High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 738: How Great Coaches Build Belief: Lessons from Mountain West Coach of the Year Jason Eck, Head Football Coach, University of New Mexico Lobos

Episode Date: March 19, 2026

In this episode of The High Performance Mindset, Dr. Cindra Kamphoff sits down with University of New Mexico Head Football Coach Jason Eck to explore what it truly takes to build belief inside a team. In his first season leading the Lobos, Coach Eck engineered one of the most remarkable turnarounds in college football—leading the program to nine wins, a bowl game appearance, and Mountain West Coach of the Year honors after being projected near the bottom of the conference. But behind the wins is something deeper. Coach Eck shares how leadership, culture, and mindset shape the foundation of a high-performing team. Drawing from more than two decades of coaching experience across Division II, FCS, and FBS football—including championship runs at Minnesota State and South Dakota State—he explains how leaders create environments where confidence grows and teams outperform expectations. Throughout the conversation, Eck discusses how belief is rebuilt in struggling programs, how players develop mental toughness for high-pressure moments, and why culture must become player-driven rather than coach-driven for lasting success. This episode is a powerful reminder that confidence and culture aren't built overnight. They are created through daily standards, aligned leadership, and a mindset that prepares teams to perform when the stakes are highest. You'll Learn: • How Coach Eck helped players build real confidence after a turnaround season • What leaders can do to help teams handle pressure and rising expectations • Mental habits athletes use to stay composed in high-stakes moments • How leaders rebuild belief in teams that haven't experienced success • Leadership lessons from rebuilding multiple football programs     Episode Resources & Links Learn more about the Mentally Strong Institute: https://mentallystronginstitute.com/ Follow University of New Mexico Football: (1) New Mexico Football (@UNMLoboFB) / X Follow Jason Eck on X: (1) Jason Eck (@Coach_Eck) / X Request a Free Mental Breakthrough Call with Dr. Cindra or her team: https://freementalbreakthroughcall.com/ Download our Confidence Research Study: https://confidencestudy.com/

Today on the high performance mindset, we're talking about what it really takes to build belief in a team because culture and confidence doesn't appear overnight. They're built through leadership, consistency, and a mindset of people inside the locker room. And our guest today knows a lot about that. Today we're joined by coach Jason Epp, who has quietly become one of the best program builders in college football. Before leading one of the biggest turnarounds in the country at the University of New Mexico the season, he outbuilded, championship teams at multiple levels, including where I first met him at Minnesota State in Mankato, where he helped the Mavericks make a run to the National Championship Game Division 2. That stop in Mankato was a big career accelerator for him. And after those two dominant

offensive seasons, he was hired by Montana State in 2015, later became the offensive coordinator at South Dakota State University, where he won the AFCA FCS assistant coach of the year, eventually becoming the head coach at Idaho, where I got to have the pleasure of working with his team. And then fast forward to today, he just finished his first season leading the Lobos, and Coach Eck led the program to one of its best seasons in decades, earning Mountain West Coach of the Year honors. But behind the wins is something deeper, leadership, belief, and the mental edge required to build a team that plays with confidence. So today we're talking about how do you build a team? culture, how do you develop leaders and create a mindset that allows teams to outperform

expectations? Coach Eck, welcome to the high performance mindset podcast. Stendra, I'm honest, honored to be on with you. You've always been such a great, you know, supporter of the teams I've been involved with. And I think you've really made a big difference, you know, on those teams, whether it was at Mancato or Idaho or here last year. And, you know, I'm excited to chat with you and talk a little bit. bit about, you know, the method behind our madness here. I love it. Well, and when I was putting this

introduction to get together, I was like, wow, I knew all this, but, you know, it was really impressive just looking at your record and all the things you've accomplished at these different schools, right? And really being this incredible culture builder, and I've seen it firsthand. So I just want to start with asking you a question about, you know, when you start a program like at the University of New Mexico, tell us a little bit about, like, what's really important to. to you as you get started building that culture? Well, I think, you know, building a team, building a culture starts with people. And you want to get, you know, great people.

And I think, you know, for my, I have a pretty good litmus test. You know, I want to hire people that I like to be around, you know, people that, you know, regardless of work, you know, people I'd like to, you know, go for a walk with or spend the afternoon with or, you know, go to a. a basketball game with, have a beer with. I mean, I want people who have good energy. I think good energy attracts other energy. And I think that's a great, you know, a great starting point.

And then, you know, after you add those people, it's really working hard to get to know each other. And I think especially now in college football where there's more roster turnover than there was before the transfer portal and before NIL, I really think there's a premium on if you can get people connected and build close connections to get on the same. page and, you know, being really consistent with your messaging is important. That's why, you know, having a mental performance coach like you really, you know, helps us because we're, you know, you're echoing a lot of the same messages we're talking to the players about and our strength coach. I think there's a great job of promoting those same points of emphasis and, you know, Aaron Keene, who we both worked with, you know, he used to always say that. And I think there's truth that when you have the same message with many voices, it really sinks in.

