How Steve Clifford had always lived and grinded on the job — a bachelor with no kids living out of a spartan condo near the office — offered him an around-the-clock dedication to his craft. In many ways, though, Clifford had tilted the imbalances too far. He had to change — or risk losing everything. “For the most part, the diagnosis was sleep deprivation,” Clifford told ESPN. “The headaches and the cause of the headaches were a lack of regular sleep and the stress that goes along with coaching. There were two ways to treat it: Stronger medication or stepping away from coaching, stopping the travel, getting regular sleep, diet and exercise. “But getting on medication would only be a Band-Aid. It could get me through another day, a week, a month, but here was my decision: Long-term health versus coaching right now.
The doctor told me, ‘You may get through this season, but you’re going to have migraines soon, and that’s going to become a much bigger problem for you.'”
