Where'd 'one game at a time' come from? Coaches battling emotions of the game

It's probably impossible to know the exact moment when 'we're taking it one game at a time,' went from analysis to coach speak, but it's been a long time.

The phrase and its ideology are married to sports. Coaches can't afford to even hint at their teams looking ahead or dwelling on the past. They have to live in the moment. Why? Well, as Nebraska football coach Mike Riley said on Tuesday in the Big Ten coaches' teleconference, all of us.

Riley wasn't picking on the media or the fans, to be clear. It's just easier for everyone outside the 14 football offices of the Big Ten programs (OK, every sports office, period) to analyze and dissect in the intervening time between games. Emotions are fundamental to humanity, and it's essentially impossible to avoid them on a football team, whether partially or completely.

That's why the 'one game at a time' drum so often gets beat into the ground.

'There's no doubt you have to guard against that in every way (and) I think it goes to that saying of, 'don't let the last game lost the next one,'' Riley said. 'We try to live in a vacuum of one week at a time, but whether it's a win or a loss, how you handle it can affect the next game.

'I think coaches and some players actually realize it's the best thing to do. It's really difficult because the average person or those in the media have all week to talk about the last game. … I think it's really a trap. I think coaches and players realize you can't do that, but the world around them is surrounded with that. It's something you always battle.'

If you've ever listened to a football coach's news conference following a loss that was preceded by either a high profile win or a loss, you've heard that coach asked, in some form, if there was a hangover from the previous week.

Almost every single one will tell you no in the moment. But it's happened. Especially when considering college athletics, young people aren't always to the maturity level that allows them to process something very good or very bad and compartmentalize it to be able to focus on what's ahead.

Every coach asked on the teleconference Tuesday said the teams best at handling those situations are ones with more experience, hence (in theory) more maturity.

Following Iowa's loss to Michigan State on Saturday, much of social media wondered aloud if the Hawkeyes were emotionally hung over from losing on the last play to No. 4 Penn State. Ferentz said Tuesday at his weekly news conference his team wasn't mentally ready to play when they got to Michigan State. He didn't specify what effect, if any, the Penn State game had in the way of an emotional carry-over, but he couldn't deny it was a challenge.

'There's always emotion that's tied to that,' Ferentz said. 'Some games are easier to move past than others, but that's part of the challenge. There's a million challenges every season. It's just one more part of the equation. Typically more mature teams, older teams handle it a bit better.'

Meeting that challenge is a skill. Some are better at it than others.

Coaches subscribe so forcefully to 'one game at a time,' because that seems to be the best way anyone's found yet of keeping everything in the 12 boxes that make up a season. If something comes along that they find works better at handling the emotional impact of the game, the coaches will do that thing.

Nittany Lions head coach James Franklin said Tuesday training your emotions to peak at the right time is a highly valuable skill. Not getting the players 'too juiced up,' with a 'win one for the Gipper speech' the night before the game is just one example, he said.

So even if a coach reciting a phrase might lead to eye rolls, it's born from a place that people can see pretty easily.

'I think coaches are designed to control people's emotions, right?' Minnesota Coach P.J. Fleck said. 'Emotions are strictly based on a result. When something happens good and something happens bad, you respond to it emotionally. To be able to get those thoughts and ideas directed toward how a culture responds to those things, no matter what happens, and not let it get the best of us one way or another, I think that's a big factor in the game of football.

'I believe that. You can put it in a skill aspect or a talent aspect that you can develop.'

l Comments: (319) 368-8884; jeremiah.davis@thegazette.com