Yeah, excellent, excellent. So when you think about just walking into a new program and you've done this at multiple places, I think about Idaho and how you had so much success there and now at the University of New Mexico, what are two or three sort of cultural standards that you really try to establish right away, besides like getting good people on the bus? Yeah, I think building belief is important because you know that in your business, you know, how much really confidence and belief transitions. to your results.

And, you know, when you go into places that have not had a lot of success, it's probably even more so because you're not just even building belief in the athletes. You're building belief like really in the fan base and things. So I think the your body language, the confidence in your messaging, you know, the setting, you know, goals and it's really sticking to those and reiterating and talking to. about having a vision of where we're going to go and consistently hitting on those is important. And then, you know, for us, you know, we talk about, you know, championship behavior. You know, we're going to act like champions before we get to the point where we're going to

actually win a, you know, a championship. And, you know, I have a belief that there's, you know, this is something I learned that a freshman in college, not a social psychology class, but just, you know, consistency of self across areas of your life. And, you know, to me, it's not surprising, you know, you were. a high performer as an athlete as a runner. It's not surprising that you're a high performer now in your industry now with mental performance.

I think there's a lot of carryover between different factors of a person's life. And we really stress that to the players. And we see buying of that. They start to realize that when they take care of things in one area of their life, it makes football easier. So we really stress that championship behavior and doing things the right way in all aspects of your life. And then I feel like our guys start seeing carryover between the.

those areas. Absolutely. And how did you decide to use championship behavior as your motto or your guideline? And then what does that actually mean to you? Because I think about coaches who maybe are listening that want to say, well, I want to do something similar. I don't know where to start. And I don't really even know. Can I think of championship behavior is really the standard that guided all of you this year, right? And allowed, I think, the team to rise above because they knew exactly what that meant. Yeah, I think you can be ahead of me

if you realize it before you become a head coach. I think I didn't settle on it until I became a head coach. And, you know, I was, you know, one of those guys who I wasn't sure if I was going to be a head coach. You know, I think if you had asked me back when I was at Mankato and I worked with you, I don't know if that was

something that was really on my radar. So even when I got the head coaching job at Idaho, I don't think I had totally my philosophy totally, you know, had my head wrapped around it. But then, you know, I really just started. I think you have a lot of beliefs and a profession of what, what is good and what is bad and what has helped you win and what has been the reason when you haven't had success. And, you know, that was kind of a, you know, a common theme as I thought about it is, hey, we got to be a team that doesn't beat ourselves. We got to be a team that can master the things that are non-talent issues.

and if we can just do a good job of taking care of ourselves and not beating ourselves, I mean, that's going to help us get the 500 right away. You know, if we can just eliminate that and then, you know, you figure out a way to beat, you know, one of the teams that's better than you. And I think that's been a, you know, kind of something that we've been able to do, whether it was our first year at, you know, Idaho, we went on the road and upset Montana, who was like a 20-point favorite. This year we were able to go on the road and beat UCLA.

You just not be yourself and then find a way to steal a game against somebody. You know, now you're in business to have a winning season and turn around a program. And, you know, we kind of broke it down and really had some pillars that we talked about. And, you know, accountability we define as doing what you're supposed to do, what you're supposed to do it. Just kind of trying to build that trust between your teammates, between your coaches, that you're going to have great effort, do your assignment right. And then toughness, now that you play a big point. part of that. I thought the team last year at New Mexico was probably the toughest team I've ever been around. And we define that. How do you respond when bad things happen?

Yeah. I think that's a life lesson as much as it is something that will help you in football. And then the last two urgency, and we define urgency as a passion to get better on a daily basis. And I really want to be surrounded by those type of people in our building, whether it's coaches, whether it's players. You know, it's myself. I got to be a lot better head coach next year than I was this year. if we're going to get ahead. And then the last one just, you know, and I think this resonates with you as well, just with your books and things,

but grit. And, you know, we define grit as, you know, effort over a long period of time towards long-term goals. And I truly think football is one of those games. Like a lot of things are where, you know, you can work for quite a while and not necessarily see tangible results. But if you just keep going and plug it along

and really have focused deliberate efforts, eventually you start seeing those tipping points where you start seeing results and it can sometimes those results can go fast. I think in my career I had, you know, 23 years as an assistant coach that I had to put in before I finally got the opportunity to be a head coach. But then my lessons I learned and what I had in place, you know, put me ready so that when I did have that opportunity, I've taken advantage of it. It would have done well.

