Could Abraham Maslow, the preeminent psychologist, trash-talk as exuberantly as Alphonso Pogue, the high-energy, high-thinking, outside linebackers coach for the WVU Mountaineers?
No.
Or, probably not, anyway.
At least based on that first acquaintance you made during Psychology 101 in your freshman year.
However, the psychologist and the guy who practices his own brand of psychology every day as a football coach do tread a lot of the same ground.
Which, we’ll get to.
First, though, a mic’d-up Coach Al Pogue, from a practice during spring drills:
“Yeee-AAARGH!”
“Wait a minute — did you say you played wide receiver in high school? That wasn’t you? My bad. I had you mistaken for an athlete.”
“We’re coming for you, Jack. It’s nothing personal. I like you. But we’re coming for you.”
“Yeee-AAARGH!”
Granted, the above transcript might read a little flat, with a “Guess you had to be there,” undertone.
But Pogue’s in-the-moment performance — let the coach sound his yawp — was as animated as any ESPN “Game Day” crowd mugging behind Herbstreit, Corso, et. al., on Saturday morning.
There’s Pogue, yelling.
And laughing.
And taunting.
And setting himself up as a punchline during agility drills.
And laughing. (Again).
In the middle of all this (seemingly) manic behavior, he’s also doing something else.
He’s coaching. He’s teaching.
He’s telling his guys what to do when the screen comes their way, and how to win the war of feet and hands during one-on-one pass coverage.
Pogue’s been doing this for a long time in the college ranks.
He earned his passage in Alabama public schools.
Dr. Maslow calls the play
Yep, Pogue was a high school football coach.
He was a high school football coach in the state of Alabama.
A high school football coach in the state of Alabama intuitively knows the sport still wears a houndstooth hat for special occasions, even with the Bear being gone all these years.
“Special occasions,” as defined by any Friday night or Saturday afternoon in autumn.
In this gridiron-infused place, stars fall (in a good way, just like the song says) during four quarters ensuing on a football field.
You’ll see Pogue directing the alignment of stars in West Virginia today at Milan Puskar Stadium in Morgantown, where WVU lines up against Texas Tech in a bid for the rebuild.
It’s a noon kickoff and a national television audience. Mountaineer Week, too.
Pogue has worked bigger venues over his career — and certainly smaller, too.
All of them were giant, though, for the guys who would never play another down after high school, to the others bound for Division I and maybe the next step after that.
“Step,” is a word that is giant, in the coach’s vocabulary.
“Step,” as in, “stepping up.”
That is, grabbing on to it, when the coach points at you and tells you to get in there after somebody was slow to his feet after the hit.
A lot of opposing receivers were slow in getting to their feet during Pogue’s days as a mercenary cornerback and free safety for Alabama State.
The Mobile, Ala., native was a three-year starter and All-American, on his way to earning a degree in special education.
He was a classroom teacher in his field also.
As a teacher, he knew how to size up the personnel, either in the front row and back row, or the huddle.
He knew the players and students he could yell at, because they could take it (and needed it); and he knew the players for whom a quieter, more professorial approach got the desired result.
It was all about playing to one’s potential, really.
Just like Maslow.
Maslow was the psychologist who came up with the Hierarchy of Needs pyramid that steps up every first semester for Psych 101.
Primal needs — oxygen, food, sleep, etc. — are at the base.
Every other level is a higher level, literally and figuratively. Meet one level, make another.
At the end, you’re self-actualized: You make the college football playoffs, in the parlance of Pogue’s line of work.
Maslow, however, was talking about physical and emotional survival.
Pogue’s ideas of survival and self-actualization are completely different in the college football player’s hierarchy of needs.
Carver juggernaut
If you’re already good enough to play D-I football, he reasons, you’re already good enough, period.
Your basic needs as an athlete, through genetics and drive, have already been met.
“Now, you just have to make guys believe they can go out there and win,” he said.
There ended up being a lot of believers on Pogue’s 2008 team at George Washington Carver High School, in Montgomery, Ala.
It was Pogue’s first year as head coach there. He inherited a team that had only won three games the season before.
The opener against Jefferson Davis was akin to a tornado in a trailer park. Carver crushed it, 50-7.
On, the carnage went, and October of that year couldn’t have been scarier.
In the five games that month, Carver outscored its opponents 266-23, including a 71-0 steamrolling of Monroe County. Tecmo Bowl, anyone?
Pogue left Carver for Auburn in 2011, which led him to Troy and now-WVU head coach Neal Brown.
“We’ve got the players and we’ve got the coaches,” he said, referring to his boss’s team in Morgantown. “We’re gonna do this thing up here.”
Besides, the teacher-by-training said, with nary a whisper of trash-talking: You always put up good numbers with self-actualization.
And never mind those four quarters.
“I want our guys to win on the field, but I want them to succeed in life.”
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