This week’s conversation is with Yogi Roth – Yogi is a dear friend of mine, and I’m really excited to finally introduce him to the Finding Mastery community.

At his core, Yogi is a storyteller with a unique focus on seeking and uncovering humanity in sports around the globe.

His professional work has ranged from a college football analyst to an Emmy award-winning filmmaker, New York Times bestselling author, media personality, world-traveler, and accomplished coach.

Yogi has lived a full life and I always appreciate the unique perspective and insights he brings to the table. In this conversation, we cover a lot – the changing landscape of college sports, parenting, youth development, what he’s learned from some of the world’s best athletes, and so much more.

“My job is to seek and uncover the humanity in sport around the globe. Each one of those words has tremendous depth to my purpose here.”

In This Episode:

His purpose

What I hope I do well is that when I seek the stories out I lean into the humanity of the story, even as a broadcaster. I call a game every weekend, okay couple million people tune in and they want to hear how he caught a pass, how he threw a touchdown, how he made a tackle, what was the scheme. I’ll go there and thrive there, but my dropdown as you would say, my double click would be like and then let me tell you how he got here… My job is to seek and uncover the humanity in sport around the globe in college football season, in college football. But those words to me they’re really important, everyone of them, seek, uncover, humanity, sport, world. They have tremendous depth to what I think is my purpose at least today.

Pursuit of a competitive edge

In my athletic career, I don’t think I had that mental discipline. I think I was often, “Prove everybody wrong” versus “prove myself right,” but regardless when I played it was to master the receiver position then sit in the quarterback room to know how they think. So I was always about, there will not be a reason you can say I shouldn’t play and I would go so far, I would sit with the coach. Okay, so let’s say you’re the coach, I’d say, “Hey coach Gervais, what will stop me from playing in your offense this year?” And you would say, well you need to get a little faster and I need to see you beat the best one on ones. So all I did was work on my speed and then I tracked my one on ones in training camp and then I presented to the coach before the season and said, “Hey, I ran a 456 and I’m 90% success rate against our best corner you project as a first round pick. Tell me why I can’t play and why aren’t I on scholarship?” Eventually I would play and get a scholarship.

Tapping into that extra level of grit

I can remember sitting at a table like this, but on that side was my grandfather, grandmother. Instead of a cup of water here on video, I’d have a teal glass of ginger ale and he would be telling me stories about how he survived the Holocaust. He would say, “Come feel my left shoulder. I was shot eight times here after I escaped being in the forest digging my own grave.” I’d hear the stories of my grandmother and how she came home from school in the sixth grade and her teacher said, “You can’t go home today. Your family was just murdered. Axed to death.” And she went on the run. So as I heard those stories, the way I internalized those was… I hope this doesn’t come across as arrogant, but it came across to me as this is my superpower. You don’t even know what I can tap into because of what I’m connected to. My perseverance, my Angela Duckworth grit is on levels that you don’t even understand.

Life in a Walk

When I was in college my dad was diagnosed with prostate cancer, I didn’t deal with it at all. Not good, bad, indifferent, just I didn’t register. I went and started traveling, I’m going to go see the globe and years later it hit me like a ton of bricks of damn, I didn’t process this. Holy crap, he’s going to die at some point right? Not necessarily from prostate cancer, who knows what’ll happen. I got a lot of questions and it was a very clear crystal thought that came across me one night in my solo place in Venice Beach. I do not want to go to a celebration of his life and learn more about him from other people. F this. And I booked a flight home the next day I walked into at the time my sister’s apartment in Brooklyn and I said, “Dad, let’s go for a walk.” And he said, “Sure.” Thinking we’d go around Prospect Park and I gave him a plane ticket and I said, “In two weeks we leave, I’ll meet you in Madrid. We’re going to go walk the Camino de Santiago.” Which is commonly referred to as the most famous pilgrimage on planet Earth.

