FanHouse SEC Football

What began with an apology ended with a national title.

Fourteen and a half weeks after Tim Tebow fought back the tears and promised that that day's loss to Ole Miss was only a beginning, he fought back the Sooners and made sure that promise came true.

And, unless you lived under a rock that has yet to undergo the digital transition, you already know this. It's been unwillingly drilled in to your head like multiplication tables or that darn Saved by Zero commercial.

Again. And again. And again.

He's a missionary. An icon for our generation. A man who can perform a circumcision during an out route and can turn Gatorade into wine.

Or maybe we're confusing him with someone else.

But then again, it's hard to tell with more sugar poured on him than John Daly's breakfast cereal. You think you put on weight over the holidays? Chow down a couple high-calorie Tebow features and you'll be punching new holes in our belt for all those added pounds.

In Part One I named five college football recruits who will make an "impact" in 2007 and beyond. What follows are the top five impact recruits.

Please keep in mind the word impact can mean a lot of things to a lot of people. My rubric is slanted towards guys who people will be talking about early in their careers and not necessarily the best players, period.

• Jahvid Best, Tailback (California) - The "sleeper" out of my ten, if you want to call him that. Best is a little on the light/small side (5'-10"/183 pounds) but the man can scoot (a California high school best 10.39 in the 100-yard dash). There are only a handful of people every year who are that fast and are legitimate football players. Think Ted Ginn, Reggie Bush, those types of zoom zoomers. Best may be the next. Video here and here. Strange video here.

• Joe McKnight, Athlete (USC or LSU or Ole Miss) - McKnight is considered by many to be the best recruit in this year's class. People compare him to Reggie Bush because of his versatility (15 yards/carry, 30 yards/reception) but he's a little slower (10.75 compared to 10.41 in the 100 meter dash). That said McKnight can do it and should start out as a running back. Video here, here, here.
  

• Noel Devine, Running Back (West Virginia) - Many would consider Devine the nation's top recruit but his off-field elusiveness and questionable academics have muted expectations a tad. That said, outside of Reggie Bush there hasn't been a more breathtaking player to come out of the high school ranks. It's useless to give words to his abilities, just watch tape and see for yourself. He just committed to West Virginia and if he miraculously qualifies will be all over SportsCenter every Saturday night for the next three years. Boatloads of videos (~45) here. Noel Devine is a YouTube phenomena and has been since his sophomore year of high school.
  

• Everson Griffen, Defensive End (USC) - If we can return from space and into the relatively elevated stratosphere for a moment, we must talk about the amazing Everson Griffen. Aside from Devine, no other player's tape stands out more this year than Griffen's. He puts on a show running through defensive lineman and past defensive backs as a ball carries and simply blows past offensive tackles and chases down running backs way downfield as a rush end. He reportedly clocked a sub 4.5 second 40-yard-dash at a camp this year at nearly 270 pounds. Griffen is a true physical freak and there's a chance to play at the Leo end spot opposite Lawrence Jackson for the Trojans this year.

• Jimmy Clausen, Quarterback (Notre Dame) - And finally we arrive at the great Jimmy Clausen. Jimmy has been eyeballed since the middle school days as an elite quarterback prospect and so far has lived up to the billing. He'll go to the Mecca of college football, Notre Dame with expectations far beyond those of another ballyhooed prep slinger, Ron Powlus (ironically, his quarterback coach this year). Clausen is the most polished high school quarterback in ages and has a quirky personality and awesomely bad hairdo. Pair that with the hype and the fact that he's at Notre Dame and the guy is college football's biggest lightning rod ... perhaps ever. And that's before ever having taken a snap. People will most definitely be talking about this guy and so he headlines this list of the top 10 impact recruits of 2007. Video here. A few more videos here.

Alright, there it is, my list of the top 10 impact recruits. Who else should have been on this list? Who would you have omitted. Fire away (within reason).

***
Previous:

Impact National Recruits Part I

As reported pretty much everywhere today, audio was released of Alabama coach Nick Saban using a derogatory slur.

During a meeting with Florida reporters, Saban relayed a story about a phone call from a friend on the LSU board of trustees who had an unusual encounter with a cajun-accented LSU fan (full audio here).

"He was walking down the street yesterday before the Sugar Bowl," Saban said on the taped comments. "He calls me. There was a guy working in the ditch, one of those coonass guys that talk funny.

"I can't talk like them, but he can. Most people in Louisiana can."

