Former Auburn star Michael Dyer ready to run again

George Schroeder | USA TODAY Sports

LITTLE ROCK – The run we remember included a hard fall, and then an odd pause. He took the handoff and scooted around right end. After a short gain, a safety wrestled him down.

Except Michael Dyer wasn't down.

He stood up and looked around. For an instant, everyone and everything seemed frozen. Then he heard them – coaches, teammates, it seemed like everybody – screaming: "RUN!!!" And he did, all the way to a national championship.

Which is why it is startling, on a dreary Saturday morning less than two years later, to find the offensive MVP of the BCS Championship game in a middle-school gymnasium in one of the meanest parts of his hometown. Several hundred miles away, kickoff is approaching, Auburn vs. Arkansas. But football isn't on the agenda here, where a group of teenagers listens to an impassioned pep talk from a police officer. As Sgt. Willie Davis explains critical thinking and decision-making and the consequences of wrong choices, Dyer sits quietly, head down, until his moment arrives. He stands. For a moment, he looks around. Then he starts pacing.

"How y'all doing? I'm Michael Dyer," he says. "I want to talk to you about the world and how to weed out some of the traps you can get caught up into."

After washing out of football programs at Auburn and then Arkansas State, Dyer is enrolled at tiny Arkansas Baptist College, working toward an associate's degree with the goal of returning to major college football next fall. But he is also enrolled, unofficially, in a mentoring program with a very different goal.

"This ain't about football," says Donald Northcross, dean of men at Arkansas Baptist. "This is about Michael Dyer being a good man."

***

He's a good football player. Coming out of Little Rock Christian Academy, he was rated the nation's top running back by ESPN.com/Scouts Inc. Although Cam Newton was the chief catalyst in Auburn's 2010 run to the BCS title, Dyer was more than a complementary part, breaking Bo Jackson's school freshman record while rushing for 1,093 yards. He had 143 yards in the championship game, including 57 on the drive (and 37 on that crazy not-quite-down run) for the winning field goal.Last season as a sophomore, Dyer rushed for 1,242 yards and 10 touchdowns. Most who have watched the 5-9, 210-pounder play would probably agree with the assessment of his uncle, Andre Dyer:

"He is a beast when he grabs that ball on the football field."

The trouble was keeping his eye on the ball away from the field.

"I listened to the fame and the crowd," Michael tells the kids in that middle-school gym. "Now I've got to go through a whole 'nother change and get back to the things I know are right."

He left Auburn last January after he was suspended from the Chick-Fil-A Bowl for violating unspecified team rules. Last spring, testifying in the trial of an Auburn teammate, Dyer admitted his .45 pistol was used by four former teammates in a robbery, though without his permission. He said he frequently used "spice," a powerful synthetic marijuana substitute that was legal at the time, as well as marijuana.

A transfer to Arkansas State, where former Auburn offensive coordinator Gus Malzahn had become head coach, didn't work out either. Dyer was dismissed in July after details of a traffic stop several months earlier were revealed.

Dyer had been cited for speeding – 96 in a 70 zone. The state trooper found evidence of marijuana. He confiscated a handgun, though the pistol, which was unloaded and stored in a backpack in the car's trunk, was later returned to Dyer by the state police. The trooper was fired after an internal investigation into his conduct, but the publicity was too much for Arkansas State and Malzahn.

Though Dyer declined to discuss specifics, he says he made poor choices, "took things for granted or blew off" responsibilities. Auburn coach Gene Chizik and Arkansas State's Malzahn declined interview requests.

"You always have problems you've got to face," Dyer says. "It's how you answer them and do things from there. … I understand if people are mad or disappointed in me. All I can do is what I can do now and go past what I did before. We're all just restarting and going from there."

But to restart, he'll have to endure a reshaping.

***

Andre Dyer waited until a week after Michael's dismissal from Arkansas State before calling his nephew. "Mr. Dyer," he started – and this, he says, underscored his serious tone; he more often calls his nephew "Mike D" – and then followed with a question: "What are you going to do?"

