Sympathy for an opponent or bypassing a friend to get to the top can cause subtle retreats and settling for less. It’s easy to give in to the urge to let your neighbor/your brother go first. The loss of just the slightest bit of “victory hunger” – starving for a win – can be all it takes to allow a step back, especially for human beings. (We wonder if John’s brother, Jim, subtly let his older brother outcoach him?) This was one reason the great tennis champion Jimmy Connors would never let himself get close to other players. He knew he couldn’t allow himself to feel sorry for them.

Managing guilt and failure
San Francisco quarterback Colin Kaepernick reveals another side to managing guilt – personal failure. Obviously his own worst critic, he blamed himself for the Super Bowl loss stating, “I made too many mistakes for us to win.” He was referring to his badly thrown second-quarter interception and to his three straight incompletions from the Raven five-yard line at the end of the game. He went on about his perceived errors, “They will stay with me the rest of my life” – which reveals just how harsh we can be over our imperfections. Many a person has failed to overcome their failures. As cornerbacks and relief pitchers in baseball know, “You better have a short memory.” Find a way to accept your failures and move on.

Then we had the missed holding call – by both the back judge and the side judge – on the last 49ers offensive play at the five-yard line, the third of Kaepernick’s incompletions. Replays clearly showed that cornerback Jimmy Smith had his outside arm around receiver Michael Crabtree – and had held his jersey. Former defensive back guru Brother Oliver – one of the greatest defensive coordinators in college football history – commented in a radio interview that it was unquestionably holding, that Smith had simply held the receiver “way too long.” (Perhaps not to appear too harsh Oliver went on to say that the play didn’t determine the outcome but in truth it did – it was the last 49ers pass into the end zone. Everything was riding on that play.)

Football analyst and former defensive back Herm Edwards, the former Jets coach, waived off the hold and said that you don’t get the call at that point in the game, and it was the Super Bowl. But sometimes a referee will step up and make that call – in a big game. Recall just such a final play in the 2002 national championship game between Miami and Ohio State when the referee called holding on a Miami defensive back in the end zone, an infraction which was no more blatant than Smith’s hold. Despite the referees’ usual insistence that they aren’t the ones who make the difference in the game, this referee did because he thought it was the right call, and Ohio State went on to score. Had he left the flag in his pocket, Miami wins.

Fear of criticism
Imagine if either of the two Super Bowl referees had made that holding call against Baltimore. He would have been flooded with criticism and faced a mountain of unjustified guilt, and found himself at the center of controversy. And the replay would have backed him up showing Smith holding Crabtree’s jersey – and the referee would eventually have been admired for his courage. Leaders sometimes have to stand up to make unpopular decisions.

I’m just saying that guilt entered the picture, and a referee passed on standing up. Edwards’ take means there’s an unwritten rule that – toward the end of a game – you can hold longer and you can even grab a jersey. So fear of guilt changes the rules. And as a result peer pressure takes the flag out of the hands of even the finest referees.

Taking your best shot
Then we have 49ers offensive coordinator Greg Roman who called for the pistol formation just once in the final four plays after the Ravens had difficulty all day stopping it. Did he not go with the strategy that got him there? Did he fail to take his best shot? Was he like the refs? One thing’s for sure, too often in crucial circumstances people miss taking their best shot.

If you want to know what motivates the human race you can fill in two of the first blanks with “secret guilt” and “fear of success,” and you wouldn’t be too far off too often.

The post Success lessons from 2013 Super Bowl appeared first on Andrew G. Hodges, M.D..

With all his bravado and fearlessness, his cool under pressure, when all was said and done quarterback Joe Flacco and the Baltimore Ravens caught a huge wave of success phobia displayed by their first playoff opponent, the Denver Broncos and rode it all the way to a win in Super Bowl XLVII. I believe it was the golfer Jack Nicklaus who used to say “More tournaments are lost than are won,” meaning that—in one form or another— a player will often simply give the victory away. Before the Ravens won it, the Broncos— the number-one seed in their conference— lost it. Heavy lies the head that potentially wears the victor’s crown.

Take nothing away from the Ravens and Flacco who took advantage of an opponent’s lapse, but as former all-pro safety Rodney Harrison said about their first playoff win against Denver, “If you’re Denver’s [safety] Rahim Moore, how do you let Jacoby Jones get behind you in that situation?” Specifically with 41 seconds to go and no timeouts with Flacco and the Ravens on their own 30-yard line trailing the Broncos 35-28, how do you get beat on a go route if you’re the last line of defense?  You get beat on an old school-yard play, “Everybody go deep.” Four fly patterns by the four Raven wide receivers straight down the field.

