Graham against the Jets and another by Arizona’s Neil Rackers against the Packers.

All of this raises the question: could the preceding outbreak of failed field-goal attempts have precipitated Kaeding’s spectacular meltdown? Did Kaeding fall prey to a shanking epidemic?

According to Dr. John F. Murray, a Palm Beach-based sports psychologist, it’s a plausible theory, although impossible to prove. “It’s certainly safe to say that [Kaeding] made a mental mistake,” Murray says. “Exposure to other people’s failures could have gotten inside his head.”

For experienced and consistent players like Kaeding, a good kick is an automatic move that requires little thought. So little, in fact, that extra thinking can be the very thing that does in a player under high pressure. If a memory of another player missing a kick popped into Kaeding’s mind as he prepared to take his shot, that neural signal could have interfered with Kaeding’s mental preparation.

“When you’re kicking a field goal, you’re mostly using your motor cortex—that’s what controls kicking. So when you send a neural impulse from your brain down the spinal cord to the legs to make the kick, you don’t want to have a lot of interference from the frontal lobe or temporal lobe having a memory of some guy who missed a kick last week or any other distraction,” Murray says.

Still, if exposure to the failures of other kickers is what did in Kaeding, one would expect field-goal misses to come and go in groups. But, historically, this is not the case, says Steve Hirdt of the Elias Sports Bureau. Even though these playoffs have been a particularly bad time for field-goal kickers, Hirdt says that missed field goals do not always cluster in this way—at least not enough to identify a trend given the limited data available.

Indeed, there are many other possible psychological explanations for Kaeding’s aberrant misses. He could have gotten caught up in the pressure of the moment, which could feel like “having a gun to your head and being told to ‘make that field goal or I’m going to pull the trigger’,” Murray says. Alternatively, Kaeding could have missed one shot due to a technical flaw or a fluke, and then missed the next two because he was dwelling on the past. Or he could have just had a fight with his wife earlier in the day or gotten a speeding ticket on the way to the field, disrupting his concentration.

Patrick Cohn, another sports-psychology expert and owner of Peak Performance Sports, favors these kinds of explanations over the possibility that other failed kickers psyched out Kaeding. “When kickers miss uncharacteristically, it comes down to the pressure they’re feeling,” he says. “They don’t pay attention to what other kickers are doing, but a bad miss early in the game could lead to more misses later on.”

We’ll probably never know for certain the exact cause of Kaeding’s choke—even Kaeding himself may not know what happened, Murray says. But it surely comes down to mental preparation, which Kaeding will have to work on before he kicks again.

“Yes,” Meyer said in smiling reply.

And that’s it, exactly.

It’s what makes it almost impossible to believe that Meyer, who in less than 24 hours switched from retirement to a leave of absence as Florida football coach, will be able to change his style and work habits regardless of how much time he takes off.

He’s wired in the manner he’s wired, and it’s what makes his job even more consuming than it is on its own. The coaching DNA coursing through Meyer’s veins is a significant element — perhaps the primary one, he’ll tell you — in what has made him so successful.

He need not apologize for any of that, and doesn’t.

But neither is he necessarily deserving of our sympathies.

It has taken a health scare to get Meyer to say it’s time to “re-prioritize” his life in terms of faith, family and football. But a series of quotes attributed to Meyer’s wife, Shelley, after the news conference makes it clear she has her own doubts about her husband’s ability to change.

“He has to learn to relax,” she said. “I think he’ll make a really good attempt at that, (but) I don’t know if he can do it. I can tell you I can’t imagine him not coaching again, because that’s all I’ve ever known.

“I can’t have him looking or feeling the way he has been, but I don’t see him becoming a man of leisure. It’s going to be interesting.”

She will have a close-up view of Meyer undertaking the reinvention he promises. He has driven himself at 100 mph all these years, but will slam on the brakes and then re-accelerate in search of the proper speed at which to live and work. The Gators’ date Friday night against Cincinnati in the Sugar Bowl looks less like a football game and more like a coaching petri dish.

Steve Spurrier, a Gators icon as a player and a coach who is now in charge at South Carolina, once left the job Meyer now holds. Spurrier tired of unreasonable expectations.

