BMatt’s Monday musings

AUBURN | College football is a results-oriented business and college coaches are ultimately judged by wins and losses on the football field.

They know that and anybody even remotely connected to college football knows it too.

Those results are directly related to talent acquisition both in recruiting and the transfer portal.

For Auburn, its two biggest rivals — Alabama and Georgia — excel in talent acquisition and in order for the Tigers to close the gap on the field, they’ve got to get it done off the field first.

That’s what has made the last several months so crucial for Auburn. And while the results aren’t in yet, the entire staff from Bryan Harsin to his assistant coaches and to the entire recruiting enterprise as Jay G. likes to call it deserve praise for their hard work.

They have accomplished the first and most important process of recruiting and that’s getting talented players on campus.

They’ve hosted 30 official visitors over the past month, most highly ranked and/or with offers from Auburn’s peers in the SEC and around the country. There’s also been a steady flow of 2024 and 25 prospects in for unofficial visits and camps.

I’ve seen a lot of spring and summer recruiting periods — of course, it’s changed with the early signing period and June officials — but this group has done as well as any I’ve witnessed in getting players to Auburn -- a campus and town that literally sells itself.

Spending so much time in the athletic complex and attending camps over the last month, I’ve also observed some other important developments with this year’s team.

You can see it with how well the coaches communicate with each other, and how so many players came around to watch and help coach up many of the campers.

With every fist bump, hello, chat or longer discussion you have with a coach or player, you sense that Harsin’s focus on culture is having an impact. I’m as sure as I’ve been in my 21 years covering this team that the majority of coaches and players are on the same page and pulling together.

I think that’s an important component for success. Not as important as having a talent edge, but certainly part of building a successful program.

Of course, it’s about results, and when it comes to recruiting and the early signing period, those results are coming soon.

It appears some of AU’s top targets will be making decisions in the coming days and weeks. Auburn is also planning to have several commits come out of Big Cat on July 30.

The expectation, even dealing with some of the negatives that came out of February, is to be at or close to double-digit commitments going into preseason drills.

That’s exactly what this staff needs and would help build recruiting momentum going into the fall, which will includes more official visitors for big home games and build toward the early signing period Dec. 21-23.

The full results — on the field and off — will be in by then and that’s what will matter most. But as it stands now, as a four-week dead period begins, Auburn has positioned itself for a degree of success.

And it’s come from the past several months of work the entire group of coaches, staff and players have put in. They deserve praise and support for their work.

The rest will come — the degree of success or failure or somewhere in between -- later this fall.

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In today’s musical journey, we go back 51 years to the closing of an historical venue known as The Church of Rock and Roll, which was known for headlining a number of top bands from the late 1960’s and early 70’s. On June 27, 1971, the Fillmore East in the Lower East Side of Manhattan closed with a bang as The Allman Brothers Band, The Beach Boys, Edgar Winter and Country Joe McDonald and the Fish played the final night. The final concert was carried live on two local radio stations. Because of the acoustics and audience, a number of bands recorded live albums at the Fillmore East including John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Jefferson Airplane, Jimi Hendrix, The Allman Brothers Band, Derek and the Dominos, The Who, Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, Joe Cocker, Santana, Miles Davis, Neil Young and Frank Zappa. Even more bands and musical artists played there over a three-year period including Led Zeppelin, Chicago, Tina Turner, Van Morrison and The Byrds.

The Commodore theatre was originally built in 1926 as a part of the Yiddish Theatre District. It was bought by Loews and turned into a movie theatre called the Loews Commodore and then the Village Theatre, showing movies through 1963. After falling into disrepair, it was bought by rock promoter Bill Graham in 1968. He wanted an East coast version of his Filmore Auditorium in San Francisco. Graham would regularly schedule to acts per night, especially on Friday and Saturday. The Allman Brothers Band played there so many times, they were called Bill Graham’s house band. It was sold in 1971 as more concerts started booking larger arenas and stadiums. It continued to host concerts including Foghat, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Steve Miller Band and Bachman Turner Overdrive through the 1970’s. It became a nightclub during the 1980’s before being bought by a bank, which has a branch on the street level and renovated the rest of the building into apartments.