Greg Schiano reaches into his pocket, pulls out his iPhone, and holds it up.
“This right here has created something that never existed,” Schiano said at the Big Ten Media Days in Indianapolis last week. “I call it the life of comparison. They live a life of comparison through social media.”
That life of comparison applies to college students across the country, but social media exasperates the pressures already on athletes, particularly college football players who often draw the brightest attention and the sharpest scrutiny.
And along with various other pressures, from the advent of Name, Image and Likeness to simply the task of performing at a high level in top-tier collegiate athletics, the pressure on the mental health of athletes continues to grow.
Schiano said that addressing mental health has always been important, but now more than ever.
And that’s why Rutgers Football, under the guidance of Dr. Peter Economou, the school’s director of behavioral health and sports psychology, has developed a multitude of ways for players to seek help should they need it.
“In our field of sport psychology, when I teach it, one of the unique things that we do here is I’m an academic, so I bridge the gap between academic and athletic — you’re using the research and really applying what we know. we are learning in the laboratory,” said Economou. “So we consider ourselves anthropologists because it’s just recently becoming integrated into sports.”
Along the way, breaking the stigma associated with mental health has been a priority.
“We’re in a social media-driven culture and we’re in a social media-driven business,” security Avery Young said. “We are looking to produce income and produce viewers to get more income. So it’s something that puts a lot of pressure on you, especially when you’re trying to win a football game, and if things don’t go well, then everyone turns their back on you or turns against you. It gets a little dark sometimes. But with all the resources we have now at Rutgers, it’s like a weight has been lifted off your shoulders, I’d say.”
The Big Ten has been at the forefront of addressing the mental health needs of its athletes, including free and unlimited access to the Calm Mental Fitness app. Economou is part of the conference’s mental health and wellness cabinet, which was established in December 2019.
A survey conducted by the NCAA in 2021 found that two-thirds of athletes knew where to go for help, but less than half were comfortable receiving it.
Economou and his team, along with Schiano, have addressed that issue.
“Coach Schiano is a huge advocate for mental health,” said Economou, who has been at Rutgers for four years. “He is very supportive and expresses the importance of him, which is equally important in terms of physical and mental health. That allows and has provided the opportunity to be more involved and close and part of the team culture.”
Mental health providers are present during team meetings, practices, games, and other events. They have become part of the program.
Economou said his team has a “full range” of members of various experiences and education levels to help players from a wide range of backgrounds. They also work and educate themselves with other members of the program, including athletic trainers, strength staff, and administrators.
Interdisciplinary care is “system-wide,” Economou said.
Integration in esports is still new, which means it is still evolving and growing. Psychologists are still learning methods and techniques for treating mental health at a time when college sports, especially college football, are constantly changing.
But the social media effect is here to stay: from trying to compete in that “comparison life” to seeing and reading reviews or, in some cases, vitriol.
“If you ever watch people when they do that, they take this picture, they take that picture, and then they take the best picture and post it,” Schiano said. “I tell our kids all the time, number 1, you are competing with the best. And number 2, if you weren’t going to ask that person for advice, then why do you give a shit what they think? And that’s what you do. When you read what someone says about you, you let it freely enter your brain.”
Economou said it’s important to set limits on how athletes use their phones so they “don’t monitor us because they can easily.”
The effect of NIL, Economou said, is still being studied as it is so new: the new rules came into effect last year.
Meanwhile, the importance of addressing mental health remains paramount.
As the pressures on college football players grow, so does the need to address them.
“I think we’ve done as good or better a job than anyone in the country in building an infrastructure so that our players have access to mental health professionals 24/7 and never feel like, ‘Well, I have a problem, but I couldn’t. not get anyone,’” Schiano said. “They know we have the resources to do it, and that was a big deal for me when we took over.”
