Welcome back or welcome to THE PROCESS, a limited series within Y-Option: College Football with Yogi Roth, hosted by myself and Rhett Kleinschmidt. This series exists for one reason: to study how high performers actually live. Not what they post. Not what they say at a podium. What they do when nobody’s clapping.
The first 5 conversations delivered in powerful ways: Mark Jackson, Peyton Manning, Chris Fowler, Jared Goff, Dan Lanning and today, the final episide airs within this limited run.
This conversation, fueled by our founding sponsor 76, keeping you on the GO GO GO so you never miss a beat, takes us to Bloomington, Indiana. We go inside the head coaches office. Inside the mind of the man who built one of the most relentless, standards-driven programs in America.
Curt Cignetti.
Indiana and Coach Cignetti are coming off a season that ended with hardware and history. Awards. Trophies. Headlines. The whole thing.
And the first thing he made clear was also the most revealing.
Inside the building, it is already time to start over.
While the outside world is still celebrating, he is in development mode. New faces, teaching standards, sharpening the details, preparing for spring ball. The tone is not nostalgic. It is not sentimental. It is focused and the message is simple: what happened is real, and it is over.
What Rhett and I loved most is that our conversation was not a performance from Coach Cignetti.
It is who he is.
The deeper we went, the more the through-line showed itself. His approach does not change because the circumstances do. Big game, small game, championship, rebuilding year—it’s all the same.
The Process stays steady, but the improvement never stops.
Coach Cignetti is always refining how his staff teaches, how they spend time, how they build schematically, how they communicate. That mindset shows up in how he evaluates players too.
We have all heard his phrase production over potential and this conversation gave it real teeth.
Yes, the portal makes evaluation easier in some ways—you have a body of work. You can see consistency. You can see how a player performed against real competition over multiple seasons. But he talked about something that matters more than highlight tape.
Fit.
When you sit across from a player, you learn a lot fast. How they carry themselves. How they talk. How they listen. First impressions are not perfect, but they are meaningful. Then comes the research. The calls. The trusted recommendations. The quiet intel. The stuff that never gets posted.
He also got specific about what he looks for physically too, beyond the high school combine stats.
Flexibility in the lower half. The ability to stop, start, redirect, generate power. It is detailed. It is intentional. And it is consistent.
But toughness is still number one.
Not the cartoon version. Real toughness. Day-to-day accountability. The willingness to work. The ability to be coached. The resilience to keep growing when it is hard, when it’s boring.
What stood out most: even with more doors opening after a historic season, the standard does not bend.
Most of us would imagine that there is a temptation after winning to widen the net, to take a few more chances, to rationalize why a guy might be worth it. Coach Cignetti made it clear that is how you quietly change the standard without admitting it. If you start accepting players below it, that becomes the new standard.
And that is a reminder that goes well beyond football.
Everything is earned. There are no promises. There are no guarantees. There are no shortcuts.
We also spoke about pressure and how he manages it for his players and his staff.
Coach Cignetti shared a story from early in his head coaching career that has become one of his quiet tools. In the tensest moments, when the game is tight and everything feels heavy, he will drop a simple line that changes the temperature. It is a reminder that the players are alive in the moment, not trapped by it. It is pressure relief and recalibration in one breath.
With his staff, he is big on consistent messaging. He will step into a staff meeting and deliver one short, specific message. One or two things he believes the team must embody right now. Then he trusts his coaches to carry it. He trusts the message to trickle down and become action.
He does not need to touch everything to control everything.
That trust, built over time, is part of why the standard holds. And if something is off, he will step in and rattle chains. Not because he is emotional. Because he is protective of the level.
The conversation closed where so many great ones do: family.
I asked about his father, about adversity, about the moments that shape leaders before they ever wear the headset. He talked about his dad as a fighter. Competitive. Disciplined. Tough. A man with a relentless work ethic who never met a challenge he did not believe he could overcome.
Those traits did not just stay in the family. They got handed down into the program.
That might be the real story of why Indiana has been able to rise and sustain. Not just scheme. Not just recruiting. Not just facilities.
Its identity. Its standard. The daily choice to do it the right way, even when nobody is watching.
Coach Cignetti said he is proud of the team they had. Proud of the leaders. Proud of the closeness. And he made the point that matters most—whether you are building a program, a company, or a family:
You can win games, but you do not win big or win consistently if you are not doing it the right way. If you are helping people become the best they can be, football will carry them now, and it will carry them later when football ends.
Then Rhett and I stayed in The Afterglow for a few minutes, because these conversations always leak into real life.
We talked about standards at home. Non-negotiables. The idea that if you want your kids to live with discipline, you have to model it. If you want a standard, you have to set one, and then you have to live it.
Nobody keeps you more honest than your kids.
That might be the best accountability system on earth.
So here is the takeaway I am sitting with today:
Dig into your philosophy, your values, what matters most to you and your circle. And compete to keep the standard. Then attack the details, but do not attach to the outcome. Rather, and maybe even ironic, stay connected to The Process…
Thanks for coming along for this ride with Rhett and me, as it’s been a blast.
Much love and stay steady,
Yogi
