AU FOOTBALL: Coming to Auburn never a question for Thigpen

Tommy Thigpen was just a few weeks away from helping shore up North Carolina’s 2009 recruiting class when he started hearing a rumbling coming from a few states down and to the left.

There was Gene Chizik, the new head coach at Auburn and a longtime favorite of Texas coach Mack Brown — Thigpen’s biggest mentor.

That was the start. But there was so much more, Thigpen said.

First, it was young, up-and-coming offensive guru Gus Malzahn heading to Auburn. Shortly after, there were highly touted recruiters
Curtis Luper and Trooper Taylor. Both of them were in the fold, too.

Then Tracy Rocker, one of college football’s best defensive linemen of all time, joined Ted Roof, another guy Thigpen had heard of for years, to lead the Auburn defense.

“People were talking about it,” Thigpen said. “That’s a hell of a staff he’s putting together.”

So when Thigpen’s BlackBerry buzzed with an invitation to join this exclusive party of proverbial college football assistant high rollers, there was little, if any, hesitation.

“There was no question, no sitting back about it and praying about it,” Thigpen said. “Everybody I talked to said you’ve got to come to Auburn.

“Everyone wants to be a apart of that.”

Thigpen, the final piece to Chizik’s coaching staff, left behind a place where it wouldn’t have been improbable to expect he could finish his career.

And, certainly, there wasn’t anything wrong with his alma mater, a place he spent four years as a player and four more as linebackers coach.

It just wasn’t Auburn, Thigpen said.

“If Auburn is calling you, you’ve got to go,” Thigpen said. “And then when you come here, you’re like ‘Wow, this is football.’”

Thigpen’s life hasn’t slowed down since he came on shortly before spring football. There was the four weeks of practice, of course,
followed by four weeks of out-of-pocket high school player evaluations, which took him all throughout Alabama and outside the borders.

There’s no sign of it stopping, either.

Thigpen said he has stacks of tape of high school defensive backs and safeties that each of Auburn’s assistants brought back from their respective travels to pore through before fall practice kicks off in August. Not to mention all the other activities that keep a coach who
was recently named one of the Top 25 recruiters in the nation by Rivals.com occupied.

But there’s some other footage that’s been rolling through Thigpen’s head since he was hired by Chizik.

“(I’ve been) watching that crowd respond on gamedays from watching highlight tape,” Thigpen said. “I can’t imagine what it’s actually going to be like in August.”

Thigpen’s played in big games against big programs like Clemson and Florida State. And he’s coached in them, too, even in front of a home crowd that grew to as large as 60,000.

But that was at a “roundball” school.

“I wanted to be at a place where football was the issue,” Thigpen said.

Sitting from his desk with his door open in the Auburn Athletic Complex, Thigpen has already been satisfied by the football-looney mentality. He’s already overheard the Iron Bowl talk.

“When you see 100,000 for Tiger Walk, it does send chills down your spine,” Thigpen said. “It makes you go ‘Wow, if you want to coach bigtime football, this is where you want to be.’”

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