Continuing to tell the story, Saban then quoted the worker's vulgar comment about Saban going to Alabama.

Saban has since apologized, asking that it be understood he was merely relaying the friend's story and that he himself finds the term offensive.

Expect this to get a lot of play the rest of his career. And a beatdown from one Ed Orgeron. And maybe The Waterboy as well as I think they're both offended.

"Mama says alligators are ornery cause they got all them teeth and no toothbrush. Mama says Nick Saban's the devil."

But we all know he's not really the devil, it's just his medulla oblongata.

In the immortal words of the late, great Jim Fyffe, my time is up and I thank you for yours. This will be my final post for AOL's FanHouse. The company has decided to go another direction and cover college football with a wider net, doing away with the individual school writers.

In the future, FanHouse will continue to cover college football, but will do it with a smaller group of writers who will cover college football in general. You can be assured that if Auburn has breaking news, it will be covered here.

It was a business decision on AOL's part and you have to respect that. It has been an honor for me to be part of the FanHouse family this season. I want to thank Jamie Mottram, the mastermind behind the FanHouse concept. He has built an incredible gathering place for fans to visit and share their views. I wish him nothing but luck in the future. I'll continue to visit every day.

I also want to thank all the FanHouse writers I've gotten to know this year. It has been a blast sharing stories with you all season. AOL has some of the most talented writers around; and where they find some of these stories is beyond me. They just get better and better.

Finally, I want to thank all my readers. You made Auburn FanHouse one of the most visited (if not the most visited) college site on the FanHouse portal. Where many schools were measuring readers by the hundreds, you pushed our numbers to more than 40,000 just in the last month at Auburn FanHouse. Incredible.

Your comments were awesome. Your defense of Auburn was admirable. I'll miss all of my regular contributors. And yes, strangely enough, I'll even miss Jake. Anybody that loves SEC football enough to get punished on a daily basis is OK in my book. Keep your head up Jake. Your children may one day see Alabama beat Auburn.

While I may be leaving AOL, I'm not going anywhere. Just as I did before my FanHouse gig, I'll be returning to my blog in the Summer. I'm going to take a few months off and then resume with Football Saturday In The South. I hope you'll stop by as we get closer to the start of the season.

I'll close by talking about Auburn. For somebody who grew up loving Pat Dye, I have to say that Auburn is in its glory days now. Tommy Tuberville has a chance to be better than Shug and Pat. And that's obviously saying a lot. We are about to conclude the best recruiting class since Tuberville arrived.

Everything is in place. Next year will be a transition time. But look out in 2008. It has the potential to be very special. War Eagle and God Bless!

It appears that Auburn finally has its season opening opponent for 2007. The Manhattan (KS) Mercury is reporting tonight that Kansas State has reached an agreement with Auburn to travel to Jordan-Hare Stadium for the Tigers 2007 season opener.

There have been rumors flying around all day on the internet. The Mercury is the first to confirm the story. The opener will be played on September 1st and televised by ESPN. There was no mention of a return trip by Auburn. This has been a sticking point for the Auburn administration in trying to schedule a BCS conference caliber opponent. You would have to assume that they'll be no return trip to Manhattan, Kansas.

This will not be the first time the two schools have met in the season opener. Auburn opened with Kansas State to start the 1979 season. The game was won by the Tigers 26-18 at Jordan-Hare Stadium.

The Reggie Bush saga in Southern California is unraveling faster than a New England Patriots lead. The news out of Los Angeles is getting worse by the day. Recent news of audio tapes confirming that Bush and his family were "on the take" while still in college raises some very interesting questions.

Will Bush be stripped of his Heisman Trophy? Will USC lose its national championship? The likelihood of either happening is looking pretty good. The NCAA will certainly be pushed into action if these tapes are authenticated.

The results could be historic. What will the BCS do? If the NCAA takes away the Trojans victories from 2004, the BCS will have little option but to take back its championship. The same will hold true for the Associated Press. They will be left with two options. One would be to vacate the title and leave that way. The other would be to crown the second ranked team that season as its national champion.

That of course, is Auburn. Wouldn't it be ironic if Auburn, after being screwed by the BCS, ended up as national champions? There's no question that in hindsight, the 2004 squad would have given USC a run for its money and have had a good chance of winning (see Florida 2006).

Two months ago, I would have said this was a pipe dream. Today, I think it's very possible. Maybe we can get the BCS and AP to present the trophy during halftime of the Auburn-Alabama game at Jordan-Hare Stadium. Too little too late you say? Not me, I'll take it. Finders keepers.