Flacco spots Moore’s risky behavior
Here’s how Moore did it with a combination of mental lapses which did him in. First he had deep responsibility on speedy wide-out Jones lined up wide right—providing support for cornerback Tony Carter.  When Flacco came to the line of scrimmage and surveyed the scene he saw exactly what he was hoping for— a sign of weakness in the Bronco defense, a sign of retreat if you will. Rahim Moore was leaning in too close to the line of scrimmage unlike the other two safeties in a three-deep defender set. With his two burners out the widest on each side, Flacco would have hoped for the weakness in the defense to be on one of those two guys, receivers who could really make you pay—take it all the way on one play.  Moore presented him with that chink in the Bronco armor.

But Moore didn’t stop with being a little out of position conceding some ground to Jones, he also stared into the backfield far too long after the play started instead of immediately back-pedaling into position. He wasn’t concentrating on his job.  After the snap, when Flacco scanned the field to see which receiver might be open, he wasn’t too surprised to see Jones with a step behind his man and to find that Moore was late coming over for support. That was Flacco’s shot and he took it—from his own 20-yard line.

But pressured by the pass rush of linebacker Von Miller who nearly hit his arm, Flacco had to float the ball on a higher trajectory than usual from his own 25. With the ball hanging in the air for 55 yards all the way to the Bronco 20, Moore comes to the rescue and for some strange reason slowed down. When he finally arrived he mistimed his leap prematurely and awkwardly as the ball dropped into the waiting arms of Jacoby Jones who then waltzed into the end zone.  Overtime, baby—but the Broncos were shortly done.

Even Raven backup quarterback Tyrod Taylor had spotted Moore’s egregious error from the sidelines: “The safety did a bad job tracking the ball. You could see he was out of position.”

A pot full of mental error— the fear of success in review
Let’s go back over Moore’s series of errors:  playing too shallow, slow getting into the play, slowing down as he approached his man, and finally mistiming his jump— leaping too early. His last move suggests that secretly he was anxious which interfered with his judgment, his concentration and lastly his physical speed. To say the play came down to a veritable pot full of mental errors would be an understatement. Even Flacco admitted that he had had “some luck” on his desperation heave. And that “luck” was Moore’s self-sabotage. Why did he choose this moment to self-destruct? Consider the stage was big, too big for him at that moment and he was exiting left.  

Harrison blamed Moore’s lapses on hubris, on Moore forgetting situational— read “team”— football and instead thinking how he could intercept the ball to claim the role of “final hero.” Harrison told Sports Illustrated, “Moore wanted to be the guy who made the interception and won the game. Everybody wants to be the hero.”

The overlooked but familiar idea of success retreat had claimed another victim. Overdoing can be its cover. Read: consciously I want to be a hero but deep down I want to lose—maybe punish myself for being selfish. The bottom line was that Moore’s behavior said, “I didn’t fear losing enough, I feared success if the truth be told.” He did a lot of things to assure he would not succeed.

Peyton Manning’s struggles with success
While Moore’s failure only sent the game into overtime, Peyton Manning had his own struggles with success which then showed up. It wasn’t long before Manning coughed up the game for the Broncos by throwing an interception—the worst pass he had thrown since his crucial interception near the end of Super Bowl XLIV three years ago, an errant toss that also assured his team’s loss back then.

Sometimes people can have their fill of success— or their family’s success— and unconsciously decide  that it’s simply someone else’s turn. Don’t underestimate the fact that Manning was coming back from a serious injury, a concern which can wreak havoc deep in the recesses of our mind when it comes to reaching the pinnacle of success.

And Junior Seau joins the crowd
Rodney Harrison observed how success sabotage— similar to Rashim Moore’s blunder— showed up in Super Bowl XLII. From his safety position with the Patriots at a crucial point late in the game he recognized the mismatch of 6’4” Giant receiver Plaxico Burress on a 5’9” corner Ellis Hobbs in solo coverage.  The defensive coordinator had called an all-out blitz and Harrison was screaming at middle linebacker Junior Seau to check out of the call. But as Harrison said, “Junior being Junior” just wanted to blitz— and Eli Manning just wanted to win. Manning threw an easy 17-yard fade for a touchdown to Burress in the end zone corner.  Seau suffered from the same overdoing hero impulse that apparently haunted Moore— and another player blind to true success bit the dust.

