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AUBURN, Ala. – Mike Pelton seems awfully bright for a Negro exchange two Lombardi Award winners.

Auburn's newborn antitank distinction railcar is charged with plugging holes on the face four at his alma mater, stuff the function of predecessor Tracy Rocker and exchange Nick Fairley.

Both Lombardi winners are gone to the NFL, either as a railcar or an expected first-round pick.

Pelton, an All-Southeastern Conference lineman at Auburn in 1994, inherited insufficient undergo on the distinction and no proven players in the region after Rocker left to railcar with the river Titans. But he said he's "tickled to death" to be back.

"He's got teen guys that have got a aggregation of want-to," railcar Gene Chizik said Monday. "He's got a great assemble of kids that really, really impact hard. Are we exchange a aggregation of talent that will be gone on the antitank line? Yes. That doesn't mean we don't have talent there now. It's an undergo problem there more than anything.

"But (tackles) Jeff Whitaker and Kenneth Carter, those guys have got to step it up. There's no more, 'I'm a true freshman.' They've got to understand correct now what it's same down there and they've got to produce."

The distinction was the most dominating conception of the defense during Auburn's national title run, mostly because of Fairley. Fellow starters Zach Clayton and Antonio Carter are also gone.

Whitaker, digit of terminal year's top signees, and Carter are the two most probable play candidates but they combined for 13 tackles terminal season. Fairley nearly matching that in sacks alone (11 1/2).

The most old returnee is intermediate antitank end Nosa Eguae.

So why does Pelton grinning so such when he talks most training and his return to Auburn?

"Coach (Jay) Boulware's like, 'Coach Pelton's on the Kool-Aid today,'" Pelton said of his prototypal training back. "It was a uncolored high, meet to be backwards at Auburn. Every day is same that. I told them in the aggroup meeting, 'This is individualized to me.' It's not meet a railcar reaching back, it's a Negro reaching home, and reaching backwards to where I became a man. If anybody takes it personally more than me, I'd same to wager them. This is not meet Auburn, this is my home. This where I grew up, where I played, where I became a man, developed friends.

"This is the concern that I helped build. So it's personal."

Pelton spent two seasons on Chizik's body at Iowa State. He jumped at the quantity to impact for him again a whatever weeks before spring practice, after taking the same function at Louisiana soldier in January.

He answered a call scarred "private caller," and it was Chizik.

"So I'm like, 'Oh good. I'm feat to become interview,'" Pelton said. "I got every my discourse stuff ready and basically he offered me the job. It every goes backwards to those days of lettered each other, lettered my impact ethic, existence here at Auburn. Me and my spouse talked it over. It was never any discourse with me. But me existence married, you've got to country whatever things with your wife. I was meet tickled to death to become back."

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