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.

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Already we have seen how Chizik’s inconsistent behavior and lack of discipline underscored the ongoing saga of his final disastrous season in 2012.  To fully appreciate how specifically Chizik predicted his Auburn squad’s dismal performance due to his discipline failures we must return to a previously mentioned speech. Because he delivered this talk to a prominent quarterback club at the peak of his success in September of 2011 (see previous article “A coach retreats from success”), the importance of his statement cannot be overstressed.  At the time his team had barely won its first two games but still boasted the longest winning streak in the country.

He provides a rich story—as his unconscious super intelligence speaks—which we can only fully appreciate in retrospect.

‘Blue’ makes a mess
You won’t believe this story. In a memorable humorous anecdote he told his audience about his kids’ new puppy named Blue. Chizik described how the new dog was peeing and pooping everywhere and that he had announced to the family that he wasn’t going to clean up Blue’s mess.  Remember, these are his thoughts which originated from his own deeper mind quick-reading him in the blink of an eye.

Get the big picture—Chizik was not going to discipline some young family “member.” In other words, he could see deep down that he was not going to bother to discipline his team even when they had accidents and made tons of mistakes.

Indeed the team and its fans would soon be blue exactly like the color of their jerseys. As though to emphasize the point, Chizik unconsciously told a similar story in his book recently released at the time in which he described his kids bringing another family pet to a practice. This dog, too, ended up pooping on the football field.

Chizik was confessing that he would soil Auburn’s long tradition on its own field, that in a nutshell the next two seasons would be “one big accident” and he would unconsciously be dogging it. The story would truly be funny if it weren’t so sad.

You can readily see how the right-brain language of imagery creates the real power in a story versus the weaker literal version from the left brain. After it’s all over Chizik can say “I didn’t meet expectations” (left brain) or he can unconsciously paint the right-brain word picture in the story of the pet puppy, Blue.

How perfectly these two canine capers fit Chizik’s behavior over his last two seasons.  The former disciplinarian became progressively undisciplined himself and failed to discipline his players. Secretly Auburn had a new coach and didn’t know it. Indeed, the second Gene Chizik had appeared.

From that point in September 2011 following his story about Blue, Chizik’s record over the remaining two years would be 9 and 14. Increasingly fans and sportswriters and even his players could see his lack of discipline. Everyone could see it except for Chizik who had a huge blind spot around the messes he continually created.

Secret passions involving success
Again he unconsciously blames the culprit success  as the reason for his disregard for discipline and his eventual retreat  into failure. Remember in the same speech he told another story in which, he said it clearly, “success meant destruction.” If you succeeded, your opponent would try and drown you (see previous article “A coach retreats from success”). The unconscious mind, as Chizik demonstrated there, sees the full power behind the killer instinct which competition secretly engenders.

Simultaneously in this story Chizik implied that, in order to win, you had to drown the person trying to drown you. Indirectly Chizik pointed to his own killer instinct which competition mobilized—drown or be drowned.  To win, you must dominate others. It’s a fixed universal idea about intense competition in the deeper mind, what we call an “archetype” of the psyche.

The passionate deeper mind is what it is.

Success goes to his head—“Winning is all about me”
To continue to understand his last two seasons, especially 2012, we turn to another key idea in the back of Gene Chizik’s mind—a concept which explains his central problem. He could not handle success and had to get out of Dodge as secretly as possible without anyone recognizing why. He had to obscure the real story with classic denial. While his failure was painful, there was a much deeper, more painful story and two more truckloads of fear. But he actually shows us how to see past his frequent denials.

In the same quarterback club speech in September 2011 as Chizik reviewed Auburn’s success, he insisted that “it is not about me.” Often to hear unconscious secret confessions we read through denials and pay attention to the key idea particularly when something goes wrong. The message now: Auburn’s success “is all about me.” The natural self-centered way imperfect human beings unconsciously look at life and try to deny it at the same time. Of course we all comprehend how such thinking originates in childhood. We try to fight it but deep down the idea lives on. Chizik’s super-intelligence had thus informed him that indeed he had experienced great success as “all about me”—that success had gone to his head

Furthermore success had seduced him into the self-idealization that he was above such a human foible.

Chizik underscores how success swells our pride and distorts our mind. The question is not can success go to our heads, it’s how much and how to recognize it. Control it. We first must own it and constantly look for its hidden effects.  It’s painful to see our heroes like this—but look we must because nobody is above their own humanity.

