There is a theory about human behavior called the 10-80-10 principle. I speak of it often when I talk to corporate groups or business leaders. It is the best strategy I know for getting the most out of your team. Think of your team or your organization as a big circle. At the very center of it, the nucleus, are the top 10 percenters, people who give all they’ve got all the time, who are the essence of self-discipline, self-respect, and the relentless pursuit of improvement.

They are the elite—the most powerful component of any organization.

They are the people I love to coach.

Outside the nucleus are the 80 percenters. They are the majority—people who go to work, do a good job, and are relatively reliable. The 80 percenters are for the most part trustworthy and dutiful, but they simply don’t have the drive and the unbending will that the nucleus guys do. They just don’t burn as hot.

The final 10 percenters are uninterested or defiant. They are on the periphery, mostly just coasting through life, not caring about reaching their potential or honoring the gifts they’ve been given. They are coach killers.

The leadership challenge is to move as many of the 80 percenters into the nucleus as you can. If you can expand the top 10 percent into 15 percent or 20 percent, you are going to see a measurable increase in the performance of your team. By the end of the 2014 season, our nucleus group was close to 30 percent. We did that by challenging our top 10 percent to identify and go get some of the 80 percenters and, in turn, influence the 80 percent to elevate their level of play, deepen their commitment, and give more of themselves for the program. We wanted our top 10 percent to be leaders who influenced and motivated others. This is essential because leadership is about connecting. Leadership is an activity that happens person to person and heart to heart. It’s about engaging deeply with others and inspiring them to be better.

When I coached Tim Tebow at Florida, he was a leader and an influencer. He’d come in my office and we’d say to each other, “Let’s go get an eighty today and get him into the top ten.” It was a daily, intentional priority for Tim and for me.

How well you perform as a team is going to depend on the work you do with the 80 percenters. That’s why I devote more time to them by far than to either of the 10 percenters. As much as you love your top 10 percenters, you don’t need to motivate them because they are doing it by themselves. Everybody—coaches, staff, trainers—wants to be around these elite people. They are positive, high-achieving people, and it’s fun to associate with them. But remember, your goal as a leader is to build and motivate your whole team, and the way to do that is to focus your attention on the 80 percenters.

On the other end, the bottom 10 percenters are not really worth wasting any energy on. It took me a while to realize this. For years I would try to change them. I would look at their corner-cutting ways and take it as a challenge to make them see the virtue and satisfaction that comes with working hard and getting results. It was probably arrogant on my part to think I could get them to change. The lesson I learned was this: time is a nonrenewable resource. If you waste it, you never get it back, so it’s essential to pick your battles wisely.

We talk about that at length at Ohio State. The hours you spend trying to motivate a guy who doesn’t care about getting better or about being there for the team are hours you would be much better off investing elsewhere. Players under stress from problematic family situations or dealing with drug-related issues, my staff and I will do whatever we can to help. If you want to get better and battle through adversity, we will be right there with you. The bottom 10 percent that I’m referring to are the players who have only one gear and don’t want to find another one. I had a player once who was the quintessential bottom 10 percent guy. He had the natural ability not only to make it to the NFL, but to be a really good NFL player. He was smart and had many advantages to capitalize on. He was on scholarship for four years, but the money that the school spent on him was wasted. He did little as a player and even less as a student. I talked to him. Mentored him. Other coaches did as well. We tried to help him see how he was slacking his way right out of a degree. Our efforts proved futile.

When we discover that a player is willfully resistant to our efforts and refuses to take advantage of the resources we provide, we redirect our attention elsewhere. Kobe Bryant expressed it well. “I can’t relate to lazy people,” he said. “We don’t speak the same language. I don’t understand you. I don’t want to understand you.”

I am going to lay out specific ways of moving the 80 percenters into the high-performing group, but before I do let’s look at the bigger picture of the 10-80-10 principle and the whole concept of talent.

I like having talented players as much as the next coach. That said, I think that we tend to overrate the importance of talent. I think we, as a nation, are obsessed with it. We want to believe that having talent guarantees greatness. We want to believe we can accurately gauge somebody’s greatness with times, measurements, and data. What’s your IQ? What’s your forty time? Your vertical leap? Your fastball reading on the radar gun? Your SAT score? Your bench press? Give me your numbers, and I will tell you how good you are, and how good you can be.

But statistics don’t play the game.

Football leads the charge in all of this. Look at the endless reports we get from the NFL combine. Look at the lists spit out by all those recruiting service rankings, telling us that this guy is five stars and that guy is four stars, as if it were the final word.