Yeah, awesome. And I think what I observed like last year at University of New Mexico working with the team is those, you know, those, those core models or principles behind championship behavior are right up on the wall right when you walk in. They're in the team room. And then you continue to reinforce those. And I think that's important because, you know, deciding on what you want in the values and principles to guide your program, but then keep on repeating them, I think that's

one of the things that you do incredibly well. And I think you do incredibly, you know, you're incredible at like helping the team believe that they can win. and they, when they are underdogs, what do you think that really takes? And what do you do throughout the week to help them believe that they can win against UCLA or whoever it might be? Yeah, I think those are, they're really, they're long-term projects more than short-term. You know, I remember, I remember tweaking our spring game format before my last year at

Idaho because I thought, you know what, we're going to go play Oregon the first game of the year and we're going to need to be ultra confident to go compete with Oregon. You know, they're one of the top five teams in the country. I mean, you know, Oregon this year played Montana State who won the FCS national title and beat them really badly. We were able to go in there. We lost 24-14. We hung in there. But, you know, I tweaked our spring game format because I wanted to make sure that our starting offense and starting defense both came out of spring feeling really good about themselves. I didn't want to have them on the last day competing against each other where one team won and now the other side kind of had a, you know, a stick in there, you know,

something, you know, chip on their shoulder all summer. I wanted them both feeling like, man, we played great today. We had a great performance. You know, and I tell our coaches that, I think your body language all week as a coach, the statements you make. And I'd seen a lot of ways to do it. You know, when I was an assistant coach for 23 years, I was around 12 different head coaches in 23 years.

And, you know, just even how. how framing things, you know, obviously those games, you've got to play well because you can get embarrassed if you don't. But like if you put it in those terms, like when someone makes a mistake, like, you know, you better not do that or we're going to get embarrassed or they're going to beat us by 50, you know, right away. I think you're instilling doubt and you're conveying that. So I think just, you know, the coach's body language all week, the coach's body language, the first time the players come to the sideline where we didn't have a great series. I think that's super important.

And then, you know, I think finding some edges, you know, finding some edges that you can sell the guys on of why we're going to win this game. You know, why are we going to be able to do this even though they have more resources or we may appear overmatched, you know, and I think giving guys some substance to why, you know, we can do that is critical. And, again, one of our biggest things we always turn back to is, you know, this game is going to mean more to us than them. This game is going to give us more validity.

It's going to help our players who want to go to the NFL. We know that as a group of 16 that when we play a Power 14, if an NFL scouts evaluate and this game will be the first game that those people put on to watch where, you know, if they're looking at a Big Ten player, that's probably not the first game they're going to turn down to watch versus Idaho or New Mexico. They want to watch their game against Ohio State or Indiana.

So, you know, we try to use some of those maybe perceived disadvantages to an advantage for us and to build that belief throughout the week. But it's not something like you start thinking of the night before the game. You know, it's really a whole week process. And then sometimes it was, if it was the opening game of the season, something that even started the spring before. Yeah. You know, and I appreciate what you just said, which I think is brilliant,

is also tying, you know, the team success or their success to, like, their personal goals. And I know a lot of the guys there, yeah, would really want to play. play in the NFL. And so it's like, you know, the NFL scouts are going to be watching this. So not only do they want to do well for the team, but it's like, okay, I need to level up here and bring my A game. You know, I read this article this year about you and your son and how, why you decided to become a head coach. I'd love you to tell us why you decided to become a head coach because you kind of said, a Minnesota state you weren't quite sure that that's something that you wanted to do. what made you decide this is what I want?

You know, it was interesting. You know, really it was probably first fostered during the COVID shutdown. And, you know, that year, you know, in the fall of 2020, I was the FCS coach. I was the offensive coordinator at South Dakota State. We didn't play our season in the fall. It got moved to the spring.

And John Stiglmarrier, who I worked for, great mentor of mine, he was wonderful. We were still practicing. But, you know, that year, my son was a sophomore. high school, and I think I got to go to like 10 out of his 12 games that year. Sometimes coach would move the practice schedule a little bit to let me get to the game. You know, some of those games in South Dakota are far flung because there's not a huge population

there. And, you know, even more weird, we weren't playing our games in the stadium, but the high school played at the stadium at Dykow Stadium where the Jackrabbits say it. So I'd be sitting in our home stadium. We weren't playing games, but, you know, South Dakota was a pretty good place to be during COVID. They were playing their games. And so I'd be sitting there with my wife and she'd look at me at least like once or twice a game and say it's so weird to be sitting in the stadium next to you watching a football game rather than you being on the sideline. And

that kind of evolved to A, it's going to be really hard if you're coaching one place on a Saturday and your son is playing somewhere else on a Saturday and I'm going to feel torn. And that really got me thinking about being a head coach. My son is a linebacker. And I was the offensive coordinator. you know, again, the way coaching works, I, you know, the offensive coordinator does not have a lot of say about who we're going to recruit on defense. So, you know, I wasn't necessarily going to be able to connect to my son and I, but that was probably the start of thinking about being a head coach. And, you know, it was really just having a little bit more, you know, control. I have a big family that had five kids. And, you know, I thought maybe it would be a good thing that would be better for my family, being able to set the schedule a little bit more and control that, those things.

