Delta Force: Auburn coach Gus Malzahn's Meteoric Rise Began in the Arkansas Delta

BY Brandon Marcello
9 July 2013

HUGHES, Arkansas -- Jutting out of a wide-open space along Arkansas Highway 79 is an old football stadium, lost among the miles and miles of bean fields in the Arkansas Delta.

The only mark you can associate with the year 2013 is the short grass, where someone decided to provide a quick, fresh cut where the field once hosted games. There are no hashmarks, no yard lines, and the locker rooms, ticket booth, concession stand and wooden grandstands have been taken over by long weeds and vines.

The story of Gus Malzahn’s meteoric rise from the Arkansas high school ranks to the head coaching job at Auburn began here in 1991. It's a farming town of 1,441 people planted 15 miles from Interstate 40, which cuts the state in half and serves as its main traffic artery. Hughes hasn’t had much to cheer about of late, but they look back, fondly, to Malzahn and the magical run he made in '94.

"Someone needs to write a book about it some day or make a movie," said Rob Coleman, a former assistant for Malzahn at Hughes High. "You're talking about somebody who came from the -- hate to say it -- the bottom of the totem pole in coaching, and now he's coaching at Auburn University. That doesn't happen every day."

Hughes, a predominantly black community, is still somewhat cut off from the outside world because of its location. Even the Encyclopedia of Arkansas holds nothing back, calling the scene at Hughes "typical of the towns in this part of the state, although it is not known for any major historical events or as the home of any significantly famous people."

Malzahn may just be the biggest name to emerge from Hughes. It was his home for five years -- and his canvas as he made mistakes, tried new things, drew up a few funky offensive plays and led the Blue Devils to the Class AAA state championship game in '94.

***

Malzahn did a little bit of everything at Hughes. He taught a history class, and coached the junior high basketball team leading them to a couple of conference titles. He kept an eye on his players inside and outside the classroom. He even learned how to drive a tractor to cut the grass and keep the field pristine.

"He wasn't a very good teacher in the classroom, because he was always drawing up plays," said Charlie Patrick, Hughes' former athletics director.

A fresh-faced graduate of Henderson State, Malzahn tried to land a big job immediately out of college as an assistant coach at Arkansas powerhouse West Memphis in 1991. The job instead went to Bobby Crockett, an assistant at Hughes. Malzahn simply shifted his attention to Hughes and jumped at the opportunity to start his coaching career -- but not as an offensive coordinator.

Patrick hired Malzahn to serve as the Blue Devils' defensive coordinator on Dale Coomer's football staff. He was still a long way from earning the label of a mad scientist in Arkansas, where he developed the hurry-up, no-huddle philosophy in the mid-1990s before skyrocketing through the high school ranks. When he started, Malzahn was leading cornerbacks and defensive linemen through drills.

"I tell you what," Malzahn said. "First of all, I didn't have a clue what I was doing and I learned a whole lot by making mistakes."

He leaned on Patrick, a former football coach, for advice. He also called on Frank McClellan, a rival coach at nearby Barton, for advice. McClellan is a legend in this state, where he won eight state titles at the small school and is widely known for his hard-hitting defenses.

"But, really, to be honest with you, I learned by making mistakes," Malzahn said, with a grin cracking his stern face. "I'm glad I moved to the offensive side after that."

Coomer left for a coaching job at Van Buren the next year. He wanted to be closer to home. Patrick says it was an easy decision to promote Malzahn to the head coach after only one year as an assistant.

"People aren't beating down the door to come here," Malzahn joked with Patrick.

"He was the obvious choice," Patrick said. "I didn't have to consider anyone else."

***

Malzahn seemed content with living in the small town, fishing Lake Horseshoe with friends and playing basketball on the weekends with his coaching buddies in the area.

At first, the Malzahns lived next door to the Patricks in a rental house across the street from the school, but had to move to a small trailer along Highway 38 -- the main road through town -- during their final two years as residents because the rental home’s owners decided to make the property their own.