In one last look back, when we realize the phenomenal quick-read ability of a quarterback’s unconscious mind, we can see in the blink of an eye that on the play involving Moore— on which the playoff turned—Flacco would have read Moore’s risky out-of-position body language as a message, “Try me.”  Moore was signaling not only self-centeredness but carelessness and danger, and Flacco was more than willing to oblige him. Without that risk Jones would have never gotten behind him, and the Ravens would never have gotten to the Super Bowl.  You could call it “a game of inches”—a familiar baseball reference—but more often than we realize, the big games turn on the smallest choices.

There’s a lot more to handling the hot potato of success than we ever imagined.

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We now turn to the 2011 season and the beginning of Gene Chizik’s historic decline.

A magnificent national championship season inspired a spectacular celebration that was followed shortly by a shocking armed robbery by four Auburn players. Those amazing events ominously mirrored the rapid rise and fall of Gene Chizik and Auburn’s football fortunes.

Success goes to his head
In 2011 Chizik wrote a book entitled All In, which had been his team’s war cry during its championship ascent.  But Chizik’s book really should have been named All About Me.  While offensive guru Gus Malzahn, quarterback extraordinaire Cam Newton, and defensive star Nick Fairley had basked in the limelight in 2010, Chizik had apparently stewed in the background. In his book he barely mentioned those people. As his envy surfaced in his narrative, success had clearly gone to his head—the kiss of death. His decision-making—which reflected both arrogance and jealousy—quickly faltered as he fell victim to a series of self-defeating blind spots.

A lack of discipline and focus had begun to permeate the team. Chizik’s demoralizing star system—his unchecked favoritism—had mushroomed into other areas. For one thing, he was secretly favoring his own star which now shown so brightly.

After Auburn’s dramatic 2012 decline, Heath Evans, a former Auburn player who went on to enjoy a long NFL career, revealed that when he’d worked out with team members during the 2011 pre-season what he saw was “scary.” Missing were “discipline, structure, accountability, and most importantly, mental and physical toughness…it’s non-existent,” Evans said. Without the right coach, Evans observed, even the toughest team member could crumble. “Great coaches know how to make great men, and they’re built,” Evans noted. “You don’t come out of the womb with great character, great discipline, great emotional and physical fortitude.”

Like most top athletes, Evans emphasized mental toughness over physical strength, and Chizik’s mental toughness had started to go south—and his players read the message. It’s a mental game—like the rest of life.

Chizik’s blind spots were multiplying—and quickly. His decisions left much to be desired. He replaced stalwart defensive line coach Tracy Rocker with Mike Pelton, an Auburn alum who had worked under Chizik in 2007-08 at Iowa State. Pelton proved wholly inadequate. Under Rocker, physicality would not have been a problem, and the increasingly awful line play would simply not have been tolerated.

Confession of lacking discipline — hallmark of retreat
In May 2011 at the Auburn Fellowship of Christian Athletes annual fund-raising banquet in Birmingham with virtually his entire team present, Chizik was noticeably less supportive of his players. His speech stressed players’ misbehavior and their need to make better choices – in part likely in response to the robbery. But those words suggest that unconsciously he was quick-reading his own misbehavior and his own poor decisions—secretly observing the proverbial log in his own eye.  Deep down he knew he was slipping.

His guilt-inducing comments point to the unconscious guilt which invariably comes with great success. It’s the guilt which successful people consciously experience when they realize how much success they’ve had in comparison to others. But deep down such guilt can be an unbelievable powerful motivator.

For instance, when he was a basketball star for the Detroit Pistons, Isiah Thomas’s success guilt would surface whenever he passed through “the hood” where all his friends remained trapped in poverty. Thomas credited teammate Bill Lambeer for helping him overcome the guilt.

At the following year’s Auburn FCA meeting in May 2012, Chizik revealed how success guilt was eating at him from the inside out. Already the coach was telling us the secret story behind his personality change, how and why he was no longer the same confident leader. Success arrogance and guilt were two unseen culprits.

Chizik rejects reading deeper
At previous FCA meetings I had brief conversations with Chizik about the best-selling book Blink (see blog explanation page) which underscores “the new unconscious mind” that intuitively and instantaneously quick-reads situations. An Auburn Board of Trustees member and prominent leader had first urged him to read the book. Chizik expressed interest and eventually read Blink. I emphasized to him how his players were quick-reading him moment-by-moment for guidance, that he had far greater influence than he realized.

We discussed the step past Blink where he could listen to his players for their deeper verbal messages—and I sent him my book, The Deeper Intelligence, which explained how. But he implied that he already understood how the deeper mind worked and used it for reading body language.

He never understood that his quick-read unconscious really existed. He never grasped his propensity for blind spots. He never realized any of this even though his super intelligence progressively confessed to his own failures and blind spots.

