Field Generals: Under Pressure

Tim Jamieson knew what was on everybody’s minds.

The University of Missouri head baseball coach had just finished his second season in the Southeastern Conference, college baseball’s powerhouse division, and it had gone poorly. The Tigers finished with a 6-24 record in conference play and ended the season on a 15-game losing streak in those games.

Jamieson, who has helmed MU since 1995, had seen his job status come under discussion after the team’s first year in the SEC in 2013, when the team experienced similar futility to 2014 but managed to make the conference tournament.

After 2014, however, criticism and speculation heated up, and they were fueled by the fact that Jamieson had one year left on his contract and hadn’t received an extension. If he performed poorly in 2015, the school could just decline to give him a new contract, rather than taking the costly and PR-fraught move of firing him.

That was it. Perform, or be done. What’s a coach to do, in a situation filled with so much pressure and stress?

First of all, transparency is key. At the start of fall practice, Jamieson got the team together and filled them in about the delicacy of his situation, with his own words. They might not have been revelatory, but establishing an honest atmosphere, no matter the situation of the program, is preferable to one of deception and back-talk, like purportedly flourished at Oklahoma under head coach Sunny Golloway, who had great success with the Sooners but was slammed by former players after he left for Auburn in 2013.

“I really appreciated him just being up front with us,” says MU closer Breckin Williams, a fourth round pick by the Diamondbacks in this year’s draft, currently playing with the Hillsboro Hops. “Because I feel like a lot of times coaching staffs at the college level and stuff won’t keep players in the loop, and there’ll be changes made and stuff will be going on and you’ll just never know it, and a lot of times it’ll sidewind you.”

Jamieson doesn’t know if that’s the case with other college programs; in fact, he’d never dealt with a situation when his job was under such discussion until this season. And by addressing the topic to his team, Jamieson was acting proactively, putting up a sort of barrier to outside forces.

“Pressure does not come from outside sources,” Jamieson said. “It comes from inside…whether I choose to acknowledge those things or I don’t.”

It’s the outside distractions, expectations, and other noise, says Jamieson, that combine to create pressure on a coach, who does his best to filter them but nonetheless lets some slip through. No coach is impermeable.

“I don’t think it’s humanly possible,” Jamieson says.

The pressure may create additional motivation and provide fuel to be more focused, but worries are the other byproduct. Jamieson worried about his family, how they were dealing with the speculation and what would happen would he lose his job; he worried about what would change as his job passed from the hands of departing athletic director Mike Alden to those of new hire Mack Rhoades; he worried about normal things coaches worry about, like the health of incoming recruits. He didn’t sleep much.

But being a worrier is a trait widespread in the coaching profession. It often goes hand-in-hand with foresight and proactivity, two traits essential for baseball strategists. Coaches can’t avoid it, as they are trusted and charged with factors over which they have precious little influence, like how a certain player hits or how a bullpen works.

With that in mind, Jamieson taking the reins as Missouri’s pitching coach might have been the best thing for the situation. He could keep himself busy working directly with players, rather than stepping back and looking at the program solely from afar. After a loss, he wouldn’t have time to let negative thoughts stew, because he had to get a pitcher ready for a bullpen.

“Your mind doesn’t wander as much,” Jamieson said. “It helps to stay focused.”

Jamieson put extra effort into not let the worries affect how he went about his job, where they could influence his players and fellow coaches.

“Internally, it was tearing me up,” he said. “But externally, what I wanted to display to our opponents and to our players…I don’t want to see any of that.”

You might have been able to infer a bit about this season from the sole fact that I was able to talk with Jamieson about it. In the preseason poll, league coaches picked the Tigers to finish last in the SEC East, but they started strong in non-conference play and earned series wins against powerful programs like South Carolina and Florida. Midway through the season, multiple publications projected the Tigers to be one of the sixteen teams hosting a regional tournament.

Ultimately, Missouri didn’t get to the NCAA tournament at all. Late season series sweeps against Vanderbilt and LSU, multiple costly midweek losses, and an early exit in the SEC tournament combined to leave the Tigers out of the 64-team field. But the improvement the program showed helped Jamieson earn a three-year contract extension in early June. He could start making the more concrete moves, like hiring an assistant coach, that his job status being in limbo precluded.

Now that Jamieson has proven he can succeed in his current situation, the pressure goes down a bit, right? The proverbial wobbly chair gets a bit more stable? Actually, the opposite is true.

“People think that when you’re losing there’s more pressure on you than when you’re winning,” Jamieson said. “I’ve never felt that. I’ve always felt like the internal motors are higher when you’re winning than when you’re losing, because you know what’s at stake…(you’ve) got to keep doing this, here’s the things that we can achieve.”

That speaks to the true nature of pressure Jamieson mentioned earlier: It’s self-created. And furthermore, no coach is ever invulnerable, so multi-year contracts like the one Jamieson earned are only as cushy as current performance dictates.

So, dear reader, if you ever talk about a coach’s performance or job status with the hope that they’ll notice, you’re just wasting words. They’ve got more than enough company with their own thoughts.