And that sprung out of it. At first, you know, it was pursuing a Division II head job, you know, looking at a place I had been at the past, Winona State. I had an opening that I knew about. And, you know, summer of like 2021, I was making some calls about, you know, trying to get involved with that job. It was going to open the next year. The coach had announced he was retiring. And then some other opportunities ended up.

So I had, you know, after my first 22 seasons of college football, I'd never interviewed for a head coaching job. And then after my 23rd season, I ended up interviewing for three different jobs. and it ended up working out at Idaho, and it was a great opportunity for my family, especially coaching my son's been very special for me, for my wife, for Jackson siblings. It's been great. Yeah, and if you didn't follow the University of New Mexico, Jackson had an incredible year as a junior, was named Code Mountain West Defensive Player of the Year. And, you know, what I just saw is like the way that he led that team in so many different ways,

if it was like extra sessions, learning more about the defense, or just though this, sometimes it's like silent leadership, but the way he played was so hard that it was like, you just respected him so much, you know, it's been fun to see him play. Hi, this is Cindera Campoff and thanks for listening to the high performance mindset. Did you know that the ideas we share in the show are things we actually specialize in implementing? If you want to become mentally stronger, lead your team more effectively and get to your goals quicker. Visit free mental breakthrough call.com to sign up for your free mental breakthrough call with one of our certified coaches.

Again, that's free mental breakthrough call.com to sign up for your free call. Talk to you soon. And so when you think about even this year, you know, you had so many tight games. And I'd love to hear more about like, what do you think? think it takes from a mental toughness perspective. Let's say when you're losing, right? And it's such a tight game. And then you had so many games where you were able to win this year. What do you think that takes from a mental toughness perspective? And what are some of the core principles that you think are key there? Yeah, you know, I think you got to prepare, you get to prepare for the

worst. You got to prepare for those times. You know, we're trying to do right now in our offseason program, our mat drills are designed to really tax our guys and put them in tough situations and make it hard on them just to see how they respond. And it's not always going to be perfect. They're not always going to respond great. But then we've got to try to give those guys good feedback, you know, whether it's their body language or their effort or their, you know, turning their focus too much to feeling sorry for themselves rather than turning it outward to pick up others around them. Yeah. It's a process. And, but, But it's something you have to work on.

I think our strength coach does a great job of helping try to create some of that chaos. And it's a little bit not quite the same chaos as a real football game, but you have to try to orchestrate it and create that in the offseason. And then talk about it. I think a lot of it is that self-talk and belief of talking to the team that, hey, we are going to respond the right way when we have adversity, and we're going to lean into it. We're not going to shy away from that.

And I did think that helped us win some close games this year, whether it was San Diego State was a huge win in our last home game to tie for the regular season conference championship. I thought the Nevada game, the Colorado State game, we had quite a few games where we had to show some character and some toughness to pull out. And, you know, we got some feedback in the bowl game, too, against Minnesota. I know.

Because if we had a close game that we didn't come out on the right edge of and we had our opportunities down the stretch and we didn't take advantage of them, but as you've told me before, you know, failure is feedback. We can learn from that and we've got to become even a tougher unit for next year if we want to accomplish higher goals than we have this year. Absolutely. And, you know, the things that I saw just watching those tight games and sometimes being on the sidelines is that it's easy for teams to, like, fall apart or blame each other or start kind of fighting

or, you know, a lot of negative energy on the sidelines where instead I saw the low Lobos, like how fast, you know, that fast is moving out quickly, building each other up. And like even telling each other, we got this, you know, we can do it. And like their belief on the sidelines and the energy on the sidelines was, I think, also the thing that propelled the team. When you think about, you know, just our work in mental performance, so this year at the Lobos, last year at the University of Idaho or even, you know, in 2012, I think that was with the Mavericks.

Like, what do you think are the... 14. 14. Okay. Okay. 14. Okay, 13. Good job. I was like, wow, that was a while ago.

But when you think about like the most important topics or principles that you think you've seen implemented from a mental performance standpoint, what do you think are two or three that you think are, you know, if you give, if you give coaches advice, what are two or three that you think absolutely need to be implemented? Well, first thing I would say is I think one of the biggest things for handling adversity is creating a close-knit team. And I think building those relationships in the off-season before you get into the adversity

where you find a shared ground, you try to connect guys who seemingly, you know, one guy might be from a small town, another guy from a big city, different races, different sides of the ball. And, you know, just really taking deliberate time to work on getting to know those guys and finding that even two guys on a football team

who may seem to have very different backgrounds still have some commonalities, some shared connections, and a lot of it is that you're together on a mission of trying to accomplish the same goals. But I think when you really have that relationship with guys around you and you really understand that we have a shared vision and that we want the same things,

I think that makes it a lot easier to avoid pointing the finger when things don't go right because we know we're in this together. We know we want the same things. And if one side is struggling, it's not to point the finger on them to say, we've got to pick those guys up. We've got to encourage those guys and rally behind them. And then, you know, just like any relationship, whether it's a marriage or that,

it's not always going to be 50-50. Sometimes it's going to have to be 60-40. And football games are like that. You know, to be a championship team, you're probably going to have to win one game, you know, 13 to 10 and another game 50 to 48. and different sides pick each other up. So now going back to the tools, which I think you are great with with helping guys and giving them ammo of how to do it, I think it starts with, you know, turning things.

