Comeplexity isn't a vice

Why is media coverage of sport psychology so superficial?

'The president just reminded us that complexity isn't a vice'

In Season 4 of The West Wing, the American political drama, President Jed Bartlet faces a debate against Republican rival Robert Richie, ahead of an upcoming election.

The stakes are high and preparatory discussions in the Bartlet camp revolve around the degree of complexity the president should inject into the debate. With everything to lose, will the president's tendency to flaunt his intellect actually aid Richie, by casting Bartlet as exactly the kind of pompous politician voters love to hate?

Encouraged by his communications chief, Toby Ziegler, Bartlet throws caution to the wind, tearing Richie apart on issues ranging from state rights to education. It’s a performance that leads Leo McGarry, the White House Chief of Staff, to utter the words at the start of this article.

McGarry’s ‘complexity isn’t a vice’ quote springs to mind with pretty much every throwaway line granted to sport psychology by TV and the tabloids. In an era of microscopic tactical analysis, where xG (expected goals) is a regularly-used performance measure on a programme as broadly watched as Match of the Day, why are pundits still settling for soundbites as rudimentary as 'you can tell they just don't look up for it'?

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That was - almost ad-verbatim - Alan Shearer's description of the Chelsea team who trooped off the field at half-time during their FA Cup clash with Manchester City in January.

Clearly, some measures of cognitive performance (such as scanning frequency) are unsuitable for a Sunday afternoon BBC audience. But broadcasters should, at the very least, be able to offer simple, theoretically sound explanations of concepts such as motivation.

Shearer - whose articles for The Athletic point to a level of insight that would allow him to do just that - could easily have referred to the number of changes ex-Blues boss Graham Potter made to Chelsea’s team. He could have spoken about the side’s run of poor form at the time, highlighting how this would influence players' feelings of connection and competence (and therefore motivation). He did neither.

This isn’t to point the figure at Shearer, though. Another Stamford Bridge first-teamer, Raheem Sterling, has been the subject of much debate since the start of the season. The England forward's early campaign renaissance under Mauricio Pochettino has been hailed in TV discussions and website columns. But take a look at the balance that analysts and reporters strike between evaluating Sterling's tactical development under his new manager and attempting to understand the former Liverpool striker's state of mind.

The former topic is interrogated through heatmaps, stats showing Sterling's attempted dribbles and charts detailing his penalty box touches, compared to equivalent figures from last season. The latter? Well, there are references to the trust that Pochettino's management has helped foster, a few quotes from interviews in which Sterling mentions motivation and...that's about it.

Look, in contrast, at the below list of factors that influence confidence (taken from research by Kate Hays, Owen Thomas, Ian Maynard and Mark Bawden):

Even if we acknowledge the mild appetite for and paucity of publicly consumable data denoting traits such as confidence, motivation and focus, the opportunity to explore significant influences on performance is being passed up.

In Sterling's case, surely readers would benefit from even the briefest exploration of the facilitative environment Pochettino constructs at clubs (perhaps aided with the kind of easily understood graphic illustrated below) and the impact this might have on a range of psychological traits, from confidence to resilience.

As it is, some of the more illuminating explanations of the psychology behind sport are being provided by athletes themselves. Jason Doherty, a Gaelic footballer, spoke recently about the impact of irrational beliefs and the coping strategies that have helped him manage the negative emotions.

The accounts provided by Doherty and his peers are welcome, insightful contributions to a debate worthy of the detail their stories provide. It's a shame, at a time of increasingly in-depth, wall-to-wall sports coverage, that they're not supported by equally specific accounts from those watching the action unfold. 

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