“I don’t think he’ll need the whole year off,” Spurrier said in comments e-mailed through a South Carolina spokesperson. “I think in three or four months, he may be ready to get back. Maybe he can delegate a little more.

“Some coaches, if they don’t stay (in the office) until midnight or come in at 6 in the morning, they don’t feel like they’re working hard. … He needs to have some outside interests. He’s got a place on a lake not too far from Gainesville, but I would imagine when he’s (there), he’s probably checking with his coaches. He stays on top of everything from what I understand.”

Spurrier said he thought Meyer — who reportedly lost 20 pounds in recent weeks — looked “exhausted” during the televised news conference.

Now, there are a lot of professions more stressful than being Florida’s head football coach at a salary of $4 million per year. Almost any Web-search list on the subject will include physicians and surgeons, airline pilots and air-traffic controllers, fire fighters and police officers, social workers and customer-service reps, and teachers and retailers and stockbrokers.

But it’s what Palm Beach sports psychologist Dr. John F. Murray called the “fishbowl” existence of a high-profile football coach that creates a witch’s brew of stress and pressure.

Relieving that isn’t easy.

“It really does come down to the noggin and how you think,” Murray said. “It’s what makes a situation manageable or not. Nobody can create effective change in life unless there’s a true recognition that there’s a need to change.”

Informed of Meyer’s health issues — chest pain, migraines, high blood pressure — Murray said stress frequently triggers such symptoms.

“If you’re doing that kind of job and don’t have some kind of relaxation technique, it’s a sure path to self-destruction.” he said. “Anyone under stress is at risk of making a mistake when it comes to important decisions. You make good choices when your mind is clear, and you tend to be erratic when emotions are running high.”

Which might explain Meyer’s sudden swing from retirement to a leave of absence.

Meyer now faces his greatest challenge:

Urban Meyer needs to make that guy go away.

His chase to be the best is like a deal with the devil, and it may crush Meyer if he isn’t careful. The chest pains, dizziness, insomnia, loss of weight are a compass, pointing to the dark side. He must change direction, and reinvent himself a less-maniacal, lower-stressed coach.

That journey begins here Saturday night, when the Gators play the Cincinnati Bearcats in the Sugar Bowl. But the more telling moments will come in the next weeks, and in the next months. For the first time in his life, Meyer will need to find another speed other than fast-forward.

“What does slowing it down mean?” said one of his high school buddies Tom Penna. “Not talking to recruits? I don’t think he can do that. Does he stop looking at film? Delegate more to his assistants? What does he stop doing? What can he give up and still be productive?”

Meyer is going to have to ask himself all of those introspective questions, and plenty more. Those who know him now and those who know him from back in the day remain perplexed about how Meyer can find that balance.

Failure is not in his DNA. His father Bud wouldn’t allow it. Urban learned that early on during his days as a baseball player at St. Johns High, when Bud gave him a dollar for home runs and 50 cents for an RBI, but insisted on getting 25 cents back for every strikeout. Football was much the same: While all his friends went out partying after games, Urban would go back to his house to review aspects of the game and how he played with his father.

“He’s been bred for this since he was a kid,” said Rick Pugliese, another one of his hometown friends from Ashtabula, Ohio. “He’s a perfectionist.”

Penna and Pugliese have joined Mark Orlando and George Dragon as four guys from Ashtabula who have made an annual road trip to see Meyer during the football season, dating back in the days when he was a wide receivers coach at Notre Dame. They spend a few days together leading up to kickoff.

He always tells them the same thing: “If we win, come over the house. If we lose, I’ll see you next year.”

Now 45, Meyer’s Type-A personality has many other quirky manifestations. The incessant ring of his cell phone to the beep of a new text message. The lunch that goes cold on his desk because he doesn’t have time to eat. The remotes shattered in a fit of rage while screening game film.

It’s all about working harder than the next guy, busting your butt because that’s the only way you know. It gets you to places that few of his peers will ever see.

It brings two national titles, an undefeated run that stretched 22 games, and three-time National Coach of the Year honors.

