AUBURN | Preseason expectations can be tricky.

The most optimistic Auburn fans can point to 1993 or 2013 when first-year Auburn coaches went on magical runs — undefeated in ’93 and an SEC Championship and a national championship game loss 20 years later.

Perhaps 1981, Pat Dye’s first season, or Tommy Tuberville’s Tigers in 1999, which both finished 5-6 but laid the foundation for better seasons to come will be better comparisons.

Shug Jordan’s 5-5 first season in 1951 also helped lay the groundwork for a future championship, but his 2-8 record the following season probably wouldn’t fair well in today’s age.

I know this about Bryan Harsin’s first season. It won’t be easy.

Sure, they’re just about guaranteed three early wins but it’s a mighty step up from Alabama State in week two to a whiteout game at Penn State in week three.

No SEC team faces a tougher start to its conference schedule than Auburn, which plays at LSU and then hosts Georgia. AU hasn’t won at LSU since 1999 and the Bulldogs have won 13 of the last 16 matchups in the Deep South’s Oldest Rivalry.

The Tigers could easily start 3-3 and 0-2 in the SEC and still be a pretty good team.

The rest of the schedule is more manageable. Going to Fayetteville with an 0-2 conference record isn’t ideal, but Auburn should be favored to win that game along with three of the last five — home games against Ole Miss and Mississippi State, and a road game at South Carolina. AU should be underdogs at Texas A&M and in the Iron Bowl, even if it is in Jordan-Hare Stadium.

So it’s reasonable to expect 7-5 and 4-4 in the SEC. That would be pretty good in my eyes. Pull off an upset at PSU, win one of those first two conference games and beat Alabama at home for a third consecutive season and 10 wins isn’t out of the question.

Slip up in one or two of those winnable SEC games and perhaps it’ll just be a 5- or 6-win season.

May not sound sexy but being compared to Jordan, Dye or even Tuberville certainly wouldn’t be a bad way for Harsin to open his account at Auburn.

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In today’s musical journey, we go back 51 years to the birth of a song written on a bar napkin by a doomed Pearl, the king of cool and a beat poet. On Aug. 8, 1970, Janis Joplin, known as Pearl, helped right the lyrics to Mercedes Benz at Vahsen's bar in Port Chester, N.Y., along with singer and songwriter Bob Neuwirth and San Francisco poet and playwright Michael McClure. Joplin played the a cappella song for the first time that night at her concert in the Capitol Theatre, her second to last performance. She recorded the song on Oct. 1. It was her last recording as Joplin passed away three days later on Oct. 4 due to an accidental heroin overdose.

Janis Lyn Joplin was born in Port Arthur, Texas to a college registrar and a Texaco engineer. She began playing blues and folk music at Jefferson High School where she was a classmate of Jimmy Johnson. She attended the University of Texas where she sang in a folk band called the Waller Creek Boys. She hitchhiked from Austin to San Francisco in 1962, where she recorded a number of blues songs with future Jefferson Airplane guitarist and got heavily involved in drinking and drugs, returning home a year later. She returned to San Francisco in 1966 joining Big Brother and the Holding Company band. The band recorded its first album in 1967 and went on tour including playing at the Wake for Martin Luther King concert. Joplin began her solo career in 1969 and appeared at both the Monterey Pop Festival and Woodstock that summer. Her biggest hits were 1968’s Piece of My Heart, 1969’s Kozmic Blues, 1970’s Mercedes Benz and 1971’s Me and Bobby McGee, which was released posthumously and was her only No. 1.

Mercedes was released on the album Pearl. The lyrics were inspired by the first line of a poem by Michael McClure, “Come on, God, and buy me a Mercedes Benz." The song was recorded at Sunset Sound in Los Angeles where Joplin walked in, told the backing band to take a break, told the producer to roll tape and recorded it in one take. The song’s theme is considered to be a rejection of consumerism and the false happiness that comes from the pursuit of worldly goods. Joplin is part of the unfortunate 27 Club, which also includes Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse. All passed away at the age of 27.