Except that’s not how the real world works. The number of stars next to a guy’s name or where a school might rate on someone’s list of the best recruiting classes is nothing but a highly subjective snapshot. Maybe it will turn out to be accurate. Or maybe it won’t. There are even multiple Web sites that actually declare a national recruiting championship. I understand this is all driven by the huge fan following that college football has. The point is that a pile of numbers is not nearly as important as how hard a guy works and how driven he is to get better.

Mariano Rivera, the greatest relief pitcher of all time, signed with the Yankees for $2,000 and a glove and was not even in the top fifty prospects in rookie ball when he started. Aaron Rodgers went to a junior college because nobody thought he was a Division I quarterback, and he only wound up at Cal-Berkeley because the coach saw him when he was recruiting somebody else. Malcolm Butler, Super Bowl hero, was unrated out of high school, played at the University of West Alabama, and was picked up as an unrestricted free agent by the New England Patriots.

Not a single starter for either team in Super Bowl XLIX was rated a five-star recruit out of high school. Think about that. I have learned that being elite is not about how talented you are; it’s about how tough and committed you are to getting better.

Of the many players I’ve coached, John Simon, former OSU captain and now linebacker with the Houston Texans, was one of the most dedicated athletes I’ve ever seen. Early in his senior year—my first year in Columbus—Simon played a game against Cal-Berkeley with basically one shoulder. John was in a great deal of pain and made key plays in our 35–28 victory. After the game he gave a locker room speech that I’ll never forget. It was one of the most moving moments I’ve ever had as a coach. With great emotion, John opened up, gave us his heart, and challenged every one of us—coaching staff included—to look at what we were giving and how much we cared. I was so blown away that afterward I told the media I would name our next child after him. (OK, so I got a little carried away.) With someone like John Simon, you never have to say a word to motivate him or get him to push himself. I would put our current guys like Joshua Perry and Taylor Decker in the same category. Both of them are top 10 percenters. They are elite performers for our team and high achievers in the classroom. They do the right things and push the guys around them, the 80 percenters, to become better. They are the ultimate competitors.

Here are four approaches to getting as many of your 80 percenters as possible into the inner circle:

Mastery and Belief

If players are going to make the big push to join the elites, they need to believe it will be worth it. It’s important to remind them of the quality of the leadership at Ohio State—let them know they are being taught by masters of their craft who have made a significant difference in other players’ lives. I make sure that my assistant coaches showcase the achievements of other great players they have worked with. Visuals such as videos and images are incredible tools to convey a message. When a player walks into Luke Fickell’s office, I want him to see photos of Ohio State greats A. J. Hawk, James Laurinaitis, and Ryan Shazier, all of whom Luke has coached. When a player walks into the office of Ed Warinner, our offensive coordinator, I want him to see Warinner’s three former OSU offensive lineman who started as rookies in the NFL—Corey Linsley, Jack Mewhort, and Andrew Norwell. It may not seem like a big deal, but these sorts of associations are important. It is not about bragging. It’s about reinforcing that this is a special place that has produced special players. It’s about motivating the 80 percenters.

When I walk in my own office and I see championship trophies, photos with presidents, keepsakes, and mementos and clippings of the Heisman Trophy finalists and winners I’ve coached, I feel good. If a prospective recruit is motivated by wanting to be part of that club, well, that makes me feel good, too.

It’s a natural human reaction to want to be connected to greatness. The moment you arrive in the lobby of our football complex, you see trophies, photos, and multimedia displays of some of the great moments in Ohio State history, dating to the first national championship in 1942. Walk through the double doors and down the main hallway, and the length of it features such Ohio State football legends as Archie Griffin, Eddie George, Orlando Pace, and Chris Spielman. This isn’t theory. It’s testimony. This is who played here. This is what they achieved. Who wouldn’t want to be a part of this great tradition? The underlying message is: “This could be you. All you need to do is work, train, and live Above the Line. Be as fully committed to getting better as the guys whose pictures you are looking at.”

Harness the Power

The top 10 percenters, as we’ve noted, are the greatest asset your organization has—the elite achievers. These are the John Simons you want out there in the fourth quarter of a big game, or the Joshua Perrys and Taylor Deckers, who set an example by performing at the highest of their abilities. So we aim to leverage the influence and credibility of the top 10 percent to maximum advantage.