Chizik’s story represents the human dilemma in which we all find ourselves and it well illustrates why success can be so difficult to handle.

Yes, we are surrounded by many people who succeed, and don’t forget that not so long ago Chizik himself had been one of those success stories. We are looking at a man who got to the top of the heap. His experience on the way up that hill reveals the secret struggles less-prominent folks have as we all try to get the best out of ourselves. Humility doesn’t come easily.

Constant reinforcement for the ‘big-head’
We wonder could Gene Chizik really deny such thoughts completely—in the vast unconscious mind where we are free to expand our thinking? Think of how often he was reminded that he was the one responsible for the success. He had just won the national championship—and had achieved the greatest comeback in Iron Bowl history. He was the National Coach of the Year.  As he recounted in his book All In, along with the governor and Nick Saban at Alabama he was one of the three most prominent people in the state. And, in an attempt to educate Cam Newton about the pressures of success, he included the two quarterbacks at both schools in his top five.

Constantly catered to, being paid millions of dollars, ever reminded of just how important he was—how could he possibly escape thinking, “You know, it really is all about me?” Yet his strong denial and self-idealization reveals that Chizek suffered serious secret guilt over his ego trip. He will remind of this enormous burden at the end of his self-sabotaging journey in 2012.

A major personal clue – His deep pain
Chizik revealed a personal reason for his vulnerability to a retreat from success in that same key speech in 2011. For the only time I know of, he publicly mentioned how he came from a broken family as did his wife. They both had been severely traumatized by divorce and pledged they would not put their kids through the pain they’d felt after their parents’ separation. Whatever it took, Chizik and his wife would make their marriage work. He was putting down a crucial personal marker of unfinished business. It was a brief glimpse into his life, and he quickly closed the window. Later we will explore what this had to do with his shifting roles from a leader to an absent leader. 

Now we return to the end of the 2012 season and pick up on Chizik’s comments and mindset as his career at Auburn came to a “blue blue” end.
(To be continued.)

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While we have been focusing on Coach Gene Chizik’s precipitous decline from the top of the football world another success story presents itself from his former chief rival Nick Saban. The situation calls for a brief diversion before completing the Chizik story.

Seven days ago Saban won his third national title in four years and his fourth overall in nine years. It brings to mind a recent conversation I had about him this past October with FSU Coach Jimbo Fisher (previously the offensive coordinator on Saban’s 2003 LSU national title team).

Following a speech by Fisher, who sees sports psychology as an important part of his program, we discussed the unappreciated difficulties in climbing the heights of success — and staying there.  Fisher and I talked over how there was another level to managing success in light of our new understanding of the mind – the discovery of the brilliant quick-read super intelligence which sheds new light on the pressures of success (see article 1). Looking for every advantage he listened intently.

At the time on October 29, 2012, it was virtually a foregone conclusion that Gene Chizik would lose his job at the end of the season – and Fisher was already being mentioned as a possible successor. I pointed out to Jimbo that Chizik would be the third Auburn coach in a row over the last 20 years to follow an undefeated season with an extremely poor season not long down the road and lose his job. (Jimbo had been the quarterback coach at Auburn when Terry Bowden – the first of the three coaches — quit before he was fired in 1998.) Each coach had become dysfunctional and had major blind spots when it came to handling success.

Fisher then asked, “What about the guy on the other side of the state?” He was of course referring to Saban.  He wondered how Saban had protected himself from a major success retreat. At the time I had not really studied Saban and suggested we think about it. Then we discussed how John Wooden—the great UCLA basketball coaching legend (10 NCAA basketball national titles in 12 years) — had avoided success sabotage.

By the end of the season Saban was at the peak of his career having experienced a rare level of success with another national championship in hand. Only one of 5 coaches to win 4 national titles (Bryant, Hayes, Stagg, and Warner).

Now there was one clear way Nick Saban could avoid any further real success, history-making success. He could go to the NFL and coach. Many people would see that as a success but it would be a secret retreat. Under the circumstances it would be a step down not a step up.

Saban has a chance to be the only college coach to win three national titles in a row.  (For the record only one NFL team has won 3 championships in a row—the 1965-67 Green Bay Packers.) In addition he has a chance to surpass Bear Bryant’s all time record of six which would put him ahead of the whole pack.