The pay wasn't incredibly high, though anyone will tell you Malzahn leaves most of his financial decisions -- and balancing the checkbook -- to his wife, Kristi. Malzahn's first job at Hughes paid in the area of $24,000 a year. Kristi's parents, says Melinda Patrick, stocked the young couple's fridge with food whenever they traveled across the state to visit.

Malzahn’s mind was always on football.
Former quarterback Michael Troup remembers Malzahn asking him one December day if he wanted to jump in his small red car and travel down Interstate 40 to watch Barton play in a state championship game at War Memorial Stadium in Little Rock.

"He took us to that game to show us how teams have to perform in order to get there," Troup said. "See how they continue to block? They don't quit. They don't stop at the whistle, is what he told us.

"To take out the time to take us to those places to see where we can go, was a reason why we made it to the championship in '94."

The 20-something coach did dream big, sure, but he said the usual things a young man in a small town utters during quiet moments away from the field.

"He said he was going to revolutionize high school football in Arkansas," Coleman said. "You know how young, stupid people get together and say things. He said that. I still tease him about that. I don't know if he revolutionized football in this state, but it's a lot different than it was back in the 1990s."

Malzahn might not admit it, but high school football in Arkansas did change because of him. He started revolutionizing the game at Hughes -- well before he developed the hurry-up, no-huddle offense.

***

Malzahn wanted to make football fun for his 20-plus players, so he'd develop trick plays to run at various times in games. Most of his inspiration came from two teams: Steve Spurrier’s Florida Gators and the Dallas Cowboys.
Even Spurrier’s style caught his eye.

"He was wearing a visor way back before anybody else was and I was coaching high school," Malzahn said. "I thought that was pretty cool, so I started wearing a visor."

What really mattered were the plays.

The players' favorite was the "Starburst" on kickoff returns, which started with five players huddled in a circle with the football before one emerged with the ball. They even ran the fumblerooski.

"He was an architect even back then, too," Troup said.

Troup was named the starting quarterback as a sophomore in '94. Malzahn handed the reins to the youngster, providing him the freedom to audible into different plays and lead the team.

The formations were not all that out of the ordinary -- I-formation, shotgun and some Wing T. Malzahn's offense was multiple, yes, but he spiced it up with motion and misdirection, an innovation in an era of Wing-T’s, counters and dives into the line.

"We definitely changed things up to where you would have a lot of formations to deal with," Troup said. "If they weren't ready, they would definitely not be ready when we ran motion."

Malzahn's core staff was comprised of coaches with connections all across the state. Coleman knew the northwest corner, Patrick knew central Arkansas and Mark Eubanks had a few more connections in the east.

Hughes, on the other hand, was isolated. Coaches drove 30 minutes every Saturday morning to pick up a newspaper to check on Friday night's football scores. Teams were lucky to pull one game film from a rival each week, but Malzahn would drive long hours to pick up game film -- sometimes two tapes -- from common opponents. His staff, with connections all across the state, called coaching friends to get insight on an upcoming opponent. Malzahn was in the office early and late, jotting down notes in small handwriting on notecards.

"His notes looked like it was typed on a typewriter. He's that neat with it," Patrick said.

***

Malzahn was working long hours, acting as if he was leading a big-time program in the Southeastern Conference rather than a small-town team with less than 30 players on the sidelines.

"He was really good at scheming defenses," Coleman said. "His biggest strength through his whole career, no matter where he was at or who he was coaching, was putting the right people in the right place to make plays. He had good kids, game planned it out and knew how it was going to work out. It was something to see."

The Blue Devils were a long way from the playoffs in the last half of the '94 season. Only two teams from the conference could advance to the postseason, and Malzahn's team was in third place with two games remaining.

Those two opponents? The two teams above the Blue Devils in the conference standings. History was not on Hughes' side – the program rarely made the playoffs -- and they needed to beat Brinkley by 14 points and Rivercrest by seven.

They blew out Brinkley and beat Rivercrest by seven on a goal-line stand, then ran through the playoffs with a win over state powerhouse Pine Bluff Dollarway to set up a meeting with Lonoke for the Class AAA state championship.

