Winning Headgames
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TwitterDuring his successful 18-year NFL career as a field goal kicker, Nick Lowery was "iced" more than a few times. You know what "icing" is, of course. It's that game within a game that head coaches play by calling a timeout when a kicker is about to attempt a game-winning three pointer. The idea is to make the kicker think longer about it and feel the pressure, which may make him to shank the kick. It's all about psychology so it seemed fitting that when Lowery decided to pursue a post-career in sports talk radio, his show would be about self-improvement and the mental side of sports and it would be called "Headgames."
"As a kicker on the sidelines, you can't control where the offense is going to set up for you to kick your field goal and that's a bit of a metaphor for life itself," says Lowery. "You will be presented with some situations you can't control, so it's always about controlling the things you can handle. It's about how you can focus your interpretation of the opportunities."
Those are the types of issues and questions Lowery deals with every day on Headgames Radio, which is currently on Sirius Satellite radio (channel 122 from Monday-Friday, 10-11 am, pst). Lowery launched Headgames as a local show in Phoenix in 2004. Then Sports Byline, which distributes a number of sports radio shows, picked it up a year later (the show is about to be produced by Sporting News Network).
"I'm not in position to say there's nothing like, but I'm not aware of anything like it," says Darren Peck, the president of Sports Byline. "It's unique. It's what the best sports talk is; a specific sensibility and talking about topics that the host is passionate about. The areas that Nick focuses on now are these key issues of motivation and overcoming adversity in sports and even life."
Lowery says he simply wants to examine how and why athletes perform the way they do and what lessons everyone can learn from their success and failure.
"Sports has become an anchor to the values that we hold dear to our society, such as freedom of expression and pursuit of excellence," says Lowery, who went to Dartmouth College and holds a master's degree from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. "And within those themes the great ones have to confront moments of truth."
Those moments of truth then become the jumping off points for Lowery and his eclectic stable of regular guests to explore the concept of how to perform your best when it matters most. In addition to interviewing professional sports coaches and athletes-everyone from Kansas City Chiefs coach Herman Edwards to ice skating champion Sasha Cohen--Lowery's weekly "Performance Team" guests include Peter Roby, the Director of the Center for the Study of Sport in Society, Lt. Colonel Bill Adams, the Director of West Point's Center for Enhanced Performance and Dr. John Eliot, Professor of Sports Ethics at Rice University.
"The psychologists and performance experts speak to those very specific situations in context because listeners want to be able to identify with real people and real examples," says Lowery.
Sometime a big sports story can dominate a show for days. When Tiger Woods won the 2006 PGA Championship after going through something of a slump, Lowery used it as a lesson on commitment. "But it wasn't just about Tiger Woods, of course, it's about how people deal with failure. The most important thing for kids to learn is how important failure is and that it is something to be welcomed. As [famed UCLA basketball coach] John Wooden would say, 'The team that makes the most mistakes is a team that wins if the attitude of embracing life, embracing mistakes and embracing the process of growth is crucial.'"
Lowery knows something about dealing with and overcoming failure first hand. Before he became the most accurate kicker in NFL history (he made 80 percent of his field goal attempts and scored 1,704 points for the Kansas City Chiefs and the New York Jets) he was cut 11 times by eight different teams.
"It's not really what happened between the 11th cut and finally making the team at 12," says Lowery. "It was what happened between 1 and 12. It was a process. Sometimes your destiny unfolds according to a plan that's not in your control."
Indeed. During some shows last year, Lowery explored the saga of Joe Phillips, a defensive tackle and former teammate of Lowery's with the Chiefs. Phillips retired in 1999 and his post-playing career had not gone well. As of the last September, Phillips was 'on the lamb', having skipped a court appearance for a DUI charge in Oregon.
"Joe is truly a wonderful man with a good soul," says Lowery. "Who's to say the things that happened to him couldn't happen to us as well. Increasing ones ability to have compassion and empathy and also believing in one's self--those are fundamental building blocks for life."
Lowery's own compassion and empathy extend beyond his talk show radio universe. He's created two leadership programs for native youth in America-- Native Vision and Nation Building for Native Youth. In 2002, he appeared before the Senate Committee on Native Affairs when it was exploring the problem facing young Native Americans. "Historically, the chapter in American history that is the most incomplete, the most unhappy is that of Native Americans," insists Lowery.
During the 2006 Super Bowl week, Lowery and a few other former NFL stars (such as Christian Okoye, Bryan Cox and Keith Byers) visited American troops in Iraq. The seven-time All-Pro kicker posted a daily diary on his blog Nick's Kicks. "I wonder how close the character the great warriors in sport have to those who truly put it all on the line, anonymously, 10,000 miles from home, with no instant replay available," Lowery wrote after meeting some of the soldiers and observing how they dealt with pressure while fighting a war. "Do they visualize in vivid, rich detail 'the game' before it happens-is it all similar to their own personal life or death 'Super Bowl' in Iraq?"
In the community of football players, kickers have always been considered "different" and Nick Lowery is certainly a different kind of radio talk show host. What does he ultimately want to accomplish with Headgames? "I hope that it helps people live in the moment, live in the present and appreciate each moment and the potential that it has."