As a young coach, I savored every second I could be around Earle Bruce and Lou Holtz. I wanted to absorb everything I could possibly learn from these great men. Players such as Simon have similar drawing power, and I’m sure it’s no different with guys like LeBron James, Mike Trout, and Sidney Crosby. Elite performers in businesses and other organizations have this same effect.

Left unchecked, most people will keep the company of like-minded people. In other words, the top 10 percenters will stick with their fellow 10 percenters, and the 80 percenters will do the same with their group. We work hard to change that inclination, pairing a top 10 percenter with an 80 percenter as much as possible in workouts, drills, and unit meetings. Harness the power that the elites have. Leverage the ability of the top 10 percenters to bring more 80 percenters into the nucleus.

When Simon was captain and leader of the undefeated 2012 team, he would come to the weight room by himself every day at 6 A.M. to train. One day I pulled him aside.

“You can’t come in to lift at 6 A.M. anymore,” I said.

He looked at me, puzzled.

“You know that I love your work ethic,” I said. “This is about using you as a magnet—getting more players to go about their work the way you do. You can keep coming in, of course, but there’s one rule: you have to bring somebody with you.” He did, and it had a significant impact. It’s been such a success that Coach Mick won’t let the top 10 percenters in the weight room if they don’t bring along an 80 percenter.

David Nelson was a wide receiver for me at Florida, a fine young man with a lot of talent who was another quintessential 80 percenter. Tebow and I and others on the staff had been working to get him into the inner circle for the better part of three years, but it just wasn’t happening. When I got to my office the morning after we lost to Ole Miss in 2008, our only defeat of the season, David Nelson was sitting outside. He was in tears.

“I want to make an impact on this team. I want to make a difference,” he said. He told me he felt ashamed that he’d wasted his first three years by not pushing himself hard all the time, the way Tebow did. Now he wanted to do all he could to change that.

“You can make a huge impact, David,” I said. “You can start today. It starts with your heart and how much you want this. The more you are willing to give of yourself, the more you are going to get.”

From that day forward, David Nelson became a top 10 percenter. He gave relentless effort every day. The change in him was remarkable. After Percy Harvin was injured in the SEC Championship game, David Nelson caught a touchdown pass that gave us the lead. In the BCS National Championship game, he scored the game-winning touchdown, grabbing a jump pass from Tebow.

I can’t think of a better example of harnessing the power of the 10 percent.

Building Ownership

When a player or employee feels an ownership stake in what’s going on, he gives maximum effort. As a young coach at Illinois State in the town of Normal, Illinois, I rented my first apartment. It was a shabby place with a leaky toilet, scuffed-up walls, and cabinets that looked as if they might not stay on the walls. One night, I had some friends over to watch the heavyweight fight between Mike Tyson and Buster Douglas. When Douglas won in a shocking knockout, one of my friends jumped off the couch and kicked a hole in the wall. In the time-honored tradition of young and penniless renters everywhere, I moved the couch to hide the damage.

A couple of years later, when I joined Earle Bruce’s staff at Colorado State, Shelley and I saved up and bought our first house, for a whopping $75,000. If the same guy kicked a hole in one of our new walls, I would’ve made absolutely sure he fixed it as soon as possible. It’s different when you are invested and have something at stake.

So I started to give the 80 percenter guys more and more ownership. We have a ring committee that designs the jewelry when we win a championship, and I select guys to design the rings. When we have to make a decision about jersey styles and colors, I select guys to get involved in that also. It’s the same with locker room décor, and some of the menu options at training table. The more ways your people can share ownership, the more loyal and committed they are going to be.

Positive Peer Pressure

On the east end of our indoor training facility, there’s a section we call The Grind. It is the place where players can put in extra work honing their football skills. The top 10 percenters practically live there. The receivers go there to catch footballs and tennis balls fired from a JUGS machine. Defensive backs go to fine-tune their footwork, and offensive linemen work hand placement on dummies.

The Grind is headquarters for extra effort, the after-hours spot of the elite. It is where athletes go when they’ve moved beyond all excuse making or resistance. It is where champions are made. We have large wall banners of some of our greatest players above the area as both a tribute and motivation. One of the forces that gets our 80 percenters to move up is the culture they are immersed in. Everybody is pushing each other to get better. They are pushing hard. We cannot afford to settle into complacency. If you are going through the motions, staying in the same place, there’s a good chance somebody is going to move right past you. This isn’t something we use as an overt threat, but the message is clear. The world is a competitive place. To compete at an elite level, you need to train at an elite level.

