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..

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..

Infamous bank-robber Willie Sutton was once asked why he targeted banks.  “Because that’s where the money is,” he answered.

So why do we look deeper into the mind of Gene Chizik in light of his team’s unmatched calamitous decline? Because that’s where the real answers are.  There lays the power of hidden motivation — why success itself totally blind-sided him.   

Success carries with it powerful threats. If you believed unconsciously that success was dangerous, you would act accordingly. If this deeper quick-read mind had a major vote, you would do the “Success Two-Step”—a step forward as though you really did want to succeed, followed by a big disguised step backward, a blind spot step.

You would continue the same dance without ever really recognizing it until it was too late.

Coach ‘no show,’ team ‘no show’
First, another prominent coach highlights just how clearly Chizik’s players were accurately reading his messages of retreat. Former Georgia Coach Vince Dooley — whom I once interviewed and who also won a national championship — told an unforgettable story at the same Birmingham quarterback club that Chizik later addressed.

One Sunday following a Saturday football game Dooley experienced a painful attack of angina. He had an emergency stent put in place and survived the procedure with no damage to his heart. But what about his team’s next game? He was told he could coach the following Saturday only if he simply “made an appearance” and avoided all excitement. As Dooley put it, “I made an appearance the following game in the first half—and my team made an appearance.”  The Bulldogs appeared, all right, but that was the extent of it. They were lackluster and on the verge of losing.

At that point Dooley said he showed up, told his team exactly what he thought of their effort, and as a result his Georgia team showed up in the second half and won. He highlights that players read coaches for guidance at an unbelievable depth, never missing a thing.

Coaches’ points determine wins and losses
Along the same line comments by the late UCLA basketball coach John Wooden also shine a bright light on Gene Chizik. Wooden noted that when games were won by twenty points, those were players’ points, but when games were won by one or two points, those were coaches’ points. He also suggested that when games are lost consistently by thirty points to major opponents those are coaches’ points as well—and over his last two seasons Chizik would often lose by huge margins.

When we put Chizik’s 2011 season under the microscope we find numerous retreats enabled by his own decisions. Those detrimental decisions are exactly the kind of choices made by men who’re secretly afraid of winning.

Chizik slows down the offense – and the quarterback
His most obvious retreat occurred when he demanded offensive coordinator Gus Malzahn slow down the “Gus Bus”—his fast-paced offense—to protect the defense. He made this demand over Malzahn’s extreme objection. It guaranteed Malzahn—the highest-paid coordinator in college football at $1.3 million a year—would leave Auburn. Malzahn was so determined to escape Chizik’s sinking ship, he took a $500,000 pay cut to take the Arkansas State head coaching job.

Chizik’s rationale that his defense needed protection because it was young suggests his real message, his deeper message about himself, “I am young when it comes to success and need protection because it’s so dangerous,” as he told us (see previous blog).

Simultaneously he delivered a related secret message: “I’m slowing down my offense, my power, the real strength of my team.”

Soon Chizik would repeat the same message when he suddenly changed quarterbacks in the second half of the Florida game at mid-season with his team leading. At halftime his starter, Barrett Trotter, had thrown just seven passes and completed two. But one of them had been a thing of beauty which put Auburn ahead, a perfectly placed touchdown pass between two leaping defenders. On top of that he had a pass dropped inside the 20-yard line virtually guaranteeing at least a field goal just before halftime. The same quarterback had led Auburn to a 4 and 2 record including a gutty win on the road as an underdog at South Carolina two weeks before and hadn’t yet played a truly bad game. Trotter appeared rattled at times—rifling the ball without his usual touch—but this was his first year as a starter in the tough SEC.

It goes unsaid that quarterback is the most important position on the team. As the player who runs the offense, calls the plays and takes the snaps, the quarterback is clearly an extension of the coach. He’s the coach on the field, and changing leaders sends a powerful message to the team— “I no longer believe in your leader.” If we read deeper, the coach’s message can be seen as, “I am no longer your leader” if the decision doesn’t pay off—and it clearly didn’t. Of all positions to change, a coach must be most careful with the quarterback.

Micromanaging the quarterback – more retreat
Chizik indicated he had already made the decision before the Florida game. During practices that week, he had told back-up quarterback Clint Mosley to be ready. Auburn had lost to Arkansas on the road the week before, but Trotter played reasonably well despite the fact that his only experienced wide receiver was injured. The game was closer than the score.

I suspect the quarterback change was largely another Chizik micromanaging decision—and that Malzahn covered for him.

As it happened, Mosley played fairly well in the second half if you overlook the dropped “pick 6” near-interception the new quarterback threw to the wide-open Florida safety. That rookie mistake could have lost the game.  While Auburn went on to win, Mosley proved significantly immobile and prone to throwing interceptions. In short, he was not the answer.

