Shuttleworth 1

James Shuttleworth
Dr. E
Writing and Rhetoric
December 11, 2015
Reducing Burnouts in Collegiate Athletics
Athletics in the collegiate athletic atmosphere keep creating better and better
athletes. Faster. Stronger. More agile. But at what cost? Over the years, coaching styles or
techniques have not significantly changed. The athletes are better because they work
harder and longer. This attitude to keep pushing further is commonplace, especially in
high caliber athletics such as the collegiate atmosphere. Despite the good intentions to
become better and more competitive athletes, the increased effort has reached a peak that
is leading to extensive athletic burnouts. A burnout in essence is induced by stress and
occurs when an athlete withdraws from a specific sport due to a newfound lack of
interest. It is characterized by perceptions of emotion and physical exhaustion, reduced
accomplishment, and sport devaluation (Athlete Social Support, Negative Social
Interactions, And Psychological Health Across A Competitive Sport Season 619). This
psychological state has become very common at the collegiate level. According to the
National Collegiate Athletics Association, 47 percent of athletes have experienced
burnout symptoms, 72 percent of athletes have experienced staleness, and 66 percent
stated that they felt overworked in their collegiate athletic experience (Kaufman). This
rampant problem is reducing the performances of athletes and even causing some athletes
to completely quit his or her sport. In order to mitigate this problem, stress reduction

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strategies should be further introduced into the services for athletes. I propose that humor
should be used as a stress reliever in order to reduce the number of burnouts today.
Athletes are experiencing burnout at accelerated rates due to excessive levels of
stress. The stress taxes athletes both mentally and physically. It attacks the athletes in all
aspects of their lives. Athletics in college today require an extraordinary time
commitment in addition to the mental commitment. Athletes are expected to go to
practices multiple times a day on top of earning a college degree, which is in itself
difficult. According to a survey conducted by James Humphrey, when asked for some
sources of stress, most athletes listed academic pressures as a primary source(41). In
addition to these two required activities, athletes are supposed to maintain a social life,
sleep enough to physically recover from workouts, and still make time to satisfy their
insatiable hunger. With all of these time commitments and only twenty-four hours in a
day, athletes are stressed more today than ever before.
In addition to the physical requirements, athletes must also endure mental
pressures. They are expected to do well on a regular basis, continually improve, and beat
opponents. These expectations are created not only by the coaches, but also by the
athletes themselves and fans. For example, coaches expect their athletes to be a good
representation of the coaches ability (Humphrey, Yow, and Bowden 20). Another source
of stress is internal, as the athlete has personal motivation for success in order to maintain
his or her scholarship (Soloman). Many schools do not offer multiyear scholarships, but
instead offer yearly scholarships that can be renewed. These renewable scholarships
enable universities to cut scholarships if the athletes do not perform well or become hurt
along with a myriad of other reasons. Therefore, athletes provide themselves with stress

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because of the need to succeed. A less obvious but still prevalent source of stress for
some athletes is the fans. For the athletes, who are well known, fans provide pressures in
day-to-day contact and over social media (Adler and Adler 300). The fans interactions
with the athletes leave substantial impressions and cause the athletes to believe that
failing would let the fans down. Through these three primary sources, athletes experience
many different stresses, both physically and emotionally, that have a negative effect on
the athletes.
Stress is not an inevitable obstacle that athletes must deal with, but rather it is a
problem that can leave lasting effects on athletes. Stress pushes athletes to the point
where their sport no longer becomes an interest but is instead a burden. When this begins,
athletes performances decrease and some athletes even quit their respective sports. J.D.
DeFreeses and Alan Smiths work on burnouts in collegiate athletics demonstrated that
excessive stress leads to burnouts (Areas Of Worklife And The Athlete BurnoutEngagement Relationship 192). In their study, they surveyed 227 male collegiate
athletes from twelve different teams in the NCAA (Areas Of Worklife And The Athlete
Burnout-Engagement Relationship 184). Their research data supported two primary
conclusions; athletes perceptions of stress are positively correlated with burnout rates;
and the model typically used to study burnouts in the professional setting also applies to
the collegiate athletic setting (Areas Of Worklife And The Athlete Burnout-Engagement
Relationship 192). Each of these findings are significant because the first demonstrates
that stress is the cause of burnouts while the latter further increases the link between other
studies of burnouts in the professional setting and burnouts in the collegiate athletic
setting. In their study, the researchers used the work-fit model, which relates how athletes