If you are seeing this in your organization, enhance it and keep going. If not, lead the change that will make it a priority. Remember that the real power of your leadership is not your level of authority, but your level of influence. Your chances of ordering an 80 percenter into the top 10 percent are negligible. But your chances of influencing the shift by using the strategies we’ve discussed are excellent. Harness the power of your elite performers. Greatness happens when you are able to maximize their impact on the 80 percenters.

Tim Tebow reminded me just how profound this dynamic can be, after that Ole Miss defeat that David Nelson was so torn up about. At the end of his postgame press conference, Tim became emotional. He had to stop and compose himself. He felt that he hadn’t performed up to his own expectations or his team’s expectations.

He closed by saying this:

I’m sorry. Extremely sorry. We were hoping for an undefeated season. That was my goal—something Florida has never done here. But I promise you one thing. A lot of good will come out of this. You will never see any player in the entire country play as hard as I will play the rest of the season and you will never see someone push the rest of the team as hard as I will push everybody the rest of the season, and you will never see any team play harder than we will the rest of the season.

God Bless.

And then he left the podium.

We didn’t lose a game the rest of the season.

Michael Thomas, our talented wide receiver, is a good example of someone who moved from being an 80 percenter to the top 10 percent. Michael has tremendous gifts, but his transition to college football wasn’t easy. He was a good worker and did fine academically. But there was an arrogance in his attitude that prevented him from buying in to our culture. He played sparingly as a freshman, then struggled early in his sophomore season. Talent wasn’t the issue, but mistakes and accountability were. Every third play it seemed that he’d run the wrong route or make the wrong read and he’d always have an excuse for it. I got tired of the excuses and decided he needed a year to work on his game, learn to be accountable, and grow up. So we red-shirted him, which is rare for a second year player without an injury. It was a jarring change for him to have to sit out a whole season. I challenged him—very much on purpose.

Following the 2013 season, I called a meeting with Michael and his dad. We discussed what Michael needed to do in order to fix the problem areas in both his technique and his attitude. “You can be one of the best receivers in the country,” I told him. “It’s up to you. I know you have big dreams. I want to help you fulfill them. But if your habits don’t reflect your dreams and goals, you can either change your habits or change your dreams and goals.”

And Michael took the message to heart.

He absorbed what was said and changed his work habits. He enlisted the help of Evan Spencer and the two began training together often. As a result, Michael’s technical skill as a wide receiver grew and along the way he became a better brother to his unit.

If your habits are not in alignment with your dreams you can either lower your dreams or elevate your habits. Michael Thomas elevated.

When I was at Florida, we had a kid named Cornelius Ingram, a small-town quarterback who was six feet four inches and 225 pounds and was widely billed as the second coming of Texas’s Vince Young. Certainly everybody in Hawthorne, the tiny north-central Florida community he was born and raised in, thought he was the next Vince Young. Cornelius was recruited by schools all over the country, and he chose Florida; he was such a gifted athlete that he played for coach Billy Donovan’s Florida basketball team, too. I inherited Ingram when I took over in 2005, and the more I got a feel for our personnel, the more convinced I was that Cornelius’s future was as a tight end. We had Chris Leak at quarterback, and freshman Tim Tebow right behind him. Cornelius was big and strong and had great hands, and my football instincts told me that tight end would be a better fit.

The trouble was that Cornelius wanted no part of it. When I first broached the idea of a position switch to him, he looked at me as if I were joking.

“Coach, I’m a quarterback. I was recruited as a quarterback. I’ve always been a quarterback,” he said.

“I understand that, Cornelius, but you have everything you need to be an outstanding tight end. You would have an immediate impact there, and I’m not sure we can say that at quarterback with the people we have. I think it’s worth exploring.”

Cornelius had trouble breaking into Billy’s rotation in basketball, and now I was stomping on his quarterback dream. There were plenty of schools that were ready to let him play quarterback.

We definitely did not want to lose him. Steve Addazio, then the tight ends coach, and I worked hard to urge him to think this through carefully and understand that just because some other school may hand him the ball to play quarterback doesn’t mean that it would be in his best interests to do that. Cornelius finally agreed to give tight end a go during spring practice of 2006, and I knew that right away this needed to go well.

We had to create success for him. Find small victories to stoke his enthusiasm, and get this transition off to a good start.

In those first scrimmages that spring, Cornelius was going against man-to-man coverage almost exclusively. He was catching a lot of balls. We told him we’d use him in different ways, sometimes lining him behind center as a wildcat quarterback. He liked that idea. We called his wildcat number one day near the end of a practice that he’d dominated. I looked over at Charlie Strong, then our co–defensive coordinator, to make sure we were in a coverage that would help the play work.