‘Them boys are going to try and drown us’
Already in a hidden retreat from success and violating fundamental rules of success (for instance by failing as a disciplinarian), Chizik provided the key story four months later by telling us success—and his inability to handle it—was “The Issue” for him. On September 12, 2011, two days after barely winning his first two games of the new season, he spoke to the Birmingham Monday Morning Quarterback Club which raises more than a million dollars a year for children’s charities. I was especially interested in what he would have to say on the heels of a national championship.

The coach casually related a powerful story about the dangers of success. Remember, the right-brain unconscious mind communicates its intuitive quick-read on a situation through symbolic stories. In other words, we need to read Chizik’s story like a self-parable.

He described how the week before the Mississippi State game (which Auburn had just won) a player pleaded with his teammates to look at the impending game as if the MSU players were going to try to drown each one of them. The player vowed it would take more than one opponent, maybe three or four could drown him, but not one. Read the primitive message, “Them boys are coming over here to kill us. They’re going to roll in here like a tidal wave to drown us because we’re the defending national champion.” In other words, succeed and you get death threats. This threat doesn’t just register consciously, it reverberates to the deepest level of the psyche like a post-traumatic stress disorder experience. I could give you hundreds of examples.

Think about it. Everyone wants a shot at whoever’s on top. College football is a particularly brutal game, and it mobilizes primitive “killer instincts.” Ask anyone who has played in the trenches. College football players face unimaginable near-homicidal impulses—as Chizik’s player so aptly put it. And here was Coach Chizik himself on the heels of enormous success presenting the classical underlying equation “success means sudden destruction.” What goes up must come down. Of course coaches and football players are taught to deny such emotions, but like everyone else they have a deeper quick-read unconscious mind of their own. This deeper mind often casts the deciding vote, and for successful people and teams it can become the overriding motivator—following success.
This is a primary reason why so many prominent individuals retreat on the heels of success in various self-sabotaging ways—or at times on the verge of success. (Successful coaches know how to navigate these tricky waters but Chizik didn’t—as he will remind us a year later.)

Chizik’s overlooks his message — Two trains of thought
Later, at the end of  the next season, when reviewing his failures Gene Chizik unconsciously described his key idea regarding the mind—“train of thought.”  For example, he will state, “That’s not my train of thought.”  In so doing he points to the most impressive thing about the mind: at any given moment we have two trains of thought, one conscious and the other an amazing quick-read unconscious. Of course by nature we are consciously in denial of that deeper train of thought.

This is truly difficult to comprehend at first because we’re all biased against such a possibility since we can’t immediately control it—unless we learn how to hear its messages. But this powerful idea confronts us. Do we actually have two trains of thought going on in our minds? The world of sports provides striking examples of this reality. Recall Gladwell’s book Blink which demonstrated simultaneous normal-speed conscious thinking and super-speed unconscious thinking. Truly we have learned something new and startling about the human mind.

In his quarterback club speech, Gene Chizik revealed two trains of thought about success. First, in repeating his player’s story, consciously he was discussing someone else. But telling the story at that moment was his idea—his speech, his words. He had chosen to repeat the story, suggesting the idea was rattling around in his unconscious mind. He suggests his super intelligence was attempting to get him to pay attention to the unrecognized pressures he was facing. In a nutshell Chizik confirmed that a powerful psychological obstacle associated with success is potential destruction.

Bryant and Dye confirm danger of success
Bear Bryant once summed it up: “Stick your head above the crowd and somebody will try and knock it off.”

After Chizik’s speech I waited in line to speak with him on the dais. Patiently he greeted everyone in front of me, and then suddenly he walked off as if I were not there. He knew exactly who I was and whether his avoidance was consciously intentional or not—most importantly unconsciously he didn’t want to see me.

He walked several feet away when I called out his name and he came back to greet me. Symbolically I represented the deeper mind, the very thing he was running from: the deep fear of danger caused by success.

This incident spoke volumes about Gene Chizik’s blind spots. His unspoken message in walking off was: “I am avoiding the powerful threat of success which my team and I are facing—I am retreating.” He was running from himself. He was running from success and all the pressures and danger it represented.

Still, he listened to my brief counsel about the extreme burden of success he was clearly carrying. I  told him about how Washington Redskins coach Joe Gibbs had retreated from success the season after winning the Super Bowl (that story later) and of how success stirred up powerful emotions prompting potential retreat. I mentioned how, in a clinical study, the dreams of NFL players were filled with violent images remarkably similar to those of war veterans. Then I asked him which player had told the “success means drowning” story, and he declined to tell me. His response suggests that he didn’t want to admit he was actually the main one who feared success.