Going to the NFL Saban wouldn’t have to worry about any of those records—and the unbelievable pressure that goes with them. Far more pressure than any coach appreciates consciously. The newly discovered super intelligence (see article 1) has taught us there is 90% more pressure to success than we realize because there is 90% more to our minds.

But shortly after winning his 2012 title Saban has seemingly passed the test of an NFL retreat. He declared that he has forever “closed the door” on returning to the NFL as a head coach.

It’s not like Saban hasn’t unconsciously retreated to the NFL before. Following his 2003 national title at LSU he became the Miami Dolphin’s head coach for two years. There he learned that he lacked the control he had in the college ranks – not only was parity a problem but so were drafting and salary caps. He could have foreseen these difficulties and perhaps had similar success at LSU that he’s had at Alabama without the interruption. Maybe by now he would have a fifth national title.

Saban himself can see now that building a college football dynasty has certain advantages versus the NFL. He has a better “draft position” every year with his extraordinary recruiting skills at a magnet school for attracting talent with Alabama’s long tradition, and he now has a special connection to the next league up (the NFL) which appeals to players. And he’s not handicapped by money to upgrade facilities and staffing.

Parenthetically, it’s not like great coaches can’t unconsciously retreat as they approach breaking a longstanding record. An NFL and Dallas Cowboy insider told me about former Dallas Cowboy coach Jimmy Johnson’s silly fight and split with owner Jerry Jones. Johnson had a chance to go where no NFL coach had gone—three Super Bowl titles in a row — when he allowed Jones to force him into a retreat and resigned as coach in 1994 after winning it all in 1992 and 1993.

Stay tuned. Nick Saban has passed the first hurdle of success retreat —he’s not going to the NFL. But there will be greater pressures of success to come – beyond anything he now knows.

Already he has provided one clue about success pressure: he tells us that Alabama will be the unique target of each opponent next year. In so doing he has pointed us to the Auburn-Alabama rivalry. Nobody will target Alabama more than arch-rival Auburn.

While Auburn appears down and done for a while don’t count them out when it comes to playing Alabama. Unexpectedly they came completely out of the blue in 2010 to win it all, the last team to break the Tide’s streak.

Before we return to the rest of the story on Gene Chizik’s self-induced decline, we will take a look at the special competition between Auburn and Alabama in a game that’s known as the Iron Bowl. Chizik’s 2010 victory there helped usher him rapidly down the slippery slope of success.

The post Can Nick Saban stand this much success? appeared first on Andrew G. Hodges, M.D..

More success guilt at Auburn
Turning to Auburn he now was taking over a job by his former boss Tommy Tuberville who had hired him originally – never an easy task. His boss’s misfortunate had turned out for his gain.

As soon as he got to Auburn once again he had to fire almost all the coaches. These were men that he had previously worked with as defensive coordinator whose families depended upon their job. Several coaches were bitter and one coach he had known for 20 years on the staff still remains angry at him. Wherever he turned Chizik was taking things away from people he cared about — their most basic emotional needs: a surrogate father, a boss, jobs and a head coach in whom the school had greatly invested. It was as though he had stolen from them what they depended on and truly needed – and done so by breaking promises.

And it was all because of what he had wanted, his seeming sudden desire to be a head coach someplace else. He was seen as unappreciative because he had not achieved enough Iowa State gratitude to have in the bank when he chose to leave for a better job.

In fact Chiziik was so guilty he had taken his name out of consideration after his Auburn interview. He was certain he wasn’t going to be chosen by Auburn AD Jay Jacobs and he was feeling guilty for all the heat he was taking at ISU — when word got out about the secret job interview. Understand a fear can be a secret unconscious wish motivated by guilt:  “I fear I won’t get the job” can reflect “I shouldn’t get the job because of my broken promises.”

Chizik’s situation was extremely unusual. He had received a quick unexpected job offer after he had barely settled in to his new job – and had a poor record. Now he was returning to his old school which he had left not long ago (5 years prior) and suddenly having to fire former colleagues and friends. It was a set-up for unbelievable guilt.