It was in the last game—the Chick Fil-A Bowl against Virginia—when the forgotten Trotter (5 and 2 as a starter at the time) finally stated his unmistakable case. He came off the bench after Mosley sprained his ankle on the first series after throwing another sure interception which was dropped on Auburn’s own 13 yard line. Now Trotter, relaxed with the pressure of being Cam Newton’s successor off his back, confidently ran Malzahn’s offense to perfection leading Auburn to an eventual runaway victory. Trotter’s vastly superior mobility was apparent.

He demonstrated after his sabbatical that he had gone through the learning curve and all he had needed was a sideline break to gain perspective. All in all, Auburn was 6 and 2 when he played—and by now Trotter was an experienced SEC quarterback who had weathered a difficult season. The striking message from Trotter in the bowl game was “I figured it out.” Keep that in mind because it comes into play in a huge way the next season.

More micromanaging – the defense
When it came to the defense in 2011, Chizik continued to micromanage. He ordered defensive coordinator Ted Roof to simplify the defense, and would change game plans in the middle of the week. Micromanaging undermined his coaches and reflected a lack of discipline and trust. In the end it undermined Chizik’s own role. Strong leaders build strong associates, but Chizik was weakening his coordinators and thus weakening himself.

Such management also reflects a boundary problem in relationships—addictive type behavior. It’s as though the boss, the coach, is saying, “I must cling to you, control you and not let you be an individual.” No boundaries means no discipline deep down, self-sabotage and  passive-aggressive anger.

Chizik’s surrogate coach
Chizik had also given executive associate athletics director Tim Jackson too much power to deal with players and coaches. He and Jackson had become a team. Jackson would later describe  athletic director Jay Jacobs as the CEO, himself as the GM, and Chizik as the coach.  That says it all.  And Chizik again reflects a boundary problem in defining himself as “the leader.” The players would have again sensed an absent leader, a leader who wasn’t sure he was the leader.

Chizik also seemingly undermined staff unity by allowing coaches to quarrel unnecessarily to the point of supposed bitter disputes—when decisions by Chizik could have settled arguments. Another hint of an absent leader.

Team lacks mental toughness
A significant realization came in the LSU game when the LSU fullback described Auburn as the least physical team they had played—something Auburn had never been accused of in its long history. He accused Auburn players of backing down (and they clearly weren’t good tacklers). That opponent’s deeper mind was also pointing out that, just as the players weren’t mentally tough, neither was their leader. Was he picking up on something even the Auburn players didn’t realize? Surely it echoed what former player Heath Evans noted (see previous blog).

In the back of their mind the players could read the retreat modeled by Chizik’s decision-making: slowing down the offense, pushing Gus Malzahn aside, changing his QB, pushing coach Ted Roof aside and running a vanilla defense. He also failed to model a clear leader role either in himself or his associates.

One behavioral tip-off which spoke volumes was Chizik’s reported habit of arriving late to team meetings —and apparently his staff followed suit. We all know the meaning of promptness in organizations. In that light a starting player told me he overslept once as a freshman in 2010 and was late to strength coach Yox’s early morning workout. Yox’s punishment got his attention, and after that the player set three alarm clocks every day—living in fear of missing another workout. But Chizik didn’t hold himself to the same rules, just another subtle way of not showing up.

Chizik’s team makes appearances – but doesn’t show up
Auburn would lose big in the last half of the season suffering massacres at LSU and Georgia, and bowing to Alabama at home 42-14 without scoring an offensive touchdown except on a kickoff return. Chizik’s micromanaging would become so pronounced that—frustrated with the ineptness of the offense—he took over the play-calling in the last quarter of the Alabama game, the ultimate insult to Gus Malzahn.  Chizik’s desperate move produced zero points.

We remember John Wooden’s wisdom about coaches’ points and the scores of games reflecting a coach—and here we had a team reflecting a coach who was losing control. In too many ways Chizik had just made an appearance as a coach, had not really shown up and thus neither had his team. Key alums were warned at the end of the season that Chizik was slipping. But nobody in their wildest imagination could have envisioned what was to unfold in 2012.

The 2011 season ended on a note of optimism with the bowl victory following the crushing losses to major conference rivals. His defense had been young and supporters were looking for better days ahead.  But when we pick up with the key decisions Chizik made at the end of the 2011 season and the beginning of 2012, they will still reflect a coach in retreat. We continue to look at a post-national championship Chizik. And he will tell us that deep down more than anyone he saw it all coming.

The post Why Gene Chizik went from good to great — to awful appeared first on Andrew G. Hodges, M.D..

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Contact: andrewhodges@profilingsuccess.net

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From ‘All In to All Out’

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

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

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

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

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

Do players always know when they quit?

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

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

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

Chizik speaks between the lines

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

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

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

Background history–Chizik the Loser?

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

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

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

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

At the top 

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

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

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

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

The hot potato called success  

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

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

Contact: andrewhodges@profilingsuccess.net

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We have significantly new knowledge about success.

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

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

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