Chizik needed help to decipher his own deeper motivation—the real reason I believe he told the story was a cry for help to understand himself.  Sadly he continued to operate in massive denial. Over the next two seasons, his blind spots would progressively worsen. But he was clearly explaining how and why the surprising “other post-championship Gene Chizik” emerged. We needed to explain such a drastic change in his behavior.

Ironically former Auburn coach Pat Dye once communicated the identical idea linking success and danger. In 1982 after breaking a nine-year losing streak in the Iron Bowl with Auburn’s memorable 23-22 victory over Alabama and Bear Bryant (Dye’s former mentor), Dye stood at the post-game interview podium. Suddenly a loud noise reverberated through the room when the interview trailer he was in fell off its support in a back corner. Immediately, Dye responded to the sharp noise, “I thought I’d just been shot,” he said. “I always said if I beat Alabama, I would die.”

The post A Coach Retreats From Success appeared first on Andrew G. Hodges, M.D..

Gene Chizik was telling us that success was “The Issue” on his plate.

His team had already told us that in the off-season—very quickly.  Chizik had  shown us that certain stars were treated differently. But now he had a team full of stars, national champions all. On a cold January 22, 2011, a dozen days after beating Oregon, Auburn staged a monumental championship ceremony in Alabama drawing nearly 60,000 proud fans to Jordan-Hare Stadium. Around the same time, the players received their national championship rings.

In March of 2011, barely two months after Auburn won the national title, four players with no apparent history of trouble-making decided they would rob a person in a nearby trailer home. They had reportedly been drinking and smoking synthetic marijuana.

It was a stupendously stupid crime. With only one gunman among them, the players took money and other items from another college student who had been entertaining a female friend at the trailer. Returning to the getaway car where the driver had remained, the robbers rolled five minutes down the road before the Auburn police—who had been immediately alerted—pulled them over. All four players were arrested and one has since gone to trial.

The three who ventured inside the trailer had been expected to be key players when the 2011 season got underway in the fall. The senior-to-be gunman, Michael McNeil, certainly anticipated an NFL future and the other two with him in the trailer might also have developed into professional prospects. The home invasion plan had been hatched in an apartment where star freshman running back Michael Dyer was also present. The four thieves had even taken Dyer’s .45-caliber handgun to pull off the robbery.

For the sleepy, gentlemanly town of Auburn this was a surreal moment—four heralded college football players had been arrested and charged with a senseless and dangerous crime. Right off we can believe that the incident resulted from “success craziness”—albeit it unconscious. Why else would these players behave in such a strikingly unusual fashion—even considering drug use? It was as if they were simply relinquishing their success.  This becomes even clearer when we take a close look at Michael Dyer.

Michael Dyer
In many ways Dyer was a symbolic example and a precursor to coach Gene Chizik’s eventual success sabotage. In 2010 he had been one of the two or three top running back recruits in the nation, and he eventually broke Bo Jackson’s longstanding Auburn rushing record as a freshman. But it was at the National Championship Game against Oregon where Dyer suddenly was catapulted to fame.  He rushed for 147 yards with two memorable runs—one unbelievable 35-yard run in which he rolled over the Oregon tackler on the final drive leading to a chip shot Auburn field goal. Michael Dyer —not Cam Newton—was voted the MVP of the game, and it quickly became more success than he could handle before he finally pulled a “Maurice Clarett.”

As a powerful freshman running back, Clarett lead the Ohio State Buckeyes to the national championship in 2002 where he was also MVP of the game. Basically Clarett became so dysfunctional and difficult that he never played another meaningful down either in college or as a professional player. He was suspended from Ohio State after being charged with filing a false police report about $10,000 worth of missing merchandise before being arrested a few years later on armed robbery and weapons charges. He was sentenced to more than seven years in prison. Success had gone to Clarett’s head in a huge way.

At Auburn, to his credit Dyer lasted two seasons. While he had a productive All-SEC-type sophomore year rushing, he was a disruptive, self-centered force on the team. He had developed a secret drug problem – at least to the degree — and was suspended prior to the 2011 Chick-fil-A Bowl game. He was told major behavioral changes had to take place before returning to the team.

When Auburn offensive coordinator Gus Malzahn left to take the head coaching job at Arkansas State, Dyer—an Arkansas native—decided to transfer with him and “get a fresh start” even though he would likely have to sit out the next season as a transfer.