Cornelius took the snap, pitched the ball to the tailback, and went out for a pass. He sprinted out into the flat, the tailback threw a good ball, and Cornelius Ingram, one-time quarterback now warming up nicely to tight end, took it to the end zone. It was the start of a great run by Cornelius, who was a key part of our victory to capture the 2006 National Championship. He went on to be drafted by the Philadelphia Eagles and sign a contract for almost $2 million.

Obviously, there are limits to how often you can script success this way on the football field. However, nothing encourages an athlete more than making plays and having success in practice. Small victories can play a major role when you have a player who is dealing with the stress of change or even some other issue. Do whatever you can to reinforce someone’s confidence by helping him achieve small victories. So much of leadership comes down to knowing the people you are leading and providing them with what they need to succeed. It is also about making them confident to take risks and make changes.

“Failure is not fatal,” John Wooden said, “but a failure to change might be.”

When I think about having the courage to change, I think about Marty Johnson. Marty, a tailback for me at the University of Utah, had come from a difficult background in Sacramento but had a world of potential. Marty was leading the nation in rushing a couple of weeks into the 2002 season, a year before I arrived, until a severe knee injury ended the season for him. Dealing with the sting of not being on the field, he started making a string of Below the Line decisions. The culmination of those decisions led to him getting busted for a DUI. He was given a suspended jail sentence and probation.

I met with him when I was hired in 2003. A young man with little family structure and a long way from home, Marty struck me as an at-risk player but also a terrific, earnest guy who wanted to do the right thing. I had great faith in his basic goodness. My wife, Shelley, is a psychiatric nurse with a specialty in addiction. She felt the same way about Marty as I did. We started inviting him over to our house for dinner. He befriended our daughter Gigi and became a regular at Gigi’s baseball games. Everything was going well. With positive momentum in his life, Marty seemed to be in a much better place. Then early one morning, I received a phone call that he’d been arrested on a second DUI charge, about a year after his first one. I felt angry and betrayed. My initial response was that I was done with him. I hoped he’d go to jail for a long time. He had his chance, and he blew it.

When I got to the office, I passed by a stack of newspapers and saw a horrific headline about a little girl being killed by a drunk driver. The driver wasn’t Marty Johnson, and the story had nothing to do with him, but the thought of what this family must be going through just ripped me up. That could’ve been one of our daughters. Marty’s arrest was a huge story in Salt Lake City, a place that does not take kindly to this sort of transgression. We were all set to dismiss him from the team and from school, but then I had a long talk with Shelley and we decided that we wanted to push to give Marty another chance. Maybe he’d get it. Maybe he’d change and not be the guy in a tragic headline the next time. Shelley knows better than anyone how pernicious addictions can be and how easy it is to relapse. It doesn’t mean you coddle people and say, “Oh, he didn’t mean it. He’s a good person.” It means that if you truly believe someone wants to get sober and wants to make good decisions, you give him another chance. It has nothing do with winning football games. It has to do with saving a life. The easy thing would’ve been to dismiss him. It takes much more time and energy and patience to help a kid make meaningful changes.

I knew we’d get blistered in the media if we kept him. “I don’t care what the media says,” Shelley said. “They can write and say whatever they want. We are talking about somebody’s life.”

I suspended Marty for the whole season, and we set specific ground rules for him to adhere to in order for him to return to the team. He had to abide by a curfew, go through counseling, and submit to random drug and alcohol tests. On Thanksgiving Day 2003, Marty Johnson went to jail for a month-long sentence as a consequence for the second DUI. Gigi and I went to visit him, and when he came out in his prison-issue orange jumpsuit, I about lost it. We sat down behind a safety-glass partition and talked to him. Gigi reached her hand through the bottom and held Marty’s hand.

“Why did you do that?” she asked him.

Marty started to cry. We all shed tears that day.

Upon his release, we kept Marty close to our family, supporting his sobriety and his return to the university. During his senior season, Marty was a significant contributor to our undefeated 2004 team and accounted for 848 yards of total offense and fifteen touchdowns.

“If the Meyers had given up on me,” Marty said, “I don’t know where I’d be.”

It’s never easy to read people’s capacity for change. After watching Marty reclaim his life, I am much more willing to give players a second and even a third chance to turn things around. My wife and kids would be in tears oftentimes when they would hear stories about players going through unimaginable personal difficulties, and it used to rip me up to see how much it was hurting them. I’m better at it now because of the testimony I’ve seen from players who had the courage to fix the problem areas in their life and change. Giving up on somebody takes nothing. Helping them change takes a tremendous amount of time, energy, discipline, and love.

