In intercollegiate athletics, however, coaches are busy evaluating prospects for future teams, administrators are traveling from meeting to meeting, athletic trainers and academic advisors are tending to student-athletes who maintain year-round regimens, and sports information directors frantically are shipping media guides off to the printer.

Summer has become just like the rest of the year, which should be of particular concern in college sports. Too many talented people (especially women) find far too little respite from competitive pressures – pushing some to flee into other pursuits. As one academic advisor told this magazine last spring, “The only way we know it’s summer as opposed to spring is there are a few less students and it’s a lot hotter.”

A high-profile football coach’s recent complaint about NCAA legislation that prevented him from visiting high schools also suggests that to some degree we are our own worst enemy. The coach’s complaint was rooted in his belief (no doubt buttressed by the considerable success he has enjoyed) that he outworks most other coaches. But of course, such comments only prod other coaches to work harder and then to join in complaining about the rules they say prevent them from doing so.

Such attitudes ripple through the ranks, as aspiring coaches emulate those who set the examples. Further down the chain, the support staff holds on for dear life as work demands accelerate.

In such an environment, it is disappointing that a now two-year-old set of recommendations from the NCAA Task Force on Life and Work Balance in Intercollegiate Athletics seems to be languishing on the shelf. The report urged a “cultural shift” from the year-round grind in order to encourage the maintenance of a “competent and diverse workforce” in intercollegiate athletics – even to the extent of expanding the type of legislation that drew that football coach’s ire.

Summer, if not a time for respite, can at least be a time for reflection. So maybe it’s a time to take to heart the task force’s thoughtful conclusions and to consider ways that each of us might dial down the intensity of this competitive enterprise in which we are engaged.

One definition of reflection is that it is a thought or idea that results from meditation. Here’s hoping that this summer produces many reflections, pointing the way to a saner work life.