Here was Dyer sitting on a gold mine at “running back U” Auburn, who with another productive season would have signed a lucrative NFL contract. But his behavior was clearly signaling retreat and self-sabotage.

At ASU, Dyer continued on his decidedly self-destructive course. He was a star in the spring game but around the same time he was caught speeding in a car at more than 90 mph while high on marijuana with more in his vehicle and his girlfriend by his side. The highway patrolman who pulled the football star over let him off with a warning and soon lost his job over the permissiveness. When the story came to light Dyer then lost his job as Coach Malzahn kicked him off the team. (Reports have since surfaced that Dyer, who did not play in 2012, is now getting help with his drug problem.)

Later, at the trial of one of his former Auburn teammate’s, Dyer testified under oath that he had been battling a synthetic marijuana problem for at least his first two years at Auburn. His abuse of “spice” —which had apparently started back in high school as his fame grew—had worsened as time went on. Understand addiction is just one form of self-sabotage which undermines success. Often it begins with success.

Looking back we see how fame became increasingly difficult for Dyer to handle.  Early success can be especially tumultuous for young men to navigate.

Now we can better understand how success produced two Gene Chiziks: one “pre” and one “post” national championship. Take nothing away from what he achieved. Of course he had some good luck in 2010, but winning teams always do.  As will we see during his first two seasons his players read his message—“I want  to win badly” —and followed his plan to a tee.  Yes, he was blessed with extraordinary players, but he managed to keep the team together. Chizik’s message gradually changed, however, over the next two seasons.

If we pay attention he will tell us how and why.  He will explain to us how his somewhat subtle but powerful message became “Men, as your leader I am now in a disguised but powerful retreat from success. Follow my lead—read my deeper messages, especially my behavior.”

Contact: andrewhodges@profilingsuccess.net

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From ‘All In to All Out’

As college football prepares to begin its bowl season, a major player on the scholastic gridiron stunned its faithful fans by sabotaging its long-held tradition of success. The performance of the 2012 Auburn University football team represented an unprecedented collapse of historic proportions. No other former national champion has fallen so far so fast. Two short years after winning it all, Auburn posted the worst record ever for a former champion. The team lost nine of its 12 games.

The Auburn Tigers won the 2010 National Championship by beating the Oregon Ducks in the Bowl Championship Series on January 10, 2011, to cap off a magnificent undefeated season.  Under second-year head coach Gene Chizik, the 2010 Tigers completely dominated the prestigious Southeastern Conference and soundly defeated the South Carolina Gamecocks 56 to 17 in that season’s SEC Championship Game. The following year, Auburn posted a somewhat respectable record of 8-5 and ended the season with a victory over the Virginia Cavaliers in the Chick-Fil-A Bowl.

In 2012, however, the Tigers entirely lost their roar. The team failed to win a single SEC game—going 0-8 in the conference. And they lost big—suffering unimaginable beat downs in big games with Texas A&M (63-21), longstanding rival Georgia (38-0), and finally a 49-0 loss to arch-rival Alabama. So porous was the Tigers’ defense that in all three games the scores could easily have been doubled.

Auburn fans had never seen anything like it, and—although they’d seen it with their own eyes—nobody could explain it. After the demoralizing lopsided defeat by the Texas A&M Aggies, longtime Auburn sportswriter Phillip Marshall (auburnundercover.com)  noted that he had been watching Auburn games since 1960 when he was ten years old and this was by far the team’s most inexcusable performance he’d ever witnessed.  Then Auburn followed it with two more.

Everybody was puzzled, but—looking back—there had, in fact, been warnings.

Do players always know when they quit?

During an interview, Florida State Seminoles head coach Bobby Bowden once told me that there comes a time in a football game when an opponent will quit mentally – often unconsciously — when deep down they know they are beat. We could say the same thing about Auburn’s entire 2012 season going south.  As the season progressed, the Tigers began to quit earlier and earlier in every game. But the way the team quit was not exactly the way we usually think of quitting. In fact, recruiting had been strong as usual. Players and coaches alike insisted that practices remained spirited and strenuous. The effort was there.  But there was a definite mental quitting they couldn’t completely recognize.

In the end, Auburn went 3–9 and 0–8 in the SEC, and in its final three conference games the Tigers were outscored 150–21. So what happened?  How do you explain why a team with plenty of potential, a team used to being on top, so thoroughly forsakes its capabilities?

Stories have emerged describing coach Gene Chizik’s increasingly dysfunctional behavior—which explains some of what happened. But why did it emerge so strongly only after he had won a national championship?