When you're feeling, you're rather feeling sorry for yourself trying to take that energy and place it outward, encouraging others, trying to rally around guys and support guys when they make a mistake. Yeah. Because I think when you know that you care about each other and you have common goals, you know, guys aren't making mistakes on purpose. They didn't want to make that mistake. They want nothing more than to make a play that would help the team win and helping

those people respond so that when they have a bad play, it doesn't snowball into another bad play. It doesn't result in them hanging in their head or losing their focus or energy that way. You know, being able to understand that momentum can change that fast. Exactly. You know, and then I always try to focus that. If you, you know, do your job, do it very hard and then encourage others, you know, we can create that momentum that we may have lost.

And so a lot of the lessons, there's a lot of the overlap between those lessons, but I think they're good to look at them different ways because I think sometimes it reaches different guys different ways. But you certainly can respond in the face of difficulty and certainly one bad play does not necessarily have to have an effect on the other play. You know, especially in a football game,

I think one of the reasons the mental strength is so important in football is it's not continuous. You really have a deliberate, time, you know, the play lasts five or six seconds and then you have 30 seconds where you can take a breath to reset yourself. You can, you know, go through your process, whether it's, you know, flushing it or touching your reset button, whatever it is to come back. So I do think the setup of how a football game works where it's not like a soccer game where it's just continuous action. I think really allows you to use a lot of tools to help you reset and be ready for the next play.

Awesome. Nice thing said. You know, and I love what you just said about failure is is feedback right and how how do you actually define failure and how do you help your coaches move on quickly from failure because I think like that's so important and it's really hard for people I think when they're faced with adversity so what are your thoughts on that what is failure to you how do you help other people move on yeah I I think not dwelling on things myself helps that. I think it'd be tough. If I would always dwell and rehash mistakes that others made,

I think that makes it, you know, that would be sending a inconsistent message from talking about guys from coming back. And, you know, I try to have a lot of things on the headsets because I think frequently, you know, headsets can be crazy during the game, you know, with different things. And, you know, you can see sometimes. And this is something I think I've gotten better with during my career. There's some times where I was, you know, very emotional after a bad play.

And I saw the negatives that. I saw that was not a behavior that really behooed winning or was, you know, was not consistent with the goals I wanted to accomplish, dwelling on a play that was already over, wasting emotional energy on that, you know, something you'll hear me say frequently on the headsets to say, next play. You know, we're in the moment. We have 40 seconds. We got to move on to the next play. That doesn't mean we come to the size.

We can't review what a mistake was, but, you know, when you have 40 seconds between the play ending and the next ball has to be snapped, you know, we can't spend five or six seconds having an emotional outburst or working on that. So, you know, and I've given, you know, feedback to coaches. And I really try to tie it into myself of, hey, this is something that I learned and something that has helped me become a better coach. And I have become a better coach. And again, I think in some ways that's why.

You know, I had four years as a play caller as an offensive coordinator. Two of them I called on the field and two of them I called on the press box. I think I was a better play caller in the press box because it detached me a little bit. It helped me kind of take a step back and, you know, it was not, it was a little bit more of a sterile environment. It was not as emotional for me. Now, I was a head coach around the field, but I got to try to keep regulating people and bringing them back to, you know, to Earth and then try to get refocused on.

on what's next because, you know, certainly I think that's common, the guys spending too much energy on something that's already over, when you're really got to put your energy to what's ahead. Absolutely. Awesome. Awesome. Amazing. I think that's a really great soundbite there that you just said. So write that down, everyone. You know, when you are thinking about recruiting players from a mindset perspective,

is there any red flags when you see when you're recruiting, like from a mental perspective that you're like, nope, that person isn't going to be a good fit with our team. And then on the flip side, what do you really look for from the mental game when you're recruiting? Yeah, you know, I think I do think about everything in life can be developed and improved. You know, that being said, I think you want to target people who have higher levels of good traits. But, you know, again, obviously if guys are very athletic, you know, very physical, very mentally strong, very productive on film.

