Power of Alabama Football and a Cold Summer Champions Cookout chilling a Big Cat Weekend

College football offseasons can be drudgery. In contrast, it has been an interesting and often fun one for Alabama football fans. Kalen DeBoer's Alabama maintaining the program's status as a recruiting juggernaut has been a joy for Tide fans.

Across the state, recruiting efforts move forward in a gathering gloom. Hugh Freeze has had a few recruiting wins, but elite targets pursued by Auburn have moved in other directions. A few weeks ago, Auburn fans held hope the 2025 recruiting class would get a big boost on Big Cat Weekend. Most of that optimism has faded.

For entertainment value, Auburn's recruitment of 5-star, wide receiver Caleb Cunningham has been unequaled. According to Auburn insiders, the nation's No. 2 ranked wide receiver sadly committed to the Crimson Tide, while his heart was more aligned with Auburn. Until Wednesday, Cunningham was on the visitor's list for Saturday's Big Cat event. He announced on social media that he would not be visiting Auburn. Auburn fans claimed it was all about Alabama's bags of money. Cunningham responded, "bama ain't paid me nothing so y'all stop thinking that."

For the sake of fairness that may or may not be deserved, let's admit Freeze could finish with a solid class. Many months are left in the cycle. Per the latest 247Sports Composite, Auburn has the SEC's eighth-best 2025 class. Auburn is not doing quite as well in the On3 Industry Rankings. The Tigers are ninth-best in the SEC. Many Auburn fans know a return to the SEC's upper tier, requires the Tigers to at least be in the SEC's top four classes every cycle.

Power of Alabama Football

Any Auburn fans looking for a distraction from following recruiting should not turn to the tweet below.

Including the tweet does not mean complete agreement with the Top 50 Coaches Rankings. The source is good at list-making which prompts attention. Fans often take exception to such lists that provide no published criteria.

In this case, agreement is unnecessary because the Top 50 list prompts an interesting point. In the Top 50 are seven former members of Nick Saban's Alabama coaching tree; plus current head coach, Kalen DeBoer. All of the top five are in some way 'Bama Guys'.

Hugh Freeze is not included in the Top 50 list. Gus Malzahn is at No. 30, along with former Auburn Offensive Coordinator, Rhett Lashlee at No. 44.

Along with the eight head coaches with Alabama connections (nine if Dabo is counted), there are six more SEC head coaches in the Top 50. Ten current SEC head coaches made the list. Even if Freeze was ranked as the SEC's 11th-best, that is a hard slap to the face of Auburn fans. Making the slap more painful is that Auburn hired Liberty's head coach, and while Freeze did not make the Top 50 cut, Liberty's replacement for Hugh, Jamey Chadwell did; at No. 24.