Video transcript:
”From the first play to the last play. Fast, physical, relentless. Smart, disciplined, poised. One play at a time, six seconds of play. Every play has got a life and a history of its own. Like it’s nothing– nothing. Not affected by success, not affected by failure. Onto the next play. Never satisfied. Playing to a standard, and not the circumstances of the game.”
This is the standard implemented by Curt Cignetti that helped Indiana football go from the team with the most losses in college football history to a national championship in just two seasons. It’s this emphasis on playing to a standard and not the circumstances of the game, or not a scoreboard or not the outcomes that makes all the difference.
As college baseball and softball and other spring sports are starting up this month, some of you might be getting off to really hot starts, and some of you might be getting off to really slow starts. Some of you might be somewhere in the middle, or some of you might not have gotten an opportunity yet at all. And whether or not that’s you, it can be really easy to start looking at the numbers and the statistics for really small sample sizes and start to make judgements and to start to kind of feel that pressure in thinking like, if I keep this up, I might be an All American, or, holy crap, I gotta pick it up immediately. And whether this is or isn’t you, we have this tendency to believe that we can start controlling the outcomes and controlling the numbers. And when we’re on a hot streak, we wanna make it last forever. And when we’re on a slump, we’re worried that it will last forever. And we certainly have influence over these things.
If a certain adjustment needs to be made to play at a higher level, then we should absolutely make that adjustment. But as soon as we start to believe that we can control the results, that’s when the results start to control us, and how present we are, how much effort we put in, where our focus is.
When you compete to a standard, meaning prioritizing a focus on the quality in which you do things, you’re more dependable, you’re more consistent, and you provide value even when the numbers might not be there. Someone like this is almost impossible to take outta the lineup and is the first one off the bench when they’re not already in it.
So ask yourself, what are my standards as a player? What are the controllable aspects of my game that I take the most pride in? How present can I be? How committed to my approach can I be? How good of a teammate can I be?
You’ll find that if you play to a standard and not a scoreboard, not a stat line, not a result, the results will take care of themselves.