But it also gets you to other places, like the Shands Medical Center in Gainesville where Meyer was treated after passing out at his home in the wee hours following the loss to Alabama in the SEC Championship Game. “Urban, Urban, talk to me,” his wife Shelly is heard saying during the 911 call she made that night.

Meyer’s health remains the source of constant speculation, but it seems fairly clear that Meyer is dealing with a health issue more significant than the accumulation of all that stress and strain.

“If he’s got a serious health problem, he’s got to dial it down and surround himself with people who will convince him to do it,” said former Miami Dophins coach Don Shula, who grew up 30 miles away from Meyer’s hometown.

That inner circle should include professionals who won’t sugarcoat the truth. Meyer is setting himself up for a world of hurt if he doesn’t change.

“Don’t try to do everything yourself,” said sports psychologist John Murray. “If you die chasing success or more money, what’s the point of that? Quality of life issues are important.”

Murray suggests any number of things, from Tai Chi, yoga and exercise to “smelling the salt of the ocean.”

It presents a monstrous challenge. Meyer doesn’t do down time, other than snippets of time here and there with Shelly and their three children. And even on the occasional vacations, Coach Meyer, capital C, tags along. A while back, Urban and Shelly went down to the Caribbean with a few friends. One night, in the middle of a faraway tropical bar, a handful of people looked at Meyer and started doing the Gator chomp. He immediately left.

Pugliese recalls having a casual conversation with Meyer at a football camp for kids. In just a few minutes, 10 people were behind Pugliese wanting to talk to Meyer.

Meyer always finds comfort in his extended family, the guys who wear the orange and blue. It’s not some hokey fairy tale.

The four guys from Ashtabula saw it for themselves when Tim Tebow, David Nelson and a handful of other players showed up at a high school volleyball game to cheer on Meyer’s daughter, Gigi. They weren’t doing it to suck up to the coach. They did it because they care.

The best part was that nobody bothered them, but those moments are rare.

That’s why his friends worry about him. They see Meyer “grinding, grinding and grinding,” as Pugliese says, and wonder how he can reconcile that maniacal drive.

“He’s afraid to take his foot off gas,” Pugliese said. “You can’t go at that speed all your life. I’m in car sales. I counted my call log and I had 124 calls come in one day. That’s nothing to him.”

Meyer, intensely private and guarded, isn’t saying much about his game plan. “I have to learn to do is … what they call … delegate,” he said on Sunday, the day after he changed his mind about resigning and taking an indefinite leave of absence. He was also texting while his players addressed the media that afternoon, reflective of a man who can’t sit still.

Meyer is going to feel the squeeze on his privacy even more as he begins his nebulous journey. Everybody wants to know what’s going on. When is he coming back? Will he come back? What’s really wrong with him? The story is riveting. Why else would NPR devote an “All Things Considered” segment on Meyer’s hazy future?

Meyer will hate every single question. He remains most comfortable in the insular world of football, where there is control and everything is easily defined by a scoreboard.

All those victories, all those championships, and all that bling commandeered by Meyer’s senior class define “this crazy monster that we fed,” as Meyer said Thursday.

Another monster waits with a different group of players. If Meyer learns one thing from this experience, it should be this:

Be careful feeding the beast.

We are constantly bombarded by an endless array of internal and external stimuli, thoughts, and emotions. Given this abundance of available data, it is amazing that we make sense of anything! In varying degrees of efficiency, we have developed the ability to focus on what is important while blocking out the rest. This process of directing our awareness to relevant stimuli while ignoring irrelevant stimuli is termed selective attention. Some sport psychologists believe that selective attention is the most important cognitive characteristic of successful athletic performance.

Concentration, on the other hand, is the ability to sustain attention on selected stimuli for an extended period of time. Although this might appear to involve great strain and exertion, the reverse is actually true. Effective concentration has been described as effortless effort, being in the zone, a flow state, and a passive process of being totally absorbed in the present and fascinated by the object of fixation.