The Blue Devils made plenty of mistakes. Troup remembers his receiver ran a hot route, a play they had run hundreds of times that year in practice. The ball was placed perfectly, but it went through the receiver's hands.

"Maybe it was being on the big stage," Troup said. "He dropped it for some reason. If he had caught it, he'd have turned it up field and maybe would have scored. If we played them again, we would have won by 40."

Hughes fell 11 yards short of the win in the final seconds, losing 16-13.

Malzahn wasn't sure he would ever return to War Memorial Stadium as a coach. He would, of course, but not with Hughes. He left Hughes one year later to accept the coaching job at Shiloh Christian, a private school in Springdale on the opposite side of the state. He later led Shiloh Christian and Springdale High to state titles before coaching the University of Arkansas' offense in a pair of games in Little Rock.

"I felt like I lost my best friend the day he left," Patrick said.

The Blue Devils never went that far again. Seventeen years later, Hughes High disbanded the football program following the 2011 season because of a lack of participation.

But they still talk about Malzahn here, where both of his first two homes still stand, a reminder of where Auburn’s new coach got his start.

"I'm proud of everything he's done," Troup said. "Everything he has accomplished, I feel like I've accomplished it, too."

What Now?

Now that new baseball and softball head coaches are hired, what now do we have to think about in Auburn athletics?  Nothing, I think.  We can hibernate until football starts... I don't know anything about softball, but Myers sounds incredible.  Two national championships and seven CWS appearances in eight seasons.  Can't get any better than that for softball.  Galloway is quite successful too.  He sounds as good as the other names we heard.  At least on paper, we did as well as we could with the new hires.

Tired

I am tired of reading about recruiting.  I could not care less who we are targeting or who has committed.  Enough.

Pawlowski is Fired

Well, what did you expect?  Auburn finishes 10th in a 14-team league and loses to Alabama in a play-in game in the SEC Tournament in Coach Pawloski's 5th year.  According to Phillip Marshall, the team faces in effect a major rebulding job next year.  What choice did Jacobs have?  None.

Gene Chizik: Allegations at Mississippi State led to assumptions about Cam Newton at Auburn

BY Brandon Marcello
22 April 2013

AUBURN, Alabama -- Former Auburn coachGene Chizik believes assumptions led to his program being unfairly scrutinized in the media during the Tigers' run to a national championship in 2010.

Chizik, after a fiery and passionate in-studio interview with WJOX in Birmingham, spoke to local reporters in Auburn on Monday evening. Speaking at length, but never lacking emotion, the out-of-work coach came to the defense of his former teams and the university that fired him in December.

"It’s really just hard to operate day by day with what I consider to be the most scrutinized, and sometimes villainized, program in the country," Chizik said.

The allegations, ranging from wrongdoing, grade changes and pay-for-play, to widespread use of synthetic marijuana, were discussed at length by the coach, who said he was on a mission of truth.

The cloud of allegations and what he calls assumptions, he says, stemmed from an NCAA investigation at a rival school in the SEC West: Mississippi State.

"What is somewhat of an enigma to me is how back in 2010 what started out as a Mississippi State problem, all of a sudden became an Auburn problem," Chizik said. "It never ended. It went on for 13 or 14 months and then there seemed to be a trail that kept following a lot of accusations, a lot of allegations but I'm looking for facts. It's very difficult for the Auburn people, and it's not fair."

The recruitment of quarterback Cam Newton while he was at Blinn (Texas) Junior College in 2009 caught the eyes of the SEC and NCAA, when key figures involved in his recruitment at MSU alerted investigators that his father, Cecil, attempted to solicit money from the Bulldogs. MSU would go on to disassociate itself from booster Kenny Rogers and clear itself of any wrongdoing.

The ensuing scandal cast a cloud over the Auburn program, but the NCAA found that Auburn committed no violations following a 13-month investigation.

"So, how that became a Mississippi State issue, and then all the sudden it was assumed – and there were accusations out there – well, if something happened there, it had to have happened here, I don’t see the logic in it," Chizik said. "Because obviously they left and found that there was nothing there."