In the end, it’s worth it.

There are some situations that don’t end so fortunately. There are some that are so tragic, they leave permanent scars.

Avery Atkins was one of our top recruits at Florida, a dynamic athlete and charismatic guy from a rough neighborhood in Daytona. He was a great player who had first-round NFL talent in him, and also, he was my kids’ favorite player. They would frequently ask about how he was doing and when they were going to get to see him again.

Avery started a few games for us as a true freshman and showed great promise going into his sophomore year. He became a father early in his college career, but after getting arrested for a misdemeanor domestic battery charge, I had to remove him from the team. He transferred to a Division 1-AA school to continue his career. After three games with his new team, he abruptly left, moved back to Daytona, and got involved with drugs. It broke my heart when I heard about this. My assistant coach, Chuck Heater, now the defensive coordinator at Marshall University, loved Avery like a son. Aside from being a great football coach, Chuck is as big-hearted a man as you will find. During a bye week on his own accord, he went up to Daytona to look for Avery. When he found him, Avery was high on something. Avery had a very strong support group with his mom, aunt, and grandmother, all of whom are wonderful people. Chuck met with them, and afterward talked to me about finding a way to get Avery back. “We’ve got to give him one more chance,” I said. “Let’s see if we can get him back here and help him.”

I went to the college president and the athletic director and stated our case to do all we could to help this young man. They were reluctant, but they trusted me. “We’ll make him walk on,” I said. “We’ll make him earn his scholarship. This is a kid crying out for help, and I believe we need to help him.”

They agreed and Avery was readmitted to the University of Florida, paying his own way. He, Coach Heater, and I had a long talk when he got back on campus and he seemed very grateful for the opportunity. It was January, the beginning of the spring term in 2007. Classes had just started. I was going out for a run when I saw Avery pull up in his car right outside my office. One thing I’ve learned over the years is that you can tell a lot about a kid by opening his car door. If it’s a mess—I mean, an out-of-control mess, with empty cans and McDonald’s bags and dirty laundry—it typically means other things might be out of control also.

Avery’s car was a mess, and so was Avery.

“Let’s go for a ride,” I said.

He started to drive and tears began to stream down his face. He talked about the pressures he was feeling, about all these things going on with the baby and his girlfriend. You could tell it was as if his world were caving in on him. He just needed to talk.

He drove and we talked. About a half-hour later, we were back outside my office. “You’re going to be all right, Avery,” I said. “Come by my office tomorrow. We’ll talk some more. It’s going to be OK.”

“Thanks, Coach,” Avery said. “I appreciate all you and Coach Heater are doing for me.”

It was the last time I ever saw Avery Atkins.

He dropped out of school and went back to Daytona, the streets, and the drugs. Five months later, I received a phone call. Avery Atkins had died of a drug overdose in his car. He was twenty years old.

For years, Avery Atkins’s death haunted me, a horrific tape playing on endless loop in my head: This was on my watch. How could this happen? What should I have done? I used to talk about it with Tebow, Shelley, and those closest to me, all the time. I prayed about it, asking for clarity. It was one of those instances when you know that God has a plan, but you have a difficult time understanding what it might be.

The deeper we went into the 2014 season, I could sense that more and more 80 percent guys were pushing into the top 10 percenters. Evan Spencer, our senior wide receiver and a top 10 percent guy to his core, was not just one of our MVPs and one of our top leaders. He was a player who completely embraced the idea of harnessing the power of the elite among the receivers unit.

“I did everything in my power to bring people with me,” Evan said. “I worked my tail off, but that wasn’t enough. I wanted the other guys to work their tails off too, and did all I could to lead by example by going out there and taking care of business every day.”

In words and actions, I wanted to get the point across that we were on the cusp of something great, and we had do everything in our power to get better every day. Not just some of us—all of us. This was the mindset of our program.

The offensive line was getting better protecting J.T., and on the defensive side of the ball, players like linebacker Curtis Grant and tackle Michael Bennett, both seniors, were suddenly playing with enormous energy and effectiveness. We were controlling the line of scrimmage on both sides of the ball, getting big-time performances from a number of our 80 percenters. The top 10 percent, our nucleus, was growing every day. Game by game, they were showing me their potential to be exceptional.

I liked what I was seeing.

Chapter Eight: The 10-80-10 Principle Playbook