Concentration is a difficult skill to master because our minds tend to shift focus when presented with novel stimuli. Known as the orienting response, this bias toward new sights and sounds alerted our ancestors to dangers in the wild, but often makes us the prey to meaningless distractions on the tennis court. A split second loss of concentration during a critical point can spell the difference between winning and losing.

Careful planning and practice are required to gain supremacy over our attentional faculties. Fortunately, selective attention and concentration are skills that can be learned, refined, and perfected just like razor short passes or perfect blocks. Since few players invest quality time on attentional skills, there is an immediate and tangible reward for those who do! I believe the struggle with oneself over attentional control is even more fundamental than the clash with the opponent, for only after preparing ourselves for battle are we ready to take it to the enemy.

Here are 10 specific ways of improving attentional control in football:

1. Avoid negative thoughts and feelings, as these are needless distractions which rob us of limited attentional resources.

2. Remain focused on the present, attending to what is immediately important and blocking out past and future concerns. Following a mistake, briefly note any changes necessary then move decisively to the next play.

3. Recite key words or phrases to yourself prior to the play to remind yourself to concentrate (e.g., “focus,” “attack,” “hit the hole,”).

4. Be task rather than outcome oriented. Thinking about the score or how you look are common distractions. The outcome only improves when you ignore it and attend to the nitty gritty.

5. Slightly relax in between plays while avoiding external distractions. Some players achieve this by staring at a specific area (e.g. , opposing runner’s mid section) and visualizing terrific execution.

6. Recharge batteries in between plays. Replenish your energy and calmly gear yourself up for another great play.

7. Add a ritual, or consistent routine, to your performances. This might be the way you adjust your feet, tap the ball, or set your mind, and it all helps to fight off needless distractions and keep your mind from wandering.

8. Be particularly vigilant when fatigued. Players often lose their focus when tired and you can also exploit this fatigue in your opponent.

9. Attention and arousal are closely related. Avoid becoming overly excited while remaining focused on executing and implementing your strategy to perfection. Brief breathing and/or relaxation can help prepare the way for great focus on the play.

10. Coaches should make practices interesting by frequently varying the drills and routines in a realistic manner. This variety usually increases motivation which also leads to improved focus. Yelling focus rarely helps, but doing things to naturally improve focus like this help a lot.

Warren Moon would wait until the end of the day before sneaking into the back entrance to the office building. Twice each week, the Minneapolis psychologist would give Moon the last appointment so no one would discover that an NFL quarterback was in therapy.

But it was during those sessions that Moon, who was playing for the Vikings at the time, would begin to unravel the reasons behind his unhappiness.

“I’d go Tuesday and Fridays, and I’d always go at the end of the day so no one would see me in the stairway,” Moon recalled during a recent interview. “Confidentiality was a big thing with me, but once I got past that, I was able to open up and talk about myself.”

And it was then that he discovered how much had built up inside him through the years.

There was the overwhelming feelings of responsibility for his mother and six sisters after his father died of liver disease when Moon was only 7.

The stress of dealing with suggestions that he was not smart enough to pursue his dreams of becoming an NFL quarterback.

The acrimonious dissolution of his first marriage.

“When my dad passed away, I took a lot of responsibility and probably matured a lot faster because I was so caught up with being the ‘man of the house’ with my sisters and my mom,” said Moon, who learned to cook, sew and clean the house to help his mother, Pat, a full-time nurse. “Football was a way for me to make it in order to take care of my family. I never really paid any attention to me, except for the kind of football player I wanted to be.”

Even after Moon became successful at every level he competed at, the personal issues still gnawed at him. But during more than a decade of soul-searching, Moon finally has come to terms with himself — not just as the first black quarterback to be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, but also as a man.

He hopes that by sharing his experiences, he can help other pro athletes with similar struggles. Moon’s autobiography, “Never Give Up on Your Dream: My Journey,” details his experiences during a lifetime of personal and professional challenges.

“One of the things I learned from this whole experience is that you need to deal with yourself first,” said Moon, who has since remarried. “If you do that, you’ll be a better person to be around for others.”

He strongly believes therapy would be of similar help to other athletes.

