Eric Schmidt’s ‘Gospels of the Gridiron’

UND’s head football coach brings team culture and principles to campus audience in latest 18:83 Speaker Series installment

Passersby at the Memorial Union on Wednesday, Feb. 25 — if they heard any of Eric Schmidt’s speech — might have thought they overheard an offseason team meeting at the Social Staircase.

Taking part in the 18:83 Speaker Series, UND’s head football coach laid bare his philosophies on culture, leadership and growth, culminating in what he called the “Gospels of the Gridiron.”

Schmidt, a UND graduate who recently finished his first campaign as head coach of the Fighting Hawks, pulled several lessons and aphorisms from his more than 20 years among coaching staffs at UND and elsewhere.

Notably, Schmidt was also a team captain in his playing days, helping deliver to the University its NCAA Division II national championship in 2001.

His delivery — stretching past the 18 minute and 83 second allotment intended to correlate with UND’s founding year — set the standard for what he expects of the team and how those standards can apply beyond the field of play.

“In our program, sustained success comes from talent and culture,” Schmidt said. “To me, if you have the right culture, it’s going to help everybody in what we call the ‘family business’ to be able to perform beyond their talents.”

The ‘junkyard dog’ mentality

In Schmidt’s system, there’s a flow to the culture of Fighting Hawks football that starts with leaders.

“Culture is 1000% leadership,” he remarked.

Leaders create culture. Culture drives behaviors and disciplines. That behavior produces results.

On leadership, Schmidt listed three things needed for anybody to be a leader in what they do:

• You need to want to do what you’re asking of others.
• You need to be able to communicate.
• You need to be authentic.

He went on to talk about core beliefs that he instills in the team environment.

“The first one is to be a junkyard dog,” Schmidt said. “These are the guys who burn the hottest, the guys who are the top performers in our organization — not just football-wise, but in all aspects of their lives.”

Being a “junkyard dog” is the relentless pursuit of continuous growth, he elaborated. It’s a process that Schmidt likened to compound interest: an uninterrupted investment in the right things over a long period of time.

“Every day, we call it going 1-0,” he said. “Win a meeting, win a practice, win whatever you’re doing that day. Keep stacking those 1-0’s, and that’s how you’re going to get the desired outcomes.”

His second core belief was “Cover and Move.” With 107 players doing a lot of different things on the team, whether drills or weight training, the objective is to be great at doing all those things together, Schmidt said. He emphasized accountability among teammates living and working closely together.

“Then, the last thing that’s important to me is ‘Blue Collar Nasty,’” Schmidt said.

“In football, there’s a physical element to it. You need to put in real work. You’re going to get sore; you’re going to get banged up. But if you follow the protocols of our program, you’re going to have a great chance to hear your name on draft night. I’ve seen it happen a lot of times in the places I’ve been.

“I always say that ‘the work works.’ You have to put in real, intentional work. When you do that, it creates real confidence.”

Spreading the gospel

Through his decades-long career of being “in the trenches” of coaching staffs, mainly as an assistant coach, Schmidt said he’s developed 12 tenets that can translate to any business or organizational effort: the “Gospels of the Gridiron.”

1: Model the way

“If I want my football team to be disciplined, then guess what? I need to be disciplined.”

2: Understand the big ask

“Can you bring your best energy to work every day? Energy to me is effort and focus. If we can do that, that’s how our guys are going to get better than the competition.”

3: Control is for amateurs

“You are not here to control the players. You’re here to partner with the players.”

4: The magic of compounding interest

“Uninterrupted investing in the right things is how we’re going to become the best version of ourselves.”

5: The most important skill you can help build is belief and confidence

“What we like to say in our family is to not let a negative thought ever complete itself in your mind. Our job as coaches is to help these guys be able to have belief and confidence in what they’re doing.”

6: Create very challenging practices in the safest possible environment

“Skill development is an ugly process. … It’s important you do a good job of understanding that skill development is going to take some time.”

7: Teach a failure recovery process

“It’s going to happen. You’re going to fail. You can’t be afraid to fail. You have to be able to own it, flush it and move on to the next thing. How you come back and respond is really important.”

8: Maximize your bell cows, but get everyone involved

“We gave out the elite numbers, 7, 0 and 1, to who we thought were the elite people in our organization. Two of them were starters, All-Americans. … The third guy didn’t play a ton, but he had the respect of his teammates. He was the best teammate we had in our organization.

9: Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication

“You can spoil your talent when you get them out on the field and they’re thinking too much.”

10: The separation is the preparation

“Every year that Joe Montana played for the 49ers, he would report for camp with the rookies. This is a guy who was maybe the best ever because he wanted to learn and be taught just like a rookie every single year.”

11: Ego is not your amigo

“There is a difference between a big ego and a strong ego. We’re not telling you to think less of yourself. We’re just telling you to think less about yourself.”

12: Great teams are built in practice

“It’s that daily grind, daily habits and daily disciplines that helps our guys grow and get better. That’s our culture.”

Ryan Zerr, professor and chair of Mathematics and co-chair of the UND LEADS Implementation Team, will speak on Wednesday, March 25 for the next installment of the 18:83 Speaker Series.