AUBURN | Auburn is 16 days away from pulling off one of the more remarkable recruiting classes I’ve ever witnessed.

It’s not just that this could be the highest-rated AU class in the Rivals era. It’s coming amidst what could be a fourth consecutive losing season.

That Hugh Freeze and his staff could pull this off, and they haven’t reached the finish line yet, would be a staggering accomplishment.

The biggest detriment to Auburn becoming an annual championship contender and being able to compete regularly with its biggest rivals has been recruiting.

Gus Malzahn had his moments, for sure, but his inconsistency and 8-17 record against Alabama, Georgia and LSU can be directly attributed to average recruiting, especially when compared to the SEC and those rivals.

And that recruiting got demonstrably worse in two years under Bryan Harsin.

While Freeze, hasn’t been able to turn AU’s misfortunes around on the football field just yet, he’s recruiting at a level usually reserved for the nation’s top programs.

Auburn is currently third nationally and second in the SEC in the Rivals team recruiting rankings, trailing only Ohio State and Georgia.

The best this program has ever finished in the nearly quarter-century of Rivals’ rankings was fourth in 2010, which included Cam Newton and led to a national championship.

Auburn is still a ways aways from reaching those heights, but stacking a top 5 class on top of last year’s No. 8 class is a big step in building this program back into national relevance.

One of the most amazing parts of this class is that it’s continued to grow and get better even as the Tigers have struggled on the field.

Just in the last two months, AU has flipped Rivals100 defensive end Nathaniel Marshall from Michigan, Rivals100 linebacker Elijah Melendez from Miami, Rivals100 quarterback Deuce Knight from Notre Dame and 4-star wide receiver Samuel Turner from Georgia Tech.

And when they lost 3-star cornerback Dante Core, who flipped to Ole Miss Nov. 11, they flipped 4-star cornerback Shamar Arnoux from USC three days later and moved up in the rankings.

Simply amazing, and they may not be done adding highly-rated players to this class.

Yes, Freeze and his staff will ultimately be judged by their on-the-field record, and that’ll need to take a big step forward next year.

But this class and what this staff can get done in the portal in the weeks afterwards, could put the Tigers in position to compete at the top of the SEC next fall.

They’ve just got to fight like heck for the next 16 days.

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In today’s musical journey, we go back 31 years to one of the most significant live acoustic performances of all time, which became a memorial to one of the greatest songwriters and musical artists from the end of the 20th Century. On Nov. 18, 1993, Nirvana recorded an MTV Unplugged concert at Sony Music Studies in Hell’s Kitchen in Manhattan. Lead singer Kurt Cobain died from suicide 138 days later. Cobain changed the format to play mostly covers instead of the usual stripped down versions of their own songs, and included brothers Chris and Curt Kirkwood from one of his favorite bands, the Meat Puppets, and touring guitarist Pat Smear and cellist Lori Goldston. The ensemble group prepared for two days at SST Studios in New Jersey before the live performance, which included 14 songs and was done in one take. Cobain asked that the stage be decorated with stargazer lilies, black candles and a crystal chandelier, giving it the look of a funeral. The concert aired on MTV Dec. 16 and included just one of the band’s hit singles at the time in “Come as You Are.” It concluded with a haunting cover of Lead Belly’s “Where Did You Sleep Last Night.” It was released as an album on Nov. 1, 1994, nearly seven months after Cobain’s death on April 5, and debuted atop the Billboard 200 album chart. Rolling Stone ranks it as the 279th greatest album of all time and it won a Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Performance.

Kurt Donald Cobain was born in Aberdeen, Wash., in 1967. His mother, a waitress, and father, a mechanic, divorced when Cobain was nine, which had a big impact on his life. His mother remarried into an abusive relationship and his father remarried and started a new family, which Cobain resented. He spent a good portion of his youth living with other members of his family or friends. He was drawn to the punk rock scene in Aberdeen, particularly the Melvins, and was gifted a used guitar for his 14th birthday, which he quickly learned to play on his own. He dropped out of Aberdeen High School just weeks before graduation and by 1987 had met bass guitarist Krist Novoselic and they formed Nirvana with Chad Channing as their first drummer. They recorded their first album, Bleach, in 1989, before Cobain replaced Channing with Dave Grohl and they recorded their breakout album, Nevermind, in 1991. The album became a worldwide hit and helped launch the grunge era and a number of other Seattle-area bands in Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam and Soundgarden.

Cobain first started drinking as a 12-year old and using drugs shortly thereafter. He used heroin for the first time in 1986, became an addict by 1991 and had several near-death overdoses over the next two years. Her had several suicide attempts leading up to his death and his wife, Courtney Love, and friends staged an intervention on March 25, 1994, convincing Cobain to enter a detox program, which he subsequently left by scaling a six-foot wall after a couple of days. After his death, his body was cremated and some of his ashes were scattered into McLane Creek in Olympia, Wash., by his daughter, Frances Bean Cobain. Nirvana has sold over 75 million records worldwide and the band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2014. Grohl went on to form the Foo Fighters while Novoselic has played in a number of different bands over the last three decades.