LITTLE ROCK — It was supposed to be a Red Wolves celebration.
Gus Malzahn and his staff were at Chenal Country Club on Monday to play golf, talk football and help the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame raise funds.
There wasn’t a cloud in the sky and the temperature reached 111 degrees, but there was a shadow cast over the event.
A Michael Dyer shadow.
Dyer, the incredibly talented running back who was a Parade All-American at Little Rock Christian High School and offensive MVP in Auburn’s victory over Oregon in the Bowl Championship Series championship game, had been dismissed from the Arkansas State football team Sunday.
The dismissal came nine days after Malzahn and Dyer had a news conference to put to rest rumors he was transferring.
Dyer expressed his deep love for ASU and that he would finish his career there.
This came a little more than six months after Dyer had been granted a conditional release by Auburn, where he had been suspended indefinitely for 26 days.
During the suspension, Auburn Coach Gene Chizik said Dyer had some things he had to do to be reinstated.
Instead, he transferred to ASU, where he applied for an NCAA waiver to not have to sit out a year. He didn’t get it.
He also had to return to Auburn, Ala., to testify about his gun being used during a robbery.
Controversy has seemed to swirl around the 21-year old Dyer since he was in high school when he was quoted saying he would have to sit down with Bobby (Petrino) and talk about his being an Arkansas Razorback.
Most UA fans thought that was incredibly rude of a high school kid to refer to the head coach of the state’s largest program by his first name.
Petrino still made a scholarship offer, but the Hogs didn’t waste much time on continuing to recruit Dyer.
Everyone makes mistakes, especially teenagers, but Dyer seems to make the same mistakes over and over and that means he is not a victim.
The final straw for Malzahn apparently happened in March when Dyer was pulled over for speeding in White County by state trooper Royce Denney.
Last week, The Daily Citizen in Searcy got an anonymous tip there may have been more to the stop, and apparently there was.
State Police initially refused to release the video of the arrest from Denney’s car because they were investigating the stop. Denney was quoted in the Jonesboro Sun as asking whether a gun was registered and about weed during the stop.
Dyer was issued only a ticket for speeding.
It appears Malzahn didn’t know about anything more than the ticket until he learned the Sun was going to publish a story. He immediately had a release put out saying Dyer was dismissed.
What happens next for Dyer, who rushed for more than 1,000 yards each of his two seasons at Auburn, is up to him.
Two head coaches and two programs offered him an opportunity to do something tens of thousands of young men would love to do, play college football. But he couldn’t be a team player.
He couldn’t play by the team rules.
So there was a shadow cast over the celebration of everything Red Wolves on Monday- head basketball Coach John Brady played, too - but it didn’t ruin the day.
And it won’t ruin the future of ASU football.
If one coach isn’t bigger than a program then certainly one player never will be.
Someone will give Dyer another chance, but it probably won’t be on college football’s highest level.
Malzahn and ASU will continue to work hard to move forward with the eye on a carrot bigger than the Sun Belt.
In the end, this fiasco with Dyer will go down as an opportunity lost, more for the player than the school.
Sports, Pages 15 on 07/31/2012