AUBURN | College football at the highest level is all about the head coach and that coach’s ability to recruit elite talent.

For the first half of my career covering Auburn, Clemson was more of an also-ran often filling up its recruiting classes with players that Auburn, Georgia, Florida State, Tennessee, etc., didn’t want.

That script has completely flipped under Dabo Swinney. Clemson went nearly 20 years without an ACC championship before Swinney and has won seven since. Clemson won one national championship in more than 110 seasons before Swinney and two since.

Swinney and his staff have come into the state of Alabama and signed 10 prospects over the past five years including wide receivers Justyn Ross and EJ Williams. They already have commitments from two of Alabama’s top 10 prospects in the 2023 class and could add a couple more.

Those are all players Auburn could have or would have signed in years past.

Bobby Bowden is one of the best college coaches of all-time winning 12 ACC championships and two national championships at Florida State from 1976-2009. FSU won three more ACC championships and a national championship in eight seasons under Jimbo Fisher.

Most of Bowden’s career was before the Rivals era but his 177 NFL draft picks including 31 in the first round is a great example of how well he recruited.

In the 39 other seasons under 12 different coaches, FSU has won just three ACC championships.

Florida was a pretty average SEC program until Steve Spurrier arrived in 1990. For 12 seasons under the Head Ball Coach and another six under Urban Meyer from 2005-2010, it was considered one of the nation’s top programs.

The Gators have won all eight of their conference championships and three national championships under those two coaches. Meyer’s classes included 2nd in 2006, 1st in 2007, 3rd in 2008 and 2nd in 2010.

That’s how you win championships, and I could go on and on.

I could tell you about Tennessee since Phil Fulmer was forced out in 2008 or that 10-year period at Alabama before Nick Saban showed up that included four coaches and just one conference championship.

Fulmer had the nation’s No. 2 class in 2002, the first of the Rivals era. Everybody knows what Saban has done in recruiting at LSU and Alabama over the last two decades.

The right coach at the right time can transform a program. It can turn a former women’s college (FSU) into a national powerhouse or turn an SEC sleeper like Florida into a dominant program.

Is Bryan Harsin the right coach at the right time at Auburn? I don’t know.

I certainly like how he’s run the day-to-day operations of the football program. I have no doubt his emphasis on culture has the team believing in itself and on the same page going into preseason drills.

But he’s got to step it up in recruiting.

Auburn finished 18th in nation in the 2022 class but ninth in the ultra-competitive SEC. It’s still relatively early, but AU is currently 67th in the 2023 class and 13th in the SEC and at risk of going into the season in a similar situation as last year, which generated a lot of negativity in conjunction with the five-game losing streak to close out the year.

Auburn and Harsin need to avoid that at all costs this fall. Perhaps they can win a couple of key recruiting battles over the next two weeks and a successful Big Cat on July 30 can jump-start the recruiting back up. A good September on the field could inject more confidence in the program among both supporters and recruits.

It’s the best-case scenario right now.

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Among its major sports, Auburn has a couple of coaches that are clicking all the boxes when it comes to recruiting and player development and that’s Bruce Pearl and Butch Thompson.

Pearl has transformed a men’s basketball program that has been mired in mediocrity or worse for most of its history into a national power.

All signs point to Pearl and his staff putting together another championship-contending roster for 2022-23. Neville Arena has become a huge home-court advantage.

Yes, things are going well in Pearlville.

Thompson, facing some of the toughest scholarship restrictions in the SEC with no state lottery or the ability to offer in-state tuition to out-of-state students, continues to field a very competitive team.

Auburn has been to six College World Series in its 120-plus year history and two of those have come under Thompson in the last three postseasons.

If the NCAA changes its rules to allow conferences to set scholarship limits for olympic sports like baseball, even better times could be ahead at Plainsman Park.

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In today’s musical journey, we go back 62 years to the first No. 1 hit of a country music and rockabilly legend known as Little Miss Dynamite. On July 18, 1960, the 15-year old Brenda Lee’s I’m Sorry rose to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 where it stayed for three weeks. Decca Records actually delayed the release of the song by several months because they were concerned about any potential legal issues with 15-year old singing a sophisticated love song. Ronnie Self, who was a key writer for Decca during the 1950’s and 60’s, was a co-writer of the song along with Dub Allbritten. Self wrote several of Lee’s hits during this period. Lee’s signature song is also noted for being one of the first examples of the Nashville Sound, which incorporated pop and doo-wop elements into country music.

Brenda Mae Tarpley was born in Atlanta, Ga., in 1944 into a struggling family that moved between Atlanta and Augusta looking for work and often living in houses without running water. She began singing in church at age 5 and by age 10 was the family’s primary breadwinner following the death of her father in a construction accident. She sang at local events and on radio and T.V. Her breakthrough came with a performance on the Ozark Jubilee in 1955 and then was offered a contract by Decca the following year. Her most popular hit came in 1958 with Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree, which she recored at age 13, and she had a second No. 1 with 1960’s I Want to Be Wanted. She charted a total of 47 singles in the 1960’s, which was surpassed only by the Beatles, Elvis and Ray Charles. In a career that has lasted more than 70 years, Lee has sold over 100 million records and been inducted the Rock and Roll, Country and Rockabilly Hall of Fames. She also received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. She has been married to Ronnie Shacklett for nearly 60 years and has two daughters and three grandchildren.