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..

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.)

The post The 2012 season disaster Part 4: The accidental season, the accidental team appeared first on Andrew G. Hodges, M.D..

I am utilizing a cutting-edge method for understanding the mind, a method developed from my experience as a psychiatrist and forensic profiler. Again we have discovered how the unconscious mind really works—how it quick-reads ourselves and situations in the blink of an eye, and then tells us about it through stories and key images. I call this the “right-brain” language of the mind, symbolic language. Think “speaking figuratively” instead of literally which I refer to as “left-brain.”

Often someone will appear to be talking about others but is really talking (“right-brain”) about themselves. We are all familiar with this common human tendency. Freud called it projection. Jesus put it more poetically with his idea that the speck we see in our neighbor’s eye can be the log in our own—the pot calling the kettle black.

We have discovered that the quick-read unconscious mind really is a super intelligence. I refer you to Malcolm Gladwell’s best-seller Blink which provides a sterling example of the deeper mind in action—although he missed the specific “right-brain” language, he grasped where intuition comes into play. My earlier book, The Deeper Intelligence, clarifies how the mind speaks and reveals its secrets.

So we listen when Chizik speaks for key stories and images. This takes us back to some fascinating comments and secret predictions he made between the lines at the time his decline was just beginning.  We saw that downward spiral start unwinding through the 2011 season before accelerating through the 2012 season. We will pick up next with one of the most striking messages in his entire confession.

The post A Review: How Gene Chizik reveals secrets about his inner self appeared first on Andrew G. Hodges, M.D..

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..

One last quarterback undermined – another boundary violation
The crucial point in such micromanaging came game in the fifth game of the year when Chizik pulled starting quarterback Kiehl Frazier at halftime with Auburn trailing Arkansas by just 7-0.  Frazier was starting to get his mojo back, throwing with the most authority of the year. He had been nurtured back from the Mississippi State disaster in the second game to help win an overtime contest against a surprisingly strong Louisiana Monroe team.  And the week before suiting up against Arkansas Frazier had nearly engineered a remarkable upset of LSU at Auburn. If he hadn’t slightly overthrown a third down pass to an open receiver (McCalebb) inside the ten yard line late in the 4^th quarter the Tigers easily could have prevailed in a 12-10 loss.

Most knowledgeable fans were shocked by Chizik’s strange decision to pull Frazier against Arkansas. (One popular blogger vehemently opposed the move calling it one of the most foolish decisions he could recall.) In truth it was déjà vu 2011. Again Chizik pulls the team leader — in whom Auburn was greatly invested — sending the message, “You have no leader. “ Yet again Chizik violated a clear boundary by stepping in and – in essence — saying to Frazier, “Let me take over, I don’t trust you.”

At that moment Chizik failed to recognize that a quarterback must be allowed to make mistakes — as an individual — and must be trusted as much as humanly possible to overcome those mistakes so that he demonstrates to the team, “I am the leader, the strong individual you can follow.” A coach must trust the process of a quarterback truly coming into himself.  He must give his quarterback the secure commitment that he needs to eventually relax and flourish. The coach must respect the “sanctity” of the role and honor the strong boundaries by letting his quarterback remain firmly planted so that he can grow into a real leader.

This is especially true of a young quarterback such as Frazier who had a devastating beginning and was just starting to overcome it. He was the quarterback the coaches had chosen to lead the team from the beginning. To jerk him out of that role without a really strong reason sent a powerful shock wave through the entire team.

Back-up quarterback Clint Mosley entered the Arkansas game in the second half and was his same immobile self.  Once again he promptly demonstrated he wasn’t the answer as he led Auburn to a debilitating second-half defeat by Arkansas — followed by three more consecutive losses against Ole Miss, Vanderbilt, and Texas  A & M.