I mean, those guys are tough to get in recruiting. I mean, those are the people that everybody in the country is after. So I do think that, you know, we found an edge sometimes maybe with taking guys who maybe are maybe a little shorter, a little slower, but have high mental performance, have those traits you want that will, you know, they're smart, they're tough. You know, they have a lot of times that a mental makeup that's going to allow. them to get better because they're going to take feedback. They're not going to hang their head when they have failure. So I think there is some power in that. Obviously, I think you've got to

take some chances too. Once in a while there might be a guy who is very talented, but maybe the mental game is what's keeping him from going to Texas and now, you know, we got a chance to recruit him at New Mexico. And, you know, those are the guys we have to help. And I think we can be very valuable as a coach to help them improve their mental game through that. So, you know, So we're always trying to target people who are naturally high performers in any area, whether that's football production, whether that's their mental strength. But I certainly would not want to recruit a majority of our team who I thought we really had to improve their mental strength significantly. But if we can have a strong nucleus where we have a lot of, you know, base guys who are mentally tough, you know, strong guys that way, I think they can be a positive influence on some guys who maybe are still. merging that way. But, you know, I do look at people's natural confidence. And again, you've got to,

you know, watch because some guys might have some bravado and ego, but maybe it's not true confidence. Maybe sometimes that shows up as, I don't know the right word, but, you know, fake self-confidence or something, you know, where they're trying to hide up for maybe some insecurities they have that way. but I do think that certainly confidence, resilience, I think that is a strong thing that predicts success and we want to try to find as many guys as we can with that. And I think certainly if guys have some red flags where they show maybe some lack of confidence

or lack of resilience, they better be, in all those other categories, they better be very high, I think, to put the work in because if a young man has a lot of physical development to do and a lot of football mental development of just understanding the game, but he also needs a lot of development with mental strength and mental toughness, I mean, those are a lot of different hurdles to do. That's probably not going to be a good fit.

Let's try to find maybe a guy who's high in a lot of areas, maybe is deficient in one area, and then that's our job as a coach to help them improve in that other area because they have a lot of other strengths to work off. Excellent, excellent. You know, I think about how coaches can experience so many emotional highs and lows during a season. How do you stay grounded

and what do you do to dismanage those highs and lows? Yeah, it could be challenging. And again, I think that's something I've improved on over time. You know, I think, you know, as a young coach, you know, probably late 20s, early 30s, sometimes I struggled with, you know, disconnecting. I remember one time we had an October loss and my oldest son was born in October,

and we had like a birthday party after the game. And, you know, and I was, you know, a mental wreck after the game, depressed because we'd blown a lead. And, you know, I could not turn off being the coach and turn on being, you know, husband and dad. And that was not fair to my son, not fair to my wife. And so I think that's, you know, something that I've grown. Sometimes you have to be able to take a step back

and, you know, not take out frustrations from one area of your life in another area of your life. And I think, you know, the mindset, and I think it's a growth mindset of thinking of failure as feedback. And, you know, this year, you know, we had some great success early. You know, we, you know, beat UCLA and the beat our arch rival to get to three and one. And then we had a lot of positive momentum. And then we had to go on the road twice in conference play. We lost two games in a row.

And now we're sitting back at three and three. And, you know, I think it's easy to get disappointed by that, but you have to take. take, you know, what happened in those games as feedback and what can we learn from that? And how do we have to grow from that? And, you know, again, I think when you can bring that back to the guys and make it more process-driven than outcome-driven, and, you know, here's some things we've learned from those games that we've got to improve in our process. And these are some things that we're going to focus on getting better at.

That can help the outcomes get better, but it's not just focusing on the, you know, I want to win, I want to focus on wedding. It's, well, what are the activities? That's kind of really what championship behavior is. We're going to focus on the more process-driven things of how we're going to act and how we're going to go about our business. And by doing that, will hopefully lead us to the wins, but we're not directly putting our focus on that. We're putting our focus on improvement and getting better and taking feedback from what we haven't done well

in areas we need to improve on. Yeah, absolutely. I love failures, feedback. And, you know, I had a similar experience where I had a really hard time moving, Actually, it was when I was doing work in the NFL and I worked with a kicker who missed a really important game ending kick that ended the season. And I couldn't sleep for three days because I was like blaming myself. And, you know, I had to really take a step back. And I'm like, you know, I'm just the, I'm the person teaching.

I'm the vehicle of mental performance. And I had to realize that like I can't perform for the athletes, you know. But I've had times where I can't focus either, you know, after the game I'm just like overthinking things. And I've learned myself to, you know, it's like you're one piece of the puzzle. That's how I think about it, you know, and try to be more present afterwards to, yeah, enjoy the time with your family. That's so easy to do.

