AUBURN | It was one year ago that Auburn wrapped up a busy summer recruiting calendar with 27 official visits.

Only one of those 27 prospects — running back Jeremiah Cobb — was committed to Auburn when Bryan Harsin was fired on Oct. 31.

One. That level of ineptitude is still hard for me to wrap my mind around.

It was Harsin’s appallingly poor recruiting that was one of the driving forces in ending his tenure at Auburn in less than two years and with a 9-12 record.

Perhaps the best example of his complete incompetence in recruiting elite players is that the Tigers actually ended up signing four of the 27 after Hugh Freeze and his staff were able to flip center Connor Lew from Miami, defensive lineman Darron Reed from LSU and edge Keldric Faulk from Florida State to close out the 2023 class.

All three players really liked Auburn but weren’t going to play for Harsin.

When you add cornerback Kayin Lee, who Auburn flipped late from Ohio State, to Cobb, Lew, Reed and Faulk, that might just be the five most talented players in the class and perhaps some future All-SEC players.

A year later, AU welcomed in 20 official visitors during May and June with two already committed and the Tigers in pretty good shape for about a half dozen more.

Many will be deciding in the coming days and weeks.

The dead period officially began Sunday at midnight, which will limit contact with recruits to just texts or phone/video calls for the next four weeks.

There’s also an important one-week window at the end of July, which will include Big Cat Weekend and should yield a number of high-profile visitors.

And with all this recruiting going on in the ’23 and ’24 classes, Freeze and Co. have also managed to sign one of the nation’s top transfer portal classes with 20 important additions.

The 85-man roster has undergone a nearly 50 percent overhaul in less than seven months of Freeze on the job.

He’s taken a two- or three-win roster and turned it into one that could compete for seven, eight or more wins this season.

His high school recruiting will show immediate results this fall and should put Auburn on the path to more success in year two and three and beyond.

In a little more than half a year, Freeze has made Auburn’s present and future better. It’s far from a finished product but it’s light years ahead of where it would have been under the previous regime.

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In today’s musical journey, we go back 27 years to the day the lead singer of one of the greatest hard rock bands off all-time was replaced by the same lead singer that he replaced more than a decade earlier. On June 26, 1996, David Lee Roth returned as the lead singer of Van Halen 11 years after he left the band for a solo career and was replaced by Sammy Hagar. The reunion came about after a dispute over producing a couple of songs for the soundtrack of the movie, Twister, which caused Hagar to leave the band. The first of two Van Halen reunions with Roth didn’t last long. Roth’s antics at the 1996 MTV Video Music Awards just 10 weeks later, in which he was constantly seeking attention for himself while the band presented Beck with an award, caused Van Halen to fire him without recording a record or going on tour together. Extreme frontman Gary Cherone served as the band’s lead singer during an unremarkable era from 1966-2000 and Hagar reunited with the group in 2003 but left in 2005 due to Eddie Van Halen’s drinking. The second and more successful reunion with Roth came in 2006 and the 2007-08 North American Tour was widely successful, playing 76 shows and grossing a band-record $93 million. The band stayed together for most of the next decade until Eddie’s death in 2020 due to cancer.

Alex and Eddie Van Halen were born in the Netherlands before moving to Pasadena, Calif., in 1962. Younger brother Eddie learned to play classical music on the piano by ear and the two brothers started out playing together with Alex on guitar and Eddie on drums before switching. They connected with Roth in Pasadena and eventually formed the band, Van Halen, in 1973. Michael Anthony joined the band in 1974 as they became more popular playing in clubs throughout the Los Angeles area including a regular gig at Gazzarri’s on the Sunset Strip, which was known as the launching pad for the Doors in the 1960’s. The band singed with Warner Bros. in 1977 and produced its first album, Van Halen, in 1978, which included a number of early hits such as “Runnin’ With the Devil,” “Ain’t Talkin’ ‘bout Love,” “Jamie’s Cryin’” and “You Really Got Me.” The debut album also included the instrumental, “Eruption,” which is considered one of the greatest guitar solos of all time. The band released four albums over the next four years, which included more hits such as “Dance the Night Away,” “And the Cradle Will Rock,” “Unchained” and “Oh, Pretty Woman.” A sixth studio album, 1984, included “Panama,” “I’ll Wait,” “Hot for Teacher” and “Jump,” which became the band’s only No. 1 single on the Billboard 100. The 1984 album sold 10 million copies and spent six weeks at No. 2 on the Billboard 200, behind Michael Jackson’s Thriller. Roth left the band in 1985 and was replaced by Hagar. The next decade with Hagar was also successful producing four albums including 1986’s 5150, which hit No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and included several hit songs such as “Why Can’t This Be Love.” The band has sold over 80 million records and won a Grammy Award in 1992. Rolling Stone ranks Eddie Van Halen as the 8th-best guitarist of all time. Van Halen was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007.