Arkansas Sports 360 - ArkansasSports360.com

12/6/2010 at 2:50pm

Gus Malzahn says he's still an Arkansas high school football coach who just happens to be coaching college football. Now, the Auburn University offensive coordinator is considered the best assistant coach in college football this year after winning the 2010 Broyles Award on Monday.

Malzahn, a first-time finalist, was the choice for the 15th award given and named in honor of Frank Broyles, the former University of Arkansas head coach and athletic director who sent many an assistant on to successful head coaching careers in college and pro football. Some of those assistants include Super Bowl winning coaches Joe Gibbs, Barry Switzer and Jimmy Johnson.

Johnny Majors, a former Broyles assistant who won a collegiate national championship at Pitt in 1976, is among the legendary list of retired head coaches who annually choose the Broyles Award winner.

This year, the selection committee went with the former Hughes, Shiloh Christian and Springdale High School head coach who in five years as an offensive coordinator has been part of no less than eight wins a season and has put up astounding offensive numbers at every stop. His turnarounds of the offenses at Tulsa in 2007 and Auburn in 2009 are proof enough. This year, with perhaps the nation's best player, Cam Newton, at the controls of his offense, Malzahn is the cream of the assistant coaching crop.

His boss, Gene Chizik, won the Broyles Award in 2004 as the Auburn defensive coordinator. Chizik hired Malzahn away from Tulsa in the winter of 2008 after getting the Auburn head coaching job.

This year, Chizik, Malzahn, Newton and the Tigers have raced through 12 foes, including beating South Carolina twice, to a 13-0 mark and spot in the BCS national championship game on Jan. 10.

A highlight filim of Newton running through defenses, including a zig-zagging sprint through the Arkansas Razorbacks on Oct. 16, and the hail Mary pass at halftime of Saturday's 56-17 win over South Carolina in the SEC title game, prompted Malzahn to joke, "That's coaching there."

And, he added, "[Newton] allows me to call any play, and he can turn a bad play into a good one."

Broyles, after an exhortation as only he can do in front of the sold-out Peabody Hotel ballroom about the value of assistant coaches in the lives of a college head coach, presented Malzahn with the trophy.

Malzahn said several times that he owed Broyles, then the Razorback athletic director, for hiring him in 2006 as the Arkansas offensive coordinator for then head coach Houston Nutt.

No matter who one believes called the Arkansas offensive plays that year in the only 10-win season for Nutt, or who invented the "Wildcat" formation that Malzahn ran at Springdale, or who renamed it the "Wildhog," there is no denying that wherever Malzahn goes, magic seems to follow. It trailed him the very next season to Tulsa, where the Golden Hurricane ran off eight wins in a row and went 11-2 in the regular season. Auburn won its first five games last year, and this year is having a truly magical season.

It's been that way for Malzahn since he landed an assistant coach's job at Hughes, followed by a promotion to head coach and a state final appearance there, and then on to the enormous successes at Springdale's Shiloh Christian and Springdale High.

When Malzahn and his wife, Kristi, learned they'd be returning to Arkansas as a Broyles Award finalist, Malzahn immediately called up his former high school assistants and invited them to attend. They all sat together on the far left side of the room.

Cheering on a guy who made the biggest jump a coach could make, from lowly 2A high school to the top of NCAA Division I college football, were Kerry Winberry, who coached with Malzahn at Springdale; Brad Helm, the current Arkansas Baptist High head coach who was with him at Shiloh and Springdale; Don Struebing, an aide at Springdale; Kevin Johnson, a Shiloh and Springdale assistant; Bob Coleman, who was at Hughes and Springdale; David McGinnis, a Springdale assistant; Chris Wood, the current Springdale Har-Ber head coach who was with Malzahn at Shiloh and Springdale, and Greg Hughes, a Shiloh assistant.

Those surprising plays Malzahn springs on the likes of Alabama and South Carolina? He regularly tells interviewers those came from such Arkansas high school coaching legends as Frank McClellan at Barton and Barry Lunney Sr., whose Bentonville Tigers just won their second 7A championship in three years.

"That's my roots. That's where I learned the game. My best friends in the world are Arkansas high school football coaches," Malzahn said Monday.

Upon hearing his name as the winner - Malzahn was a finalist up against three-time finalist Dick Bumpas, TCU's defensive coordinator, and offensive coordinators Dana Holgorsen of Oklahoma State, Paul Chryst of Wisconsin and Greg Roman of Stanford - Malzahn was obviously moved and said he felt humbled in the presence of Broyles and the other finalists. He deemed it "a surreal moment."

Later, he kept going back to his roots. "I looked over at the table and my former assistants who helped me in high school. I think of the assistants at Arkansas and Tulsa and Auburn who helped me get to this situation. And the players. This is a players game and I've been blessed to have very, very good players everywhere I've been."

"There is a lot of great high school coaches that are a lot smarter than me that just haven't had the opportunity. For me to have the opportunity to coach in college and for this to happen is just really something."

His advice to any young coach dreaming of reaching this pinnacle was simple. "Just be there for the kids. Keep them first. And work your tail off."

Now, Malzahn follows in the footsteps of the previous two winners of the award - Oklahoma offensive coordinator Kevin Wilson in 2008, Alabama defensive coordinator Kirby Smart in 2009 - and begins preparing for the national championship game, when Auburn takes on Pac-10 champ and unbeaten Oregon.

"As soon as we get through here, I'm going to get on the plane, I'm going to turn on the computer and I'm going to be looking at Oregon's defense. So that's all I'll be wrapped up doing ... They'll have all our games, we'll have all of theirs. There will be a lot of information. I've heard they're really good, so we've got our work cut out."

Just a few moments earlier, Malzahn and the Peabody ballroom crowd were looking up at a short highlight video that included a brief glimpse of Malzahn and his Springdale Bulldogs celebrating a championship in 2005. Five years later, he's the Broyles Award winner as the nation's best assistant coach. The Fort Smith native thought about all the coaches he'd played for, from junior high to walking on for Ken Hatfield in 1984 at Arkansas.

"The thing that stood out about all my coaches, they cared about me, and that made a big influence in my life," he said.

Apparently, the Auburn players think the same about Malzahn, dousing him with Gatorade after Saturday's SEC title win. It's rare any assistant coach gets a victory shower. We should know by now, though, that Malzahn is anything but an ordinary assistant coach.

"It caught me off guard a little bit," he said of Saturday's surprise bath on the sideline. "But we've got some great players on our team who are special to me. That was just a great moment."

Make that two great moments for Malzahn in three days. Now, the hard work begins again.

Tagged: Hughes High School, Frank Broyles, Broyles Award, Auburn Tigers, Gus Malzahn, Chris Wood, Brad Helm, Shiloh Christian, Frank McClellan, Barry Lunney Sr., Springdale Bulldogs, Southeastern Conference