Yeah, you got to find a way. And, you know, and I think, you know, I have to be part of, you know, embracing ownership. One of my sons was just doing a little book report for his football team. He's in high school and, you know, extreme ownership by, you know, Jocko. And, you know, I do think there's, you know, power with taking ownership. And, you know, again, I think I need to embrace that. You know, if I ever, you know, shuck ownership of being responsible for things in our program, I think that sets a really bad example for our assistant coaches, our players of shucking that. So again, I try to, you know, You know, own everything. You know, when we have those two game, two game losing straights, when we lose a bowl game that we easily could have won, you know, I try to turn the focus back on myself and what I could have done better, not to beat myself up, but just to learn and grow and think of it, you know, as you like to use the term next time. You know, next time what I can do better in a similar situation because history does have a way of repeating itself. Yeah. And, you know, I also have seen you do that multiple times where, you know, you've taken ownership and you're like,

Like, you know, I could have coached better there or, you know, I'll take responsibility for that, which I think also allows your players to take a deep breath and say like, okay, you know, coach is trying to get better and keep working on himself too or working on his knowledge or decision making, right? And it's so easy, I think, just to blame instead of saying, yep, you know, I got to keep going and improving. You know, one of the things coach acts I think is your superpowers your energy. And that's obviously one of the reasons I keep working with your team and with you because I just love the passion that you bring.

And even I think about on the Maverick sideline the way that I saw you just like bring the passion and I think it fires the team up. Do you think that's just how you're wired? Has it been something that you've developed? You've kind of cultivated. And, you know, tell us about that and like why you think bringing the energy is so important. for performance and for, you know, culture and buy-in. Yeah, Sandra, I think, you know, some of the best advice.

And I, you know, again, as someone who, you know, became a head coach later in their career, you know, for 23 years as an assistant, I really, and I've always liked to research things. I've always liked to throw my hat into whether it was a hobby or whether it was, you know, a job, whether I was a whole line coach or a coordinator. I like to study other people, like to see how other people do things I wanted to learn from other people. And I asked a ton of head coaches, whether they were college head coaches, high school head coaches. When I became a head coach, you know, what advice do you give to a first time head coach? And I think the best advice I got, and I heard it multiple times, it kind of, you know, really probably sucking because I heard it from multiple people was that you have to be yourself. You have to coach to your own personality. You can't, you know, if you try to be Nick Sabin, if you try to be Bill Walsh, you know, you try to be Tody Dungey. and that's not you, it doesn't work.

So, you know, you might pick up a little thing from somebody, but you've got to be true to yourself. And, you know, again, I like to have fun. I like to celebrate when things, you know, go right. You know, I like to try to remember that this is a game. And, you know, I'm blessed to be able as my profession to feed my family through coaching a game. And I want it to be fun.

And I want it to be, you know, obviously there's going to be times when it's emotional the other way. And we're going to have some tears in the locker room and it's going to be sad, especially after you build great connections and the season's over. But when things go right, we're going to celebrate,

we're going to have a lot of fun together and enjoy our time. So it just goes back. I think energy attracts energy. And I notice people have good energy. I want to be around them. And I want to hire assistant coaches who I think have great energy

because the players will want to be around them. And, you know, proximity effect, the more you're around, the more connection you'll have, the better you'll be able to learn from someone. So, you know, again, you're not, you know, a football team is so big, you're not always going to have 109 guys who have, you know, great, great energy.

But, you know, for my coaching staff, I hope that I, you know, I do go, you know, 11 position coaches. I want to go about 11. I'll go 11 on that with guys who have good energy that players want to be around. And I think it's something that we can build off. And I think there's so many parts of a collegiate head coaching job, you know, we're dealing. You know, not just with the players and the coaches, but, you know, we're dealing with boosters.

We're trying to raise funds. You know, here you're even working with legislatures because we ask the state for some money and they've really come up big with, you know, giving us some money to help with some stadium renovations. You're dealing with other parts of campus, whether it's the academic staff here in football, the athletic trainers, the professors on campus, the school president. So, you know, just having a good approachable energy that can connect with people who may be from vastly different backgrounds, I think can certainly be to your advantage. Absolutely. And I saw that as one of your incredible strengths this year, the way you're able

to get the community and Albuquerque behind the football program and the way people showed up because you really talk to them and you're like, hey, we need you, you know, and you just are so great at like gaining buy-in at all levels. So I got two remaining questions for you. Okay. My second or last question is, why should coaches implement mental? performance in the mental game. Well, it's, it works. And I've seen this that, you know, I've seen coaches that, you know, I've worked with in the past have been, you know,

maybe skeptical or think it was kind of BS. And then as they saw it in practice, because maybe the head coach, you know, instilled it, you know, it's growing on them. Even if they, you know, seemed disinterested at first, it did that. And I think most coaches are, you know, very competitive and want to win. And so I think, you know, that's the Darwinistic, you know, only the strong survive type thing. I think a lot of people realize that even if they don't, even if it is a passion.

I was kind of quick to buy into it. And I think obviously the sooner you buy into something, the more successful see with it. But it's, you know, it's going to help you be successful. Because if you're, I think most people would say that, hey, do I want our team to be, you know, higher on a toughness rating or lower? on a toughness rating. I think that would be universal that coaches would say, yeah, I want a tougher team, but, you know, hey, what are you doing to foster that? What are you

doing to grow that? What are you doing to make that a point of emphasis where you're really working on that on a weekly basis? And I think that's something that we've bought into, and we are trying on a weekly basis to become a stronger mentally performing team. And, you know,

consistency is so important in football. And, you know, football, when you have less games, I think each game has a greater degree of importance to your season. You know, we're guaranteed 12 regular season games. You know, I think, you know, like our baseball team has already played 13 games and they started their season a couple weeks ago. So each individual game is more important to your overall success of the season.