An added unexpected burden: early success
Now add to this burden sudden success beyond belief at his new job with phenomenal prestige and financial reward. From an inadequate 5-19 job performance he suddenly has built a 22-5 record earning him “The National Coach of the Year.” Surely all the wounded Iowa State people Chizik left behind experienced colossal rage over his success. We can almost read their thoughts, “Anybody but Chizik deserves that award.  A curse on his future.”

Early success itself in a career can be a massive burden to handle. Many prominent people have testified to this reality. (Song writer Randy Newman once said he had that he had never seen anyone in the music business have early success without it “shaking them to their core.”) But add enormous personal resentment to the equation and the burden of early success triples. Such guilt which Chizik experienced can linger deep in our unconscious — that huge emotional closet where we naturally tend to bury such traumas.

Now as we continue forward observing Chizik’s behavior into the 2012 season he reminds us of an Indian tribe where the bravest of the brave were traditionally awarded medals after a big victory. Then after enjoying the recognition for a few weeks, the honored braves returned the medals to the tribe. Chizik is in the process of giving his medals back.

Two murders confirm danger of success
First we must appreciate another pre-season pressure which only expedited that process and confirmed Gene Chiziik’s deepest fear regarding the consequences of success – again a fear hidden in his unconscious emotional closet. Another surreal moment occurs on June 9, 2012, when two Auburn players are shot and killed at an afternoon pool party and a third one is wounded. The gunman was an outsider visiting from Montgomery and the tragedy would have confirmed the message that success brings destruction – that people hunt down the biggest and most successful.

The wounded player, Eric Mack, a starting guard was so disturbed with a PTSD syndrome that he was psychologically unable to play that season. Believe that the entire team and the coach were deeply affected by this – again unconsciously – while consciously they mostly buried the matter. Finally in the 11^th game of the year wide receiver Trovon Reed wears the number of one of the deceased players – subtly announcing the toll the murder took on the team.  Don’t underestimate the drag on the season of this powerful emotional event.

Continuing  violation of rules of discipline
Everybody knows the rules of success deep down. Chizik continued to let discipline slide: classroom attendance, coaching accountability, uneven discipline with certain players excused from workouts, and again strength coach Kevin Yohall is undermined. Practices were not physical enough. The message louder by the moment remains, “I do not want my team to be strong – especially mentally disciplined. “

Offensive coordinator Scott Loefller reportedly has conflicts with certain offensive coaches who didn’t support his plan. Chizik allows the lack of unity to further undermine the team — and continues to micromanage the offense at times.

At one point Chizik suspended trouble-maker DeAngelo Benton for drug use and then allowed him to return to the team – which players saw as disruptive. Benton had been drinking with the players prior to the robbery a year ago and had reportedly antagonized the shooter who killed the Auburn players by threatening his life.

Consciously Chizik would make daily efforts to coach and talk about discipline but was undermining himself continually.

Discipline means setting strong boundaries
Discipline entails establishing levels of individual responsibility. Setting boundaries in relationships is an important way to achieve discipline. It communicates to the player who he is as an individual — and who the coach is.  A coach must build strong individuals – holding each player accountable – and then mold them into a team of strong individuals each of whom chooses to put the team first.  It is an exquisite balance.  Regarding DeAngelo Benton for example, it appears he was never held fully accountable as an individual and had trouble minding his own business, often encouraging others to join him out of bounds.

Chizik had similar boundary problems of his own. While he strived to create a strong sense of team – of family, as he called it — he failed to set clear boundaries of individual responsibility, a failure which undermined his other efforts. His tendency became worse with success. We can view many of Chizik’s problems with success as boundary problems. (Later we will look at his background described in his book All In to see how these problems developed.)

The dressing-room blind spot
One change in Chizik epitomizes his sudden blind spots around setting boundaries. In the successful 2010 season he brought order to a chaotic dressing room with items scattered everywhere. Each player was given a large plastic garbage bag in which to place their extra items and keep in their lockers. Every player having his own storage bag for his own items communicated strong boundaries and individuality. It was a perfect example of creating strong individuals and simultaneously a strong team where everybody cooperated, and everybody was treated the same. Strong individuals make up a strong team.

By 2012, the locker room had returned to its former chaotic state – suggesting success had created tremendous conflict and chaos inside Gene Chizik.

Chizik continued his micromanaging as another sign of his lack of discipline. He sent administrative coach Wayne Bolt into defensive coordinator Jeff  VanGorder’s meetings to report back to him. At one point VanGorder kicked Bolt out of his meeting for good, sending Chizik a message that he was violating the rules of strong management.