The Arkansas game at home was the crucial point in the season, the time to really turn things around following a great but losing battle with LSU. Instead, Chizik chooses this propitious moment to undermine his quarterback and himself – and guarantee his secret self-sabotaging vision of total collapse. Like quarterback Barrett Trotter the previous year, Frazier would never get a real chance to perform again the rest of the regular season. After just four and a half games, he’s finished as quarterback.

At the heart of Chizik’s micromanaging was a boundary problem. It was as if he announced, “I must take control, you can’t do the job.” Secretly such excessive control reflects weakness and uncertainty in himself as well as in leaders he has chosen.  At such key moments he could not stay within his boundaries as an individual and allow others to be individuals. Deep down he was modeling a weak individual and leader – and the players saw it.

Freshman Sammie Coates pegs the coach for lack of leadership
Following the Arkansas loss, freshman wide receiver Sammie Coates shocked everybody when he publicly appealed to older players to provide team leadership. He said, “We don’t have the leadership to win.” And added, “They [coaches] put it on the older guys, but they aren’t showing much…Everybody’s talking about they want to win, but they aren’t showing they want to win.” Then he specifically criticized the quarterbacks, “They talk, but they don’t…explain things enough.”

Coates nailed it. “I want to see one of the quarterbacks step up and lead,” he said. “The leadership has to come from people in main roles.”

The young receiver was unconsciously acting as a proxy for the entire team, players who could sense that the real senior leadership missing was that of the head coach. Deep down Coates saw that changing quarterbacks meant no quarterback, no leader. He mentioned “things not being explained” by the quarterback suggesting Chizik’s decision to change quarterbacks was inexplicably bad.

In the back of his mind Chizik had played a final self-sabotaging ace at just the right moment. He waited until the season hung in the balance and then he suddenly and publicly undercut his leader. If anybody saw Frazier’s potential it was the talented receiver Coates.  He had caught a long touchdown pass and dropped two other well thrown long passes from Frazier in the preceding two weeks – and he picked right up on Chizik’s self-defeating plan.

There’s “no leadership,” the freshman said. “They aren’t showing they want to win.” Chizik was not showing up, and this young player knew it. The coach was communicating that he really didn’t want to win, that unconsciously he wanted to lose. As hard as that possibility can be to believe, Coates implies exactly that. Think about it.

Player morale on the Auburn team really started to slide after the Arkansas debacle. The momentum that had been recaptured with a win followed by a nail-biting loss to LSU was now merely a memory.

Players reflect coach
Players had reflected on the loss of discipline with off-the-field issues. Three arrests for alcohol-related activities and one suspension for drugs are the ones that we know about.

Then came Chizik’s shocking capitulation of leadership.  Auburn hired an outside security firm to do bed-checks nightly with all players having an 11 p.m. weeknight curfew. He was confessing that, lacking discipline, the players had no fear of him. Player resentment grew.  Chizik had violated other rules of success: no fear of his authority, delegating it to an outside power and in the process micromanaging — treating his players like children just as he did his coaches.

The players were reading Chizik like a book. Undisciplined and in a retreat from his power, his team became undisciplined and retreated from its potential greatness. Gene Chizik became a self-destructive leader and his players reflected it on field. The team made repeated mental errors often by older players which we can also read as a request – send us a coach.

Many Chizik decisions said, “I don’t trust you.” He built “I don’t trust” into the team and they started not trusting one another.

Chizik’s behavior really said, “I don’t care.” Inside sources reported that several players no longer cared and desperately wanted coaching changes. As sportswriter Phillip Marshall later reported, one player’s parent had warned, “If something doesn’t change, the exodus of players leaving this program will be a national story.”

Such attitudes were angrily reflecting Chizik’s disguised passive-aggressive anger. He had taken a well-respected, historic gridiron program and for a season destroyed it – and his reputation with it. We don’t think of the controlled Chizik as angry, but he was. Such destruction reeks of disguised anger.

