BMatt’s Monday musings

AUBURN | New York, Oregon, Washington and Arizona.

In just the first week of in-person recruiting, Auburn welcomed football prospects from a number of states outside its usual recruiting territory.

It’s definitely a sign of things to come under Bryan Harsin and his new staff, and it’s going to benefit Auburn immediately.

Perhaps in a few years, if the Tigers put together a couple of good seasons, the Football Performance Center is completed and Harsin and his staff are more established, they’ll be able to go head-to-head with Alabama, Georgia, Clemson, LSU, Florida, Florida State and even Ohio State for the top kids in the Southeast and start winning those recruiting battles on a more consistent basis.

But that time is not now.

It doesn’t mean that AU can’t and won’t win some of those battles. Derrick Brown, Owen Pappoe and Tank Bigsby are a few examples of important wins in the recent past, all three out of the state of Georgia.

But clearly, AU needs more than one or two big wins in each class in order to build its talent level up to be more consistently competitive with its biggest rivals.

That’s why recruiting nationally and expanding the number of top prospects AU is involved with is so important. Because when AU recruits against the top schools from the Pac-12 or Big Ten or any other conference, it has one big advantage — the opportunity to play against the best-of-the-best in the SEC.

Ending the 15-month dead period and getting recruits back on campus is another big advantage because Auburn, the school and city, sells itself.

Supplementing the usual recruiting haul from the South with some national prospects along with an aggressive approach in the transfer portal is the best way to quickly close that talent gap.

It’s not just about recruiting anymore. It’s about roster management.

Harsin appears to have recognized that immediately. I have no doubt his additions from the portal have strengthened AU’s team for 2021 and he’s probably not done.

It’s the right play for Auburn right now and it’s working quite well.

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With Desi Sills’ transfer unlikely to go through, I like Auburn’s decision to sit pat with just 11 scholarship players for the 2021-22 season as detailed in Jeffrey Lee’s HOOPS SCOOPS.

That’s still plenty of depth, especially at the point guard position, which was a major obstacle to success last season. The wing position remains deep too, even without Sills. The starters will likely be Allen Flanigan and K.D. Johnson with Devan Cambridge and Chris Moore as backups along with the potential to play Jaylin Williams or Jabari Smith at the 3 when Bruce Pearl wants to role with a bigger lineup.

I expect Moore will benefit the most from this development. He shot .400 from 3-point range as a true freshman, which was second on the team for players with more than two attempts. He was also second with a .563 field goal percentage.

I continue to maintain that Moore is an under appreciated player with a high upside. We may not see him truly breakout until his junior season when AU will be replacing a lot of players from this year’s squad, but his time is coming and he has the makeup to be a future team leader on and off the floor.

This season will be a great opportunity for Moore to be a spark plug off the bench, but even more is coming in the future.

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Today’s musical journey goes back 45 years and the publishing of a magazine story, which served as the basis for an era-defining film that led to one of the greatest soundtracks of all-time. On June 7, 1976, New York magazine published the cover story, Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night by Nik Cohn. The story followed Vincent, a young Italian-American who worked at a hardware store and was the dancing king at a club called 2001 Odyssey. The article was originally written as true story but in 1997 Cohn admitted it was fiction and Vincent was actually based on a someone he met in London.

Robert Stigwood, a famed music and movie producer and the manager of the Bee Gees, bought the film rights to the story and had Norman Wexler right the screenplay. Saturday Night Fever starring John Travolta, was released on Dec. 16, 1977 by Paramount Pictures and eventually grossed $237.1 million worldwide. The film and its soundtrack helped to launch the disco era. The film was shot entirely in Brooklyn, N.Y. including in the 2001 Odyssey, which was remodeled with a $15,000 lighted dance floor modeled after the one in The Club atop Red Mountain in Birmingham, Ala. Travolta lost 20 pounds during rehearsals and filming as he practiced the choreography three hours a day. He was disappointed when more of his dance scenes weren’t included in the movie. Travolta was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor but lost out to Richard Dreyfuss in The Goodbye Girl. It was the favorite movie of the late film critic, Gene Siskel, who bought the white polyester suit Travolta wore in the film for $2,000 in 1978 and sold for $145,000 in 1995.

Travolta actually danced to Boz Scaggs and Stevie Wonder in making the movie with The Bee Gees not involved until post-production. Stigwood called the Bee Gees about composing songs for the movie and they wrote most of them in a single weekend including I Can’t Have You, Night Fever, More Than a Woman, How Deep is Your Love and eventually Stayin’ Alive. The soundtrack has sold over 40 million copies, making it the second-best selling soundtrack of all-time behind the Bodyguard and seventh-best selling album of all-time. It topped the U.S. charts for 24 weeks and is certified 16x Platinum. The album won six Grammy Awards and has been added to the National Recording Registry in the Library of Congress. Both Night Fever and How Deep Is Your Love became No. 1 hits.