Chizik speaks between the lines

We shall see that Gene Chizik himself will answer the most important questions explaining the team’s incredible implosion. In his public comments and during brief conversations I had with him over his four years at Auburn his brilliant, quick-read unconscious mind revealed far more than he realized. Before that disastrous season resulted in his firing on November 25, 2012, Chizik’s own deeper mind was explaining that his team was performing poorly because of the emergence of blind spots – blind spots which seriously clouded his vision, blind spots brought on by success itself.

He was unconsciously attempting to understand himself, hoping against hope that he would catch on before it was too late. Sadly, he never did. But he has much to teach us about success and failure. Chizik’s story will help us begin to grasp the most underappreciated and least understood pressure in sports and elsewhere—the intense pressure imposed by success itself.

You will see as Chizik reads himself and speaks between the lines. Since I have been trained to decipher those messages, this is the story I am reporting.

Background history–Chizik the Loser?

It would be an uninformed mistake to simply label Chizik an incompetent loser. Initially that was the tag he carried into Auburn when he arrived in 2008 saddled with an unimpressive 5-19 record from his former coaching job at Iowa State.  So we must first appreciate the enormous, seemingly unexpected success he achieved at Auburn in in his first two seasons.  How many men win a national title in their fourth year of coaching and in their second season at a new job?

Gene Chizik was an unpopular choice as Auburn’s new head coach in 2008 due to his losing record in Iowa, but he had a sterling record as a defensive coordinator. In 2004 at Auburn his work with the defense was a big factor in the Tigers’ 13-0 undefeated season.  Wooed to Texas as defensive coordinator in 2005, his defense stopped USC’s offensive juggernaut at the end of the national championship game — to leave time for quarterback Vince Young to work his magic and win the title for Texas.  Chizik coached three defensive backs in a row who each went on to win Thorpe trophies awarded to college football’s defensive back of the year.  Carlos Rogers at Auburn in 2004 was the first. He felt so strongly about Chizik’s selection as Auburn’s new coach prior to the 2009 season that he left his pro team, the Washington Redskins, for a few days to fly in to Auburn to show his support. Similarly, former Auburn linebacker Anatarious Willliams solidly backed Chizik’s hire. He not only recalled how thoroughly Chizik prepared his players for games but said that what he missed most after his collegiate playing days were over was Gene Chizik the man. His players all thought Chizik was a great leader, and so they played hard for him. No wonder he was such an effective recruiter.

And in two short seasons as head coach, he led Auburn to the top of the football world as 2010 national champions. Blessed with two extraordinary players—Cam Newton and Nick Fairley—Auburn’s season was glorious. But don’t think it was all about those two star players. Chizik had come in and restored Auburn’s good name, gone head-to-head with arch-rival Alabama and Nick Saban both on the field and in recruiting. Against all sorts of odds, Chizik put together a plan and undergirded an “Auburn family” mentality that was second to none.

He hired an effective coaching staff including offensive guru Gus Malzahn who recruited Cam Newton and Michael Dyer. His offensive line coach, Jeff Grimes, developed his unit into one of the best in the country. Chizik hired defensive line coach and former Lombardi winner Tracy Rocker who pushed Nick Fairley and the rest of the line to new heights. That line and a solid game plan from defensive coordinator Ted Roof shut down Oregon’s high-powered offense in the BCS National Championship Game. Chizik’s coaches were all gifted recruiters, and so he and his staff significantly broadened Auburn’s recruiting horizons all over the country.

At the top 

After winning it all in 2010, Chizik was sitting on top of the college football world. He had won a national championship, coached the offensive player of the year—Heisman winner Newton—and the defensive player of the year—Lombardi award winner Fairley. Chizik was voted National Coach of the Year, wrote a book, and received significant salary bonuses. For the BCS Championship-winning 2010 season, Chizik earned a base salary of $2.1 million plus bonuses worth an additional $1.1 million, including $500,000 for 13 wins, an SEC title, a BCS bowl appearance and winning the AP SEC Coach of the Year and an additional $600,000 for winning the National Championship Game. He signed a new contract at a substantial raise. Gene Chizik  had far more success in a single season than most coaches have in a lifetime.

He brought an “all-in” mentality to Auburn fans, and they were all in by now. Looking back, Brett Eddins, a member of the 2010 team, tells us what a magical time it was.  He saw no problems with the program’s direction. While Chizik had fostered a “star system” favoring elite players such as Newton and Dyer, Eddins  believed that system had not greatly disrupted the team. In retrospect, however, Chizik’s star system soon grew into one of the coach’s most disabling blind spots.