What has followed in the years since is a deluge of allegations and accusations from former players -- from an HBO Sports special alleging pay-for-play, to recent reports penned by Selena Roberts of Roopstigo.com and another ESPN story concerning synthetic marijuana use at Auburn.

Chizik also finds it hard to believe that the alleged events, which the reports say occurred when the NCAA set up shop in Auburn to investigate Newton, were not discussed or brought to light earlier.

The NCAA found no major violations in that 13-month probe, which included interviews of 80 people and was under way when most of the allegations made by Mike McNeil in the Roopstigo.com report would have taken place.

"I’m going to go one step further for all the people that are educated and have common sense," Chizik said. "If you don’t know how the NCAA works, they’re very thorough in their investigations. Let me make that clear: they’re very thorough in their investigations. You want me to back that up with fact? I’ll name ‘em: Miami, Ohio State, North Carolina. Most recently, Oregon. USC. So how could they come into Auburn and leave and find nothing, and that becomes a one-sentence statement after getting drug through the mud for 13 months? How is that right? It’s not right."

Chizik said he has no plans to pursue legal action against Roberts or other media entities, including ESPN, which briefly employed him as a guest analyst on National Signing Day (Feb. 6).

"If everybody in journalism was measured 12 times on a Saturday by what they wrote, what they put out, what was on TV, it would be really interesting to see what their record would be, like coaches," said Chizik, who fired after in November after a 3-9 season. "I'm not going to point the finger at anybody, I'm only going to address that I think were false, unsubstantiated allegations."

The Final Roll: Auburn Family Bids Farewell to the Tradition of Rolling Toomer's Corner

BY Julie Bennett
22 April 2013

AUBURN, Alabama – New Yorkers pack Times Square to celebrate beginnings and ends – New Years and major triumphs. In New Orleans, revelers pack into the French Quarter for Mardi Gras, just to stroll down Bourbon Street.

In Auburn, they go to Toomer's Corner. It's a place to gather, celebrate and throw toilet paper at a pair of large oak trees.

Auburn fans have been assembling there for years. It's where everyone goes to celebrate any major victory: Iron Bowl victories, national championships, Presidential and state elections. Auburn gathers around the Toomer's oaks, where rolling the trees anchored many memories for the faithful.

In 2011, Harvey Updyke poisoned the oaks. The trees that supported a tradition four decades old began to wither.

The community tried to save them, but the poison consumed the oaks at the intersection of College Street and Magnolia Avenue. Weakened branches were pruned. Limbs were cut down to stumps. The trees still sprouted leaves, but fewer and fewer each month.

New Yorkers could celebrate New Year's without the crystal ball. New Orleans might adapt to a Mardi Gras without Bourbon Street. And Auburn fans will still gather at the front gates of Auburn University.

Auburn fans bid goodbye to the famous oak trees at Toomer's Corner Saturday, April 20, 2013, in Auburn, Ala. Auburn held it's A-Day spring football game Saturday. (Julie Bennett/jbennett@al.com)

But the familiar shade of the landmark oak trees will be gone.

On Saturday, a record 83,401 Auburn fans packed Jordan-Hare stadium to watch their Tigers scrimmage during the A-Day spring football game. Before, during and after game, most headed over to Toomer's Corner and rolled the famous oak trees one last time.

Not to celebrate a big win -- not because their favorite candidate was elected president -- but to celebrate the trees themselves and the memories they hold for so many.

It was the best way to say farewell to a beloved tradition, in the best place to celebrate Auburn.

A-Day

I wasn't able to see the game because we don't get CSS.  I did listen to some of it.  Arttis-Payne sounds good.  We can always use another good running back.  I  think we have 2 good QBs but neither is a great one.  I'm thinking this Nick Marshall will come in and be the starter.  We need better than good at that position.  Glad to see that we set a record with an attendance of 83, 401.  This was the last rolling of Toomer's Corner.  I never was big on that personally but it was great to see the pictures of the last time at least for the time being.