This story is part of Peak, The Athletic’s desk covering the mental side of sports. Sign up for Peak’s newsletter here.
In the moments after the Big Ten title game, Indiana quarterback Fernando Mendoza explained the mindset behind his team’s perfect season.
“I think it reverts back to the Stoic philosophy,” he said, “of the never-ending journey of the process.”
Mendoza is the breakout star of this college football season, a Heisman Trophy winner who has guided his team to the College Football Playoff championship game Monday night. He’s also a “process-driven and detail-oriented leader,” a business student who takes pride in “fostering positive team culture, adapting to new environments and driving success through preparation, accountability and collaboration.”
If that all sounds like it’s from his LinkedIn bio, well, that’s because it is.
As the Hoosiers cruised toward history, Mendoza deleted all but two apps from his phone: YouTube and LinkedIn.
Which seems fitting. For 15 games, Mendoza has produced two things: YouTube-worthy highlights on the field and LinkedIn-style leadership advice afterward.
A talented quarterback who could be the first pick in the 2026 NFL Draft in April, Mendoza is also a walking TedTalk — Tim Tebow with theater kid energy. His postgame interviews are appointment viewing. He is just as likely to reference a Greek philosopher (Epictetus) as he is a gridiron one (Curt Cignetti).
Thing is, Mendoza doesn’t just quote Stoic philosophers. He embodies their ideas.
Well, sort of.
As Mendoza and the Hoosiers prepare for the national title game, they are carrying some of the lessons of Stoicism with them. We’ll explain.
A key to life is delayed gratification
“It’s one of the greatest attributes,” Mendoza said earlier this month.
If anyone would know, it’s Mendoza. There were 133 quarterbacks ranked ahead of him in the 2022 recruiting class. He originally committed to Yale. He landed at Cal, where he spent his early days on campus sending in fake signals from the sideline. He focused on the long game — the art of daily improvement.
He lined up extra film sessions with an assistant coach. He excelled in the classroom, taking on internships at real estate investment firms in the Bay Area. He took notes constantly, consumed by ideas about mental performance.
“If you ever have delayed gratification — discipline in yourself and your discipline in your process and preparation,” Mendoza said, “you’re able to execute every single week.”
The idea of delayed gratification — of resisting pleasure in the short term for bigger rewards in the long haul — has long been associated with the Stoics, said Massimo Pigliucci, a professor of philosophy at the City College of New York. But one important distinction, Pigliucci said, is that Stoic philosophers were not concerned with any form of winning or gratification at all.
“Stoic philosophy is about making yourself into a better human being, meaning a more ethical human being,” he said. “The Stoics don’t really care whether you accomplish anything in life other than being a nice person.”
That said, discipline and self-control were core to temperance, which was emphasized by Musonius Rufus, a Roman Stoic philosopher in the first century.
“This is probably something that athletes especially find useful,” Pigliucci said. “According to Musonius, there is a connection between physical and psychological temperance.”
To be mentally tough requires physical discipline — and vice versa.
Where does Mendoza get his toughness? He credits his mother, Elsa, who has lived with multiple sclerosis for nearly two decades.
“You taught me that toughness doesn’t need to be loud,” he said while receiving the Heisman Trophy in December. “It can be quiet and strong.”
The process will take care of the scoreboard
Before Mendoza won the Heisman, he wrote a speech and rehearsed it. He wasn’t guaranteed to win, but he wanted to be prepared.
“I believe preparation is what leads to confidence,” he told reporters.
The process was more important than the result. It’s a simple adage that every athlete hears.
“The Stoic idea is to focus on what’s up to you and to take everything else in stride,” said William O. Stephens, professor emeritus of philosophy at Creighton University.
The philosophy, Stephens said, originated with Epictetus, a Roman thinker who emphasized controlling what we can control, or as Mendoza put it, “the never-ending journey of the process.”
When Cignetti arrived at Indiana before last season, he spoke about a simple formula born of the same spirit, of stacking good days on top of good days, of focusing on the moment and ignoring the scoreboard.
“One play at a time, six seconds a play, every play’s got a life and a history of its own,” Cignetti said. “Play every play like it’s 0-0. Don’t be affected by success or failure. Be able to compartmentalize and go to the next play.”
For an academic studying Stoic philosophy, that’s a familiar mindset.
“One of the things that I find most useful in Stoicism is, in fact, the sharp distinctions that the Stoics draw between your intentions and the outcomes of your actions,” Pigliucci said.
Likewise, Mendoza believes in more than routine. It’s about having what he has called an “intentional process.”
Mendoza grew up idolizing Tom Brady, who was famously obsessive about nutrition. Mendoza sleeps more than eight hours a night. He takes copious notes while watching film. His LinkedIn page is detailed and professional, not exactly the kind you’d expect from a future NFL quarterback.
As his father, Fernando Sr., told The Athletic: “His LinkedIn is for real. That’s a great homage to his true self.”
On the road to a championship, beware of complacency
In the final game of the regular season, Indiana destroyed Purdue 56-3. The Hoosiers were 12-0 for the first time in school history. But when they watched the film, Cignetti told the group, there would be a lot they needed to clean up.
“I think it’s about being process-oriented,” Mendoza said. “Never being complacent.”
The hazards of complacency, Stephens said, can be found in the words of Marcus Aurelius, the Roman emperor whose personal writings were later published under the title, “Meditations.”
“When you get complacent, you don’t recognize the urgency with which you have to work toward moral progress,” Stephens said. “You gotta work to become virtuous. You have to become wiser, more courageous, more self-controlled.”
In “Meditations,” Aurelius wrote of a simple morning maxim: “At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself: ‘I have to go to work — as a human being.’”
Indiana linebacker Aiden Fisher echoed the sentiment after the Big Ten championship, although he credited Cignetti, not Aurelius, with instilling it in him. “You have to wake up with a mindset that you’re going to give it your all, and any aspect of your life to improve and make sure you’re not staying complacent,” he told reporters.
There is a clear irony, Pigliucci said, that athletes competing for a championship would find value in Stoics, who cared little about any trophies or rewards. But perhaps that explains the success. In the weeks before the national championship game, Mendoza kept mentioning Stoic philosophy. He talked about the process, complacency and delayed gratification.
His citations may not have been perfect — as Stephens points out, delayed gratification is a modern idea — but to Mendoza, it was useful all the same.
“I think that our whole thing is not really competing against the opponent,” Mendoza said. “Which it is, but it’s really competing against ourselves to be the best version of ourselves. And I think that’s why we’re so effective.”