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perceive the extent of their stress compared to how much the athletes believe is an
appropriate amount of stress (Areas Of Worklife And The Athlete Burnout-Engagement
Relationship 181). The study found that as the disparity between perceived stress and
appropriate stress increased, burnout rates also increased. Therefore, by decreasing
perceived levels of stress, burnouts would also decline.
The second connection in J.D. DeFreeses and Alan Smiths work on burnouts in
collegiate athletics to burnouts in the professional setting was equally important. The
association further validates other studies that have connected burnout rates to stress and
authenticates different stress coping methods that have successfully been applied to the
work setting. It offers evidence for stress reducing methods applicable to collegiate
athletics. One study that can be specifically applied to the athletic setting was based on
how social worker students use humor to mitigate stress. This study carried out by
Carmen Moran and Lesley Hughes evaluated how social work students used different
humor techniques to mitigate stress. The humor techniques were broken into four
categories: humor production, coping humor, liking humor, and attitude to humor (Moran
and Hughes 505). The research led to two correlations; students who were characterized
as using humor production or coping humor recorded lower levels of perceived stress
(Moran and Hughes 505). These correlations show that athletes could use these two types
of humor to reduce stress and therefore reduce burnout rates.
Another article that illuminates humors effectiveness at reducing stress studied
humors effects on team satisfaction. Philip Sullivan, a renowned sports psychologist,
combined various research studies that he completed to come to the conclusion that
humor helps increase athletes satisfaction with their teams task-oriented functions

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(Sullivan 347). This increase in satisfaction in relation to tasks is important because as
athletes become pleased with their teams performance, they will also be more satisfied
with their own performance due to their contributions to the team.
A major benefit of humor to stress is seen in Herbert Lefcourts contribution, The
Humor Solution, to the book Coping with Stress: Effective People and Processes. In this
chapter, Lefcourt demonstrated the specific psychological pathway through which humor
aids in coping with stress as well as provided psychological evidence from various other
studies on humors effect of stress. Lefcourt stated that humor becomes a necessary form
of coping when one cannot deal with the actual problem at hand and must, therefore,
mitigate the stresss emotional impacts. The act of diminishing the consequences is
known as emotion-focused coping (Lefcourt 71). Lefcourt argued that humor helps to
reduce how much one takes the stress to heart rather than seeing it in a negative light. He
demonstrated that humor helps to make stress feel external and aids in making the stress
seem trivial. In addition to showing the specific logical pathway through which humor
reduces stress, Lefcourt also cited multiple independent psychological studies that all
corroborated humors effectiveness at reducing stress. Through these studies, humor was
shown to reduce stress in various situations.
With such a great deal of stress coming from three separate sources how can
athletes reduce perceived stress? It would be impossible reduce the amount of stress
caused from each source due to their uncontrollability in nature. Therefore, the best way
to mitigate burnouts would be to reduce athletes perceived stress through humor. The
most efficient method to teach these humor coping strategies would be through university
action. Most schools, including, but not limited to, Ohio State University, University of

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Notre Dame, Pennsylvania State University, and University of Michigan, do not offer
support services to athletes that specifically focus on reducing stress (Academic Success
Program; Current Buckeye Resources; Learning Services; Student Athletes Resources).
Though integrating humor as a coping strategy may cost universities time and money, it
would be mutually beneficial for both the athletes and universities to make the change.
Universities hold a personal motivation to increasing the athletes success due to the
income raised from sports and from the overall goal to help athletes successfully
graduate. There are three primary methods through which universities could approach
this integration of humor coping strategies: through tutors, mandatory freshman student
athlete programs, and coaches. All schools offer tutoring programs for student athletes. In
these programs, the tutors could act as models for how to use humor as a stress coping
strategy. When the student arrives at a wrong answer or does poorly on a test, the tutors
could utilize humor to joke about the mistakes to make them seem trivial and, therefore,
less stressful. Another method that universities could utilize that is similar to tutors is
through the coaches. After a stressful loss or event, the coach can act as a model for his or
her athletes. The coach can joke about certain mistakes and consequences to diminish
their negative effects. When the athletes witness both the coaches and the tutors utilizing
humor in this way, they will be more likely to exploit humor in the future in their day-today lives. A final approach that universities could take is to actually teach the benefits of
humor coping strategies. Many schools offer a mandatory freshmen orientation class for
student athletes. In this class, schools could teach not only the benefits of humor coping
strategies, but also provide some examples from everyday life that would illuminate these
benefits.

