Krootin' links

A quick handful of stuff:

He totally deserves an extra star for the way he was able to pull the ball back onto the tee with his MIND. It's not embeddable, but you can click here to check out Cody Parkey kicking in a GIANT WINDSTORM with some EXTREME EDITING by some guy who just learned how to use the editing software at the PALM BEACH POST. (Sarcasm aside, it's hard to get too much actual insight into Parkey from the video, but the drop-kick at the end is still pretty impressive. I think.)

Good news, bad news. Here's some good news: linebacker Nigel Terrell, Jake Holland's teammate (hell, unit-mate) and a kid who allegedly came very close to committing to Auburn several weeks ago, has started to pick up some recruiting steam and is now on the ESPN150 Watch List thingamabob. The bad news is that after nearly landing him a little while back, Aubur ndoesn't seme to even have a clear lead anymore:

“I don’t want to say I have a leader, but I’ve got a top group,” Terrell said. “It’s probably Auburn, Florida State and Arkansas.”

Shucks. On the positive side, maybe spending an entire fall playing alongside a guy who'll whisper "come to Auburn" in his ear every huddle will turn things back around.

Yeah, it's still kind of a big deal 'round these parts. Over at RBR, Todd noticed my giddiness over Jeremy Richardson's commitment--perhaps a little over-the-top, I can admit--and decided to find out if four-star wide receivers are really such a big deal these days. His conclusion was that in the SEC there's a division along these lines of haves and have-nots--for Florida, Georgia, Alabama, LSU, and Auburn, four-star wideouts have been very easy to come by the last several years, while much scarcer for the other eight teams (Tennessee included, as Dr. Saturday also happened to chronicle this week).

Unfortunately, Todd's research skewed a little too far from recent history when trying to gauge how happy we ought to be over Auburn's recent run on four-star receiving recruits. For starters, Chris Slaughter's been counted as both a 2006 and 2007 commitment, following his year at prep school, so only 42 percent rather than 46 percent of Auburn's receiving recruits since 2002 have been four-stars. Not a big deal, obviously, but if we're not counting Slaughter's 2007 re-commitment, it means that every one of the 10 receivers in question signed with Auburn in 2006 or before. Neither the 2007 nor 2008 classes included a single "new" four-star, and after Cameron Kenney's decommitment, Auburn went into Signing Day without one in the 2009 class, either. We'd essentially gone a full three years without a solid commitment from a four-star wideout. We'd become one of the "have-nots" in terms of this particular issue.

So, yeah, I still happen to think it's still a big deal that after those three years without, this staff has landed three four-star receivers in the space of four-and-half-months. That none of the three was a consensus four-star--neither DeAngelo Benton nor Emory Blake nor Richardson earned a fourth star from Scout, and ESPN wasn't particularly high on the latter two--should temper the enthusiasm somewhat, as should the fact that Auburn's last few highly-rated receiving recruits (Slaughter, Tim Hawthorne, Montez Billings) haven't made the impact expected. Still, any sign that Auburn's taking steps towards rubbing shoulders with LSU, the Tide, and Georgia again rather than the Kentuckys of the world is worth celebrating, right?

Etc. After his no-show at Texas's big camp last weekend, Longhorn fans sound pretty resigned to missing out on Lache "of Heaven" Seatrunk ... Auburn has offered Class of 2011 quarterback Kiehl Frazier of Springdale, Ark., who just-so-happens to play for Gus Malzahn's old high school ... Bad news from ESPN: Auburn's still in Demarco Cobbs' final eight, but Texas' renewed interest means it's an even longer shot than it was before, and Victor Beasley, son of an early-80s Auburn cornerback by the same name, is now a heavy, heavy Alabama lean.