Made to move

I just believe that dialogue, on those walks, when my dad had often said, “Man is made to move, and we moved through things,” I felt like we both navigated this unchartered territory and came out better for it, I think that was a catalytic moment that led me to my wife right now, Amy. Also for him, I think it was a beautiful moment where he got to share his story with his son in a really intimate way.

What he’s learned from travel

Especially as a young traveler, we go to see something. I want to go to Egypt, I want to see the seven wonders of the world, that was my bucket list initially as a traveler. Cool, what do you end up seeing? You see yourself in a totally different light, and I learned that really clearly from writing in a journal when I would go, I would just sit and write and explore, and write and explore and reflect, and I’m not a huge partier, so I would be in the hostel by myself late at night, what was today like? And I just got to see myself in a totally different light than I ever thought when I’d drop into that country.

Be a seeker

So I get asked a lot, “What’s the trait?” And I really believe, of course you have to be a great competitor, of course you have to throw the ball, but I really think is you have to be a seeker, you have to be willing to ask questions. And oftentimes at 17, especially in football, all those guys on that cover, at 17, they are el presidente, they are giving answers that sound very political, always perfect, always on, and I think the best ones are like, “Mike, help me out here. How do I deal with this? How do I manage this? How can I get better?”

Connection and relationships

The best teams I’ve seen, especially in college now with the market that we just described, the teams that are so connected. And by connected, I mean I know you, and I know you in locker 106 and I’m Caleb Williams, I know you in locker 56, I know the secretary’s actual name. I know the people serving food. The ones that are connected, and I feel as I go around in training camp, what’s so cool in college football now is that everybody’s into story. That is a word that is often talked about. It wasn’t when I played, I don’t even think it was when I coach or even five years ago. Now it’s like, “Hey Mike, we’re going to have story time every Monday night in training camp and tonight it’s the offensive line. Tell me your story.”

No one does it alone

One of my favorite stories I ever told was a docu series called All American Stories. And within it I did eight films. One of them was on a guy named Jerome Avery. Jerome Avery was competing in the Olympic trials to be a sprinter, didn’t make it. He ended up going to Athens, Greece, in the early 2000s to be a guide runner. I had no clue what guide running was, Mike. And all of a sudden he shows me. He takes basically a string, puts it on his finger, ties it to a string, somebody next to him, and they run side by side in a sprint. Well, he’s a guide because the individual sprinting is blind. And it got me thinking as we were building out this film of we come out of the womb tethered and then we fight like hell to break away. I don’t need you, I don’t need you mom and dad, let me go through my teenage years. I don’t need friends. Let me be on my own. Let me do it my way. Walk on, let me live on my own. I can go do this thing. And then we come back. We’re like, at least now I say this at 41 of, I’ve learned over the last couple years, I need community way more than I even thought as a creative. Used to be, let me just write, I’ll knock it out. I couldn’t write this book. There’s over 100 voices in this quarterback book. And I think there’s something beautiful to that concept of being connected and remembering like you lose oxygen literally when the umbilical cord gets cut. And I think you need it as you continue on and try to do great things in life.

Being the quarterback of your own life

You don’t have to just spin it in high school, or in college, or the league to be the quarterback of your business. You have to learn principles around leadership. First principles you might say, around being selfless, around being inquisitive, around being a seeker and curious. Having humility, understanding the thoughts of yourself and others with empathy, if you were emotional intelligence. Those are all things that I think are the traits of a QB that could be the leader of your company. That could be the leader of my production company, that could be the leader of you name it. And I think the one thing still applies to all of them, which is like you have to be willing to learn. Just because you have the title of QB, or just because you have the title of CEO, does not mean you’re a great leader. And I think that’s the bridge, Mike, that has happened over the last probably five, six years… we’ve gone from just assuming the QB is the BMOC, he knows everything, big man on campus. To that dude is learning about how to operate, lead, guide, mentor, whatever. And I think the best companies and families have that type of person.

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