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Some people may argue that by spending time to incorporate humor into services
for athletes, the athletes would only be taking more time out of their already busy day
and, therefore, causing more stress than was already existent. Though this conclusion is
logical, it would not occur based on my specific proposal. Instead of creating new
programs that would take more time out of the athletes days and only cause further
stress, humor coping strategies should be integrated into previous programs. These
strategies should be introduced in tutoring sessions or student athlete orientation
programs. If enacted in this way, the teaching of the humor coping strategies would not
take any more time from the athletes busy schedules. In addition to not requiring time to
teach the strategies, humor coping tools do not take any time to be enacted by the athletes
either. The beauty and benefit of these tools is that they can only be enacted in day-to-day
interactions and thoughts that would already occur. In conclusion, even though it may
seem that introducing these strategies would be detrimental to athletes stress levels, the
tactics are only beneficial both when taught and enacted.
With excessive stress levels in collegiate athletics leading to vastly detrimental
effects such as burnout, it is obvious that there must be action. Athletes today are subject
to many different stresses from many different sources. Without stress coping strategies
many athletes will continue to experience poor performances and burnouts. Each of these
effects has led to the need for universities to enact humor coping strategies to help
athletes reduce their perceived stress levels.

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Works Cited
"Academic Success Program." University of Michigan Official Athletic Site. Web. 24
Nov. 2015.
Adler, Patricia, and Peter Adler. "The Gloried Self." Social Psychology Quarterly 52.4
(1989): 299-310. JSTOR. Web. 24 Nov. 2015. <http://www.jstor.org/>.
"Current Buckeye Resources." The Ohio State Buckeyes. Web. 24 Nov. 2015.
Defreese, J. D., and Alan L. Smith. "Areas Of Worklife And The Athlete BurnoutEngagement Relationship." Journal Of Applied Sport Psychology 25.2 (2013):
180-196. Academic Search Premier. Web. 11 Nov. 2015.
DeFreese, J. D., and Alan L. Smith. "Athlete Social Support, Negative Social
Interactions, And Psychological Health Across A Competitive Sport Season."
Journal Of Sport & Exercise Psychology 36.6 (2014): 619-630. Academic Search
Premier. Web. 11 Nov. 2015.
Humphrey, James, Deborah Yow, and William Bowden. Stress in College Athletics:
Causes, Consequences, Coping. New York: Haworth Half-Court, 2000. Print.
Kaufman, Keith. "Understanding Student-Athlete Burnout." NCAA. 10 Dec. 2014. Web.
11 Nov. 2015.
"Learning Services." Morgan Academic Support Center for Student Athletes. Web. 24
Nov. 2015.
Lefcourt, Herbert. "The Humor Solution." Coping with Stress: Effective People and
Processes. Ed. C. R. Snyder. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2001. 68-92. Print.

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Moran, Carmen, and Lesley Hughes. "Coping With Stress: Social Work Students And
Humour." Social Work Education 25.5 (2006): 501-517. Academic Search
Premier. Web. 11 Nov. 2015.
Soloman, Jon. "Schools Can Give out 4-year Athletic Scholarships, but Many Don't."
CBSSports. 16 Sept. 2014. Web. 23 Nov. 2015.
"Student Athletes Resources." Notre Dame ASSA. Web. 24 Nov. 2015.
Sullivan, Philip. "Humor Styles As A Predictor Of Satisfaction Within Sport Teams."
Humor: International Journal Of Humor Research 26.2 (2013): 343-349.
Academic Search Premier. Web. 11 Nov. 2015.