How have athletes changed over the years?
In my experience, athletes in general have become less resilient in the past twenty years. Most of them have more difficulty earning their playing time and success and also have more trouble handling adversity than the athletes in the past did. Thus, their confidence in themselves and in their teammates, coaches and teams erodes too easily. I believe that for the most part the athletes of the past had what we call intrinsic self-confidence---that is confidence that comes from within. That is a more permanent self-confidence. Today’s athletes develop their confidence extrinsically, from feedback of others, and therefore it becomes a temporary confidence. The athletes of the past had more of a tendency to look defeat in the eye and compete when they were down than today’s athletes do. Many of today’s athletes handle adversity and failure by thinking negatively about their next game, performance, at-bat, etc.
On the other hand, today’s athletes are generally better trained and more knowledgeable about the sports that they compete in, and their physical conditioning is much better than athletes of the past.