Losses by huge scores emphasize the message
As the 2012 season progressed Auburn lost — for the second year in a row — by huge margins to its last three major opponents, Texas A & M, Georgia and Alabama. As the season drew to a close in November, the Tigers failed to score at all against chief rivals Georgia and Alabama.

Finally defensive coordinator Jeff VanGorder couldn’t contain himself after the Georgia loss and spoke up about the “obvious problem” – a lack of strength by the players. But his deeper, more accurate message was that the head coach lacked strength.  VanGorder saw John Wooden’s coaches’ points rule in action: big losses reflect a lack of leadership (see previous blog: “Why Gene Chizik went from good to great – to awful”). “Out of respect,” VanGorder declined to elaborate further.

True freshman quarterback says it all
With four games left in the season true freshman Jonathan Wallace emerged as the starter at quarterback. The immobile, injury-prone Mosley was indeed hurt again as was Frazier who still could have played. Wallace showed promise but was clearly in over his head in the SEC. If you had known in January that, through mismanagement, Auburn would be down to its fourth quarterback – and a true freshman at that — you could have predicted the season’s awful outcome.

The truth was Chizik’s best and most experienced quarterback – Barrett Trotter — was back in Birmingham helping coach high-school football. Chizik had unconsciously created a huge deficit at the most important position on the team – and continued to do so.

Inside the Auburn Tigers magazine columnist Mark Murphy was puzzled by Auburn’s decline from eight wins to three wins between 2011 and 2012. But he also provided more of an answer than he even realized, “Despite all of the other things going on, if the quarterback play had even been close to average the Tigers would have had excellent chances to beat” six opponents (Clemson, LSU, Ole Miss, Mississippi State, Arkansas and Vandy). Trotter had already established he would have at least been “close to average” (6 and 2 as a starter). Even though Chizik had limited his growth somewhat in 2011, it’s highly likely that in 2012 Trotter would have been a solid, average, experienced SEC quarterback in his second season. He would’ve been a player who knows how to win. He would have paid all his dues.

Chizik’s destructive quarterback decisions reflect Chizik the failed coach. At season’s end he reportedly recognized that changing his spread offense had been a mistake and that he planned on returning to it. If he had simply stayed with the spread offense and kept his senior quarterback on the team, Chizik would still have a job.

Starting a true freshman quarterback spoke volumes and well fit Chizik symbolically. He coached as if he were coaching his first game back in high school. It was that bad.

The plan to retreat
But understand that was his deeper plan – to retreat.  His grand offensive plan produced the worst offense in the SEC, and Auburn finished the 2012 season ranked 115th in total offense (down from No. 21 in 2009 and No. 7 in 2010). At the end, hard-working, soft-spoken freshman quarterback Jonathan Wallace told a friend regarding Chizik’s leaving, “It’s time.”

How bad was Chizik? It is simply unbelievable.

His chaotic confusing behavior produced a losing team on the brink of mutiny – nearly an even bigger national story – a team who basically quit in the end. And he did all this with enough talented players but made sure he again undermined his chosen quarterback. You don’t have a season like this without planning it – unconsciously.

How do you go from being the best assistant coach that Mack Brown ever had at Texas, a head coach who won a national title and then fall off a cliff? You don’t do it without a plan, a plan secretly controlled by blind spot emotions and the need to retreat.

Former player Liston Eddins – whose son, Bart, played for Chizik in 2010 – commented about the 2012 season, “You just scratch your head. When one thing gets fixed for a little while, something else breaks down…I’ve never watched a team where everybody is scratching their head so much when they appear to be oozing with talent.”

But it all comes back to the leader showing up. Chizik behaved like he was an unproven coach and he was. He had never proved he could handle success as the head guy. All those credentials and past performances as an assistant did him no good. He had never been up there to those heights all by himself and alone. And it was just too high for him. He’s not the first and he won’t be the last.

Still, he has more to explain about why success was so difficult for him. He has must to teach people about managing success – if we listen.

The post The 2012 Season Disaster: Chizik Retreats Part 3 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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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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