So those are huge. And you've got to put yourself in the best position to take advantage of those opportunities you have. Excellent. All right. Final question. There's a lot of coaches, leaders. not just in sport, but in business who listen. What advice would you give to people who, you know,

maybe some final advice on coaches or leaders who are trying to build really high-level cultures? What advice would you give to people as we wrap up? Again, I think it's studying. I think it's, you know, reading. You know, you have some great books that are good to read, but there's so many great books out there on leadership. And, you know, again, when you're doing those things,

It's, you know, you want to find one or two things. You know, again, you're not going to read a book and try to implement everything you read in the book because then I think it becomes that, hey, I'm trying to coach, like I'm Cinder Campoff. I'm not Cicampoff. I'm going to try to take maybe an idea or two that I take from, you know, from her book that resonates with me and put it in my own spin, put it in my own words. And now I think it seems authentic, you know, and can generate that buy-in because, you know, if it seems like I'm reading a script when I'm talking to the team about it,

I don't think that's going to sink in as if they can feel, you know, the passion behind what I'm saying and the, in the, the sincerity. And, you know, I kind of go back and forth with our meetings, like when I have with the players, you know,

again, you know, a lot of times I'll try to keep meetings pretty short, pretty matter of fact. And again, I feel like then if there's a time when I do kind of go off at a tangent, hopefully that's, you know,

something that sticks out. You know, my college coach, Coach Alvarez was like that. You know, he was, you know, kind of a, you know, not a guy who was a, you know, a big yeller or, you know, an authoritative voice. But when he did, I think everybody kind of looked around like, man, we better get our act together when he had that. It really captured guys' attention really quick when he did that. And I try to do the same thing. Again, I think if I'm, you know, if you're talking at maximum volume for maximum time all the time, you can have a tendency to be tuned out. and certainly want to have points of emphasis that can really sink in.

But I think that intellectual curiosity, that passion to get better, to grow, is critical to being a good leader. You know, again, you've got to keep seeking out things that are going to help you. Keep picking other people's brains. You know, keep looking at how you do things. And is there a better way? You know, can we make it simpler? Can we make it more efficient?

Can this be something that we can put into practice quicker and improve our teaching process? for young people. And, you know, there's a lot of things that, you know, I think that's one thing that I like when you have change in your organization. You know, we have four of our 11 position coaches that are new. I think that, you know, sometimes when you've been working together with the same people, you can, you know, look at things not as clearly. Sometimes when you get a new set of eyes to look at something, you can, you know,

have more questions about it. Is this the best way? Is there a more efficient way that we can do things? And I like that. I like our challenging our new coaches to try to work on that and try to challenge the status quo, be a devil's advocate. Now, we had to do a great job. Once we come to a agreement, sometimes you don't come to agreement,

sometimes you've got to come to a while, hey, this guy's the boss, this guy's the coordinator or this guy's the head coach. We're going to do it this way. Now we've got to have great unity in supporting that. But I think that process of getting to that point can have some lively conversations where we're expressing vastly different viewpoints and trying to sift and win out to get to the best place. to be at.

Thank you so much, Coach Eck, for just taking your time out of your busy schedule and to help us just learn more from you and gain some more wisdom. I'm going to do my best to summarize today, which I loved every part of this conversation. I loved it at the beginning when we were talking about, like, just building belief is so important and like the body language of a coach is really important, particularly after maybe athletes make a mistake or they fail, right? I love what you talked about related to championship behavior. We talked about accountability, toughness, urgency, and grit,

just the way that you know exactly what those mean, obviously, and continue to reemphasize that. I love it when we talked about, like, how you help the team believe that they can win against bigger opponents, so like finding the edge, giving them evidence. We talked about failure is feedback, and, of course, you're going to experience adversity and setbacks, but it's important. to continue to like see that momentum can change that fast and continue to have each other's back on the field.

And I appreciate this next play mentality, the energy that we talked about that you keep bringing. And at the end, energy attracts great energy. So thank you so much for bringing your wisdom and your insights of 25 years of football coaching. Is that correct? Do I got that right now? Yeah, this next year will be,

I'm 27 down, going into year 28. 28. Awesome. Thank you, Coachak. I appreciate you. Thanks so much, Sandra. Bows up. Way to go for finishing another episode of the high performance mindset. I'm giving you a virtual fist pump. Holy cow, did that go by way too fast for anyone else? If you want more, remember to subscribe. And you can head over to Dr. Cindra for show notes and enjoy my exclusive community for high performers, where you get access to videos about mindset each week. So again, you can add over to Dr. Sindra. That's d R-C-I-N-D-R-A.com.

See you next week.