“I would suggest to any player that if he can get past the confidentiality part of it, especially male athletes who try to be these stoic figures, where nothing bothers us and we can conquer the world,” Moon said. “Address your feelings. Address your emotions. It will be a much more freeing experience in life, which will help you to be better to others around you.”

Another message from the book: “Anything you do in life is going to be tough, but anybody who has been successful will go through tough times.”

Moon’s challenge was to care for his family the best way he knew how: by throwing a football. He grew up in an era in which college and professional coaches and scouts viewed black quarterbacks with skepticism, often recommending that they switch to running back or wide receiver because they weren’t considered intelligent enough to play quarterback.

Moon had to overcome those stereotypes at every level. He had to spend a year in junior college before being offered a scholarship at the University of Washington. After going undrafted by the NFL, he played in the Canadian Football League for six years, winning five championships for the Edmonton Eskimos. Finally, in 1984, he signed with the Houston Oilers and wound up playing 17 NFL seasons for the Oilers, Seahawks, Vikings and Chiefs.

He never spoke publicly about it until now.

“There were two reasons I didn’t talk about it,” Moon said. “One, it was painful. My thing was, as a quarterback and being a stoic figure, I acted like nothing bothers me. I’m bigger than that. Another reason is because I didn’t want to seem like I was using it as an excuse.”

So why talk now?

“It’s important to acknowledge it,” he said. “There are just not a whole lot of us [black quarterbacks] out there, and I knew I’d have to be better and make sure I watched any move on or off the field.

“[Former Bucs and Redskins quarterback) Doug Williams and I were able to help open doors for the next generation. We were pioneers in that. So many African-American quarterbacks are playing now because of the way we played during our time. That’s important to me.”

Moon’s message to others: Live the dream.

“My story is about a guy who didn’t come from a whole lot,” he said. “I had to live through racism and a lot of other stuff, but I was still able to accomplish my dream. People out there struggling to find theirs can do it, too.”

Lesley Visser, who is writing the epilogue for Dr. Murray’s new book “The Mental Performance Index: Ranking the Best Teams in Super Bowl History” will Serve as Analyst for New Orleans Saints-Miami Dolphins on Thursday, Sept. 3 on WFOR-TV in Miami

NEW YORK — CBS Sports’ Lesley Visser, voted the No. 1 Female Sportscaster of all-time by the American Sportscasters Association, is about to break new ground as the first woman analyst for a television broadcast of an NFL game.

On Thursday, Sept. 3, Visser will serve as a color commentator for the fourth quarter of the Miami Dolphins-New Orleans Saints pre-season game seen on WFOR-TV (Ch. 4), the CBS affiliate in Miami. She works the Dolphins pre-season games with Bob Griese, Nat Moore and CBS Sports play-by-play announcer Craig Bolerjack.

“Lesley Visser is one of the most accomplished sportscasters in history,” said Shaun McDonald, President/General Manager of WFOR-TV/CBS4 and WBFS/My 33. “She’s not only an inspiration for others and a pioneer in breaking down boundaries, but she also sets a standard that every other sportscaster aspires to achieve. Needless to say, we’re delighted that she’ll be contributing her expertise to our final preseason game.”

An example is Visser’s pioneer spirit is her support of sports psychology, as she recently had Dr. John F. Murray on her talk radio show with co-host Jeff De Forest on Fox Sports 640 AM to discuss innovative issues to help improve the NFL and NBA with better mental health care and mental training.

“Having had many challenges in my career, I am especially excited about this one,” said Visser, who was the NFL’s first female beat writer in 1976 when she covered the New England Patriots for the Boston Globe. “I am grateful to CBS for giving me this opportunity.”

This season, Visser, the only woman in the Pro Football Hall of Fame as the recipient of the 2006 Pete Rozelle Radio and Television Award, will be working her 36th year of NFL coverage. She will contribute to THE NFL TODAY, the CBS Television Network’s pre-game show, and cover her 23rd Super Bowl when CBS broadcasts Super Bowl XLIV on February 7, 2010 in Miami. Visser became the first female color analyst on radio when she worked selected Monday Night Football games for Westwood One with Howard David and Boomer Esiason in 2002.