How bad do you miss Auburn football? For me, it's gotten really bad. I actually watched today's practice session at the Senior Bowl carried by the NFL Network.

And you know what? I really enjoyed it. OK, so maybe I have issues. I think its called withdrawals. For the three of you who actually get that channel, the network will be carrying tomorrow and Thursday's practice sessions starting at 4:00 p.m. CT.

When the game kicks off Saturday, it will feature five former Auburn players, including running back Kenny Irons, defensive back David Irons, offensive linemen Ben Grubbs and Tim Duckworth and wide receiver Courtney Taylor.

Irons looked really good in practice today. He caught the eye of more than one NFL coach.

But the one they were talking about most was Grubbs. He's projected by many to be the first guard taken in April's NFL draft. They were also giving a lot of love to Duckworth. When you see both of them working out for scouts, it hits you just how bad they are going to be missed.

The Auburn offensive line has huge holes to fill. Thankfully, Hugh Nall has gone out and found some talented high school linemen. Unfortunately, it looks like too many of them will get a chance to play next year.

The South squad is coached this year by San Francisco 49ers head coach Mike Nolan and the North squad is led by Tampa Bay head coach Jon Gruden. Saturday's contest will be carried on the NFL Network and starts at 3:00 p.m. CT.

As you probably know, former Auburn quarterback Patrick Nix was named offensive coordinator at Miami on Friday. It's quite a promotion for the former Georgia Tech coordinator. Nix is setting himself up nicely for a shot at a head coaching job in a few years.

It's hard to believe Nix has been at Tech for five years. The past three seasons he's served as offensive coordinator, but in reality he just started calling plays this past year. The hiring is interesting for several reasons.

Nix came out of nowhere to land the job. The 34 year-old had an up and down first season calling plays, helping lead the Yellow Jackets to the ACC Championship game. The consensus among many in the ACC was that Tech coach Chan Gailey still had a hand in the offense and wouldn't let Nix completely open it up like he wanted.

He has a reputation as a creative offensive mind. Perhaps just as important, Nix is known as a tireless recruiter. If you can recruit to Tech, you should have a field day in South Florida. But what apparently landed him the job was the way he coached against Miami this season.

Here we go again. Another college coach has come out and said point blank that he's not interested in a head coaching job at another school. This time it comes from Auburn offensive line coach Hugh Nall.

Today, Nall said he had no interest in the vacant Georgia Southern head coaching job. It came open on Monday when Brian VanGorder left Statesboro to be the linebackers coach for the Atlanta Falcons.

"There is a rumor going around that I am interested in that job and it is just not true," said Nall. "I am not going to coach at Georgia Southern. I am not going anywhere. I am very happy at Auburn."

You may remember that Nall was a finalist for the job when VanGorder was hired. Nall was the starting center on the 1980 Georgia national championship team and had close ties to the late Erk Russell. It's unclear whether he still has connections with the athletic department at Georgia Southern.

Hugh, all we ask is that you please don't pull a Slick Nick Saban on us. Say what you mean and mean what you. We're begging you.

It seems like now would be the perfect time for Nall to leave if he was interested in a heading coaching position. Next season he must replace four starters on his offensive line, including All-American guard Ben Grubbs.

He may want to stay because of the group he's got coming in next year. He already has verbal commitments from four highly touted high school linemen and appears very close to getting one from Lee Ziemba, the talented tackle from Rogers, Arkansas.

Arkansas moved swiftly today to replace outgoing offensive coordinator Gus Malzahn. In his stead comes David Lee, a Dallas Cowboys assistant.

Lee has extensive links to the Arkansas program dating to 1984.

He loves the Razorback program and will work tirelessly to help this program succeed at the highest levels," coach Houston Nutt said in a statement.

Lee coached at Arkansas from 1984-88 under Ken Hatfield and in 2001-02 under Nutt. Lee left the first time to be head coach at UTEP and left for the Cowboys after the 2002 season. He also worked for Hatfield at Rice from 1994-2000.

It's unclear what kind of an offensive scheme Lee brings to the table, but chances are it doesn't matter because coach Houston Nutt (with Athletic Director Frank Broyles' backing) has to date shown Tsar-like abilities to share offensive power with his peers. Can you say Puppet Show?

And so the drama continues. We're still waiting to hear if/when former all-world quarterback Mitch Mustain plans to transfer and where to.