Next we will examine another micromanaging decision which contributed to Chizik’s downfall in 2012.

The post The 2012 Season Disaster: Chizik Retreats Part 2 appeared first on Andrew G. Hodges, M.D..

Chizik predicts season disaster
Two games into the 2012 season Gene Chizik saw the total collapse of his Auburn team coming. He described between the lines how the season would unfold with eerie precision. Unconsciously he recognizes his blind spots which will soon become more apparent to everyone.

He knew he had violated the laws of success last season but now he had really picked up the pace. His team had opened  0-2.

Auburn had lost the first game to Clemson in a close battle and his new quarterback Kiehl Frazier, struggling somewhat, had played a decent game. But the following week at Mississippi State the wheels came off in the second half and Frazier had as bad a day as a quarterback can have with three interceptions and two fumbles along with multiple sacks. Auburn’s offense was virtually non-existent and the defense wore down in the second half but was inadequate in a 27-10 defeat.  Chizik apologizes to the fans for his team’s pathetic performance.

Two days later he delivered his annual speech in Birmingham to the Monday Morning Quarterback Club. Three things stood out to me. He announced that he was the best speaker of the year so far since he was the first. He knew he wasn’t the worst speaker yet. The idea of going from “the best to the worst” speaker/coach was on his mind (most speakers are coaches).  He then noted how “wins and losses” tell you exactly what kind of team you have. And he reflected that Auburn was now in “uncharted waters” with two unexpected losses.

Once more his deeper brilliant quick-read unconscious mind has read him like a book. This super intelligence can secretly look into the future with amazing accuracy because it grasps our deepest motives. His key ideas reveal that hidden story — and continue to reflect that deep down Chizik is reading his disturbing personal reaction to his phenomenal success.

He has just announced between the lines that he will go from being the best coach to the worst coach of the year, and that by year end Auburn’s won-loss record will clearly define that reality. He will lead Auburn into “uncharted waters” of losing unlike anything in their long and glorious history.  And he nailed it as all these things came true — proving the unconscious super intelligence can be a phenomenal prophet.

From ‘best to worst’ on his mind
We have to be struck by Chizik’s prominent idea from “best to worst.” Once more he underscores his secret (unconscious) downhill journey from the best to the worst —reminding us that success for him as a head coach was truly “uncharted waters.” It fit perfectly his key idea from a year ago at the same quarterback club when he underscored the dangers of success — and then demonstrated that unknowingly he was a coach in retreat in the 2011 season due to this nagging terror.

Remember losing had not been “uncharted waters” for the 5-19 former Iowa State head coach.  Unbridled off-the-charts success in the Auburn dream season of 2010 had been the true “uncharted waters” for Chizik who was now in over his head.

And he had other precise immediate reasons to make that self-judgment of a success retreat. The week of the Mississippi State game he had demonstrated blatant denial when an academic advisor told him a starting player (who would later lose his job) hadn’t been going to class­—and Chizik refused to belief it. But deep down he knew the absolute rule: such denial violates the laws of success. Fail to discipline your team and you lose. This one denial over a player’s academics was symbolic of his numerous denials when it came to discipline.

The fact that his starting center and offensive line stalwart had been arrested the week before the game for public intoxication was also another reminder of how team discipline had slipped.

While Chizik was consciously in denial in the back of his mind he could see exactly what key alumni had warned about — his loss of control. He knew he was in trouble and his implied message was, “I am in retreat. I am going to continue a self-sabotage like you won’t believe. You saw it last year—this year it will be worse than anyone can believe.”

Loss in 2^nd game points to bad decisions before 2012 season
Two immediate losses would take him back to his key self-sabotaging decisions and denials at the very beginning of planning the 2012 season. By now these decisions were already in place. Foremost was that his quarterback Frazier was communicating he was not yet an SEC quarterback—and had been thrust into the starting role too early.

We review Chizik’s mental mistakes — blind spots – which set the tone for a team which would have a propensity for mental mistakes the entire season.