The answer came quickly.

"'Unc,' I'm waiting for you to tell me," Michael said.

They had options. Agents called, suggesting they could help Michael prepare for the NFL draft next April. But Michael wanted to keep playing college football. And despite Michael's troubles, the Dyers say college coaches wanted him to play.

" 'Bring him here, we'll take care of him, we'll make sure he's on the right track' — that same jargon you hear from all these coaches for years," Andre Dyer says. "After speaking to a couple of coaches, it all just kind of was regurgitated. It was the same song and dance, and I knew what their hearts were really about."

Andre, a Little Rock police officer, had a plan. Although Arkansas Baptist College, a historically black college, is a four-year school, it also offers two-year associate's degrees. If Michael graduates in May, he would be immediately eligible at the NCAA's FBS level next fall. Andre called Davis, a longtime friend and former college teammate, and asked him to set up a meeting with Fitz Hill, the school's president. Hill is a former college football coach – from 2001-04, he was head coach at San Jose State – but football wasn't a big part of the conversation.

"Everybody else we spoke to, I knew why they wanted Michael at their school," Andre Dyer says. "Michael knew why they wanted Michael at their school. Arkansas Baptist didn't want that. We haven't won any games for them, haven't brought in any revenue, haven't sold any T-shirts that say 'Michael Dyer is here now.' They were simply there . . . just to help this family. And that's what they've done."

Hill and Northcross see part of their mission to not only educate but also develop character in African-American men. In that respect, they say, Dyer is not different than any other student. But they have designed a personalized program for him.

In addition to required attendance at classes, Northcross and Davis, the police officer, meet regularly with Dyer, altering the times and places, Northcross says, in order to test him. They've gotten Michael a part-time job at a screen-printing company. They've asked him to begin working with a troubled high school student, and required his regular attendance at those Saturday sessions of the O.K. Program.

Their goal isn't image rehabilitation for a return to football so much as preparation for what comes after that.

"He can play football," Northcross says. "We already know that. That will handle itself. But we want Michael to develop his character. That can happen. I'm convinced that it can happen."

Says Hill: "We're trying to make him assume responsibility. You think as BCS MVP you're walking on water, breaking Bo Jackson's record and all that type of stuff. Nobody's really shooting you straight with reality. So we're trying to re-center reality for him."

Michael says he gets it. He says Arkansas Baptist reminds him of attending high school at Little Rock Christian Academy, before he got off-track.

"I'm not around too many people (at Arkansas Baptist) that can distract you too much," he says. "They've got a lot of people there that push you to be better. … I'm surrounded by people that I know care about me as a person."

***

What comes next isn't certain. Though under NCAA rules Dyer would be immediately eligible next fall with two more seasons to play, his addition would be a tough sell for some programs. Andre Dyer says they will take care in choosing Michael's next school, looking for a support system. When they find the right fit, the idea is that Northcross, Davis and Hill would vouch for Dyer's conduct – and, they say, his character – making it easier for a coach and college to bring him aboard. So far, they're pleased with Michael's embrace of their requirements, but they caution: It's early.

"This is not an easy task, just throw Michael in here and then send him out," Hill says. "My credibility means more to me than that. If he can't do it, it won't be because he looks back and says, 'I didn't have anybody to help me.'

"We have something he really wants. The test is, how badly does he really want it?"

Which brings us back to that BCS championship restart, and an analogy they hope is apt.

"If I could stop for just a moment and they think I was down, and then go again – maybe I'll be able to do that again," Michael says.

Michael says he knew the play was not over when Oregon's Eddie Pleasant grabbed him and pulled him down. After falling atop Pleasant, he got up, uncertain what to do.

"I stood up," he says, "waiting to see if I was gonna hear something."

Then, suddenly, coaches and teammates and were encouraging, imploring, even demanding – RUN!!! – and he did. Where does Michael Dyer go from here?

"It depends," his uncle says, "on who's telling him to run – and whose voice he hears."