At the time, former Auburn coach Pat Dye said the Tigers had never been so strong and the program’s future so promising. Birmingham News columnist Kevin Scarbinsky—one of the most respected sportswriters in Alabama—chronicled Chizik’s accomplishments and noted how the coach had achieved rare heights despite having to perform in the shadow of Nick Saban who was on the verge of creating a dynasty at Alabama. Scarbinsky underscored how Chizik had gone “tit” for ‘tat” with Saban, and the scribe logically anticipated a longstanding battle between the two coaches.

For Gene Chizik to suddenly nosedive from that pinnacle calls for a powerful explanation.

The hot potato called success  

Clearly things changed with success.  And it was the insistent pressures of success which had also plagued Chizik’s two immediate predecessors.  Auburn is the only SEC school to have three undefeated seasons over the past 20 years, led by three different coaches (Terry Bowden, Tommy Tuberville, and Chizik) and each coach followed their success with losing seasons a few years later which cost them their jobs. Each coach became dysfunctional.  Each coach had major blind spots when it came to handling success. I have spoken to all three, listened to their comments in speeches or interviews, and examined their behavior.

Understand, there was a pre-national championship Gene Chizik and a post-national championship leader. Exactly like there was a “pre” and “post” national championship Michael Dyer—the star of the 2010 national championship game for Auburn. Let’s look closely at the sad story of Michael Dyer who serves as a symbolic proxy for Gene Chizik.

Contact: andrewhodges@profilingsuccess.net

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Daily we are surrounded by prominent people who provide rich object lessons in just how difficult success can be to manage.

Defined simply, success means achieving our best and helping those around us to achieve their best as well. Indeed there are secret rules of success that apply to careers, marriages, raising children, education, athletics, government, hobbies, and our spiritual lives. While we must develop our conscious thinking to enhance success, our conscious mind also presents major blind spots when it comes to maximizing success.

People have overlooked the pressures of success including the temptation to stop short or give it back. But we have an entirely new lens for looking at success. We all possess an “inner success coach” which guides us toward our best.

The Discovery–our inner genius
The key to this genius is to understand we simultaneously read situations including success in two ways — with our limited conscious mind and with our far more brilliant unconscious mind (the so called “other 90%” of the mind). This deeper mind quick-reads situations in the blink of an eye.

Author Malcolm Gladwell portrayed this well in his best-selling book “Blink.” In one sterling example a fire chief had the sudden instinct to clear the room where his men were putting out a fire.  He ordered them out of the room just before the floor fell in revealing the deeper fire was in the floor below. Only later did he realize clues that he was unconsciously quick-reading.

Gladwell described the discovery of a “dazzling new unconscious mind” but mistakenly believed instincts were the ultimate in quick-reading. Yet clinical research in which Hodges participated (before Gladwell) revealed this new unconscious possessed a super intelligence which spoke clearly albeit between the lines in its own unique language — a narrative language, a symbolic story language.

Unknowingly our super-intel uses stories (often about others) or key images to reveal how it is quick-reading a situation. It is truly an inner success coach which guides us toward maximum achievement — just as the fire chief’s deeper mind did.

Right and Left-Brain Listening
By analogy think of the conscious mind as “left brain”– literal, on the surface. Think of the super-intel unconscious as right-brain — symbolic and intuitive. A major key to grasp the hidden pressures of success — obstacles to overcome — is to listen to “right-brain” super-intel messages, listen to stories in a deeper way.

For example a therapy patient consciously [left brain] felt he was ready to stop therapy, but his unconscious [right brain] then patterned stories of “unfinished business” (e.g. his remodeling project was not completed, his son shouldn’t drop out of college). His “right-brain” super intelligence saw success for him meant more self-understanding in therapy, that he had unfinished business.

In football terms we can think of our conscious “left-brain” mind as the “blind side”– where our blind spots are. Our unconscious “right-brain” mind helps us see past them through the stories we tell.

The facts are we have discovered deep down a new super intelligence in every one. We now know precisely how it quick-reads and how it speaks. We now have a whole new understanding of the mind and of motivation.

We have significantly new knowledge about success.

Sports Stories and Success Psychology
The competitive environment of sports offers excellent opportunities to observe how coaches and athletes deal with success issues. They play their games in public as they pursue their clear-cut goals. These events transpire in an observable fashion in a time-limited environment. So we can observe the “success arena” and hear people communicating about key issues in a rich and memorable manner. We have a new psychological lens through which to view success and self-sabotage. Sports stories present a valuable learning opportunity which can be directly applied to all of our daily lives.

But success stories are all around us. In big stories and “little” every day stories. Success — or the lack of success — lies at the very heart of our being.

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