Quarterback blind spot–deja vu
Immediately after the 2011 season Chizik returns to his earlier quarterback blind spot when he removed starter Barrett Trotter in the seventh game that year (again with the team leading).  He goes into more denial after Trotter has just demonstrated with his outstanding play in the Chick- Fil-A bowl game on December 31, 2011 that he is now an experienced quarterback (6-2 record in games). On top of that Trotter had responded to Chizik’s efforts to undermine his confidence (benching him and not including him in the pre-bowl game plan with no reps in practice) by demonstrating an “in-your-face coach” competence .

Yet Chizik doesn’t encourage him to stay for his senior year (and also eligible for another medical hardship year). Trotter who was understandably miffed over being mistreated and ignored has graduated but surely could have been persuaded to stay. Was Chizik consciously too proud to admit he had made a mistake in benching Trotter earlier? He should have been on his hands and knees begging Trotter to reconsider.

Instead Chizik goes into the 2012 season with only two quarterbacks to go through spring training. Again the most important position on the team. He has a young sophomore Kiehl Frazier, a former spread quarterback who had a “deer in the headlights look” in 2011, and limited Clint Mosley who would shortly injure his elbow. (Forget an early entrance freshman with a history of behavior problems —  Zeke Pike — who was quickly dismissed after a series of misbehaviors including public intoxication.)

On top of this Chizik decided to change from a spread offense to a traditional power running game to keep up with the Jones (Alabama, LSU, Florida and his old school Texas). He brings in a new offensive coordinator (Scott Loeffler) but has left him handicapped with precious little experience at quarterback and none at running a traditional offense. Chizik has rolled the dice on offense big time.

He also changed defensive coordinators bringing in NFL stalwart Jeff VanGorder who has a major limitation in not being used to defending the spread—but clearly a capable coach who would be handicapped by Chizik’s lack of discipline.

Two key off season events
Two other off season events in 2012 stand out directly linked to the pressure of success.  The first occurred on May 21, 2012 at the annual Fellowship of Christian Athletes banquet in Birmingham where Chizik describes a spring mission trip with several players to a poverty-stricken foreign country. He stresses how little these foreigners had in comparison to what he and the players had. He hints at guilt over having so much — read having such great attention-getting success.  His concern for the poor is admirable, but Chizik suggests also that he continues to deal with buried success guilt. How much success he had had while others didn’t.  ( We can deal with two issues at a time—immediate conscious issues and deeper buried matters.)

There are at least three components to success guilt — here we see the first. Success means we have what others lack – and want. (It’s reminiscent of parents telling kids, “Clean your plate, think of all the starving people in Africa.”) Later in his story Chizik will point to two other powerful deeper reasons for guilt.

A setup for sky-high guilt
A quick look back at Chizik’s 2011 book All In revealed enormous heart-wrenching guilt over recent events which surrounded his hiring only 2 short years before at Auburn. Unmistakably Chizik points to success guilt because the Auburn job was clearly a step up, a huge promotion and a tremendous personal success – his life-long dream fulfilled. The Iowa State administrators – AD Jamie Pollard and President Geoffrey – who had been totally supportive of him despite his 5-19 record  were now  furious at him, refusing even to meet with him after his decision to leave following two short years on the job. In a press conference Pollard called Chizik’s character into question for the secretive way he handled the Auburn interview process. The players were equally angry with him for leaving. He had abandoned players to whom he had promised (along with their parents) that he would coach for four years. Chizik felt like a father walking out on his kids for no good reason.

He compared having to inform the agitated people at Iowa State of his departure to feeling as though he had cheated on a spouse. To top it off his move meant the sudden loss of a job to most of his staff at Christmas time.  He had suddenly abandoned coaches and their families who depended on him for their livelihood — men whom he had convinced to join his staff far away in Iowa. Several of these were lifelong friends. Some still carry grudges. Overnight he was hated in the Ames, Iowa community that once idealized him.

Chizik described how these emotional issues packed into two days took two years off his life. He suggests a thought deep down that some people wanted to take his life from him – punish him severely — like “he had taken theirs.” We must appreciate the burden of guilt to understand his precipitous decline at Auburn.

On his flight out of Ames boarding the Auburn plane with the big AU on the side, two fans got in the ultimate parting shot holding up a sign that read “Roll Tide” —the slogan of Auburn’s arch-rival Alabama.  But Chizik surprisingly had more guilt waiting on him when he got to Auburn as we shall see.

The post The 2012 Season Disaster: Chizik Retreats Part 1 appeared first on Andrew G. Hodges, M.D..

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.”

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