Re: Clemson vs Auburn recruiting. Would welcome logical

thoughts as to why we lose recruits, that we have offered, to Auburn? With our facilities, second to none, recent dominance over them, playing in the last two national championship games, both have small town atmospheres, similar campus, except, as GA fans say, we are Auburn with a lake, etc. I just cannot understand it. Auburn does have a reputation for turning their head concerning a player's character (see Cam Newton, kicked out of FSU for stealing) but, if we offer someone I assume he has passed Dabo's character test.

Auburn has been on multiple probations (see member of the SEC) and I can tell you for a face that I have a high school classmate that is an Auburn graduate who ended up being a very successful businessman in Atlanta. He told me,and this was at least 20 years ago, that he and 10-15 other Auburn alums met once a year at Coosa Country Club in Rome, GA and pooled their $$ to be used for recruiting.

Not saying this exists anymore, but, why would a kid who has no ties to either school go to Auburn vs us?

Harley®

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Jul 15, 2017, 8:03 PM

Auburn has a long history of cheating. When Terry Bowden was head coach he found that there was a formal, hidden arrangement among boosters to pay players. Bowden said that he had no choice but to let the players who were being paid keep getting paid and to hopefully let the system die a natural death. Auburn had a wealthy booster alumnus who was on the AU BOT who called a lot of shots at AU. Some think Terry Bowden's demise at AU was driven at least in part by his failure to embrace that weathly booster and the pay to play system. Many of us think the Barners cheated wholesale for many years. The phrase 'Scam Newton' is often used to describe the money that changed hands when he was recruited from Juco and signed with AU.

It also wasn't eons ago when Bama went on probation over the $250K that went to some folks in Memphis to secure the services of a very highly rated recruit. The story is that Fulmer talked to the NCAA about Bama's cheating, which led in part to their probation and to some question about how safe it was for Fulmer to go to coach games in the state of Alabama.

And the evidence seems pretty strong that Ole Miss was the beneficiary of a pay to play recruiting policy almost currently.

When Spurrier was coaching at Florida there was an agent scheme working via Tank Black, a former Gamecock player/coach (?) which put money in the hands of Gator players in the late 90s. There is court testimony to that fact and Spurrier himself made a remark about not as many really nice cars in the player parking lots to indicate when talent was down on his UF teams.

I am not accusing anyone or everyone of paying recruits, coaches and agents to make sure players go to FLorida, Auburn or Bama or LSU or Ole Miss these days, but the record is reasonably clear that was almost a norm within the last 20 years.

So when a player jumps to Auburn or to Ole Miss I personally consider it a possibility that money changed hands.

Doesn't everyone think that?

Go Tigers!!