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[Editor’s note: This article is part of the series “Talking with Takeo,” in which Auburn Wire looks back at Tigers legend Takeo Spikes’ early life, playing under Friday night lights, his recruitment, years at Auburn, favorite college moments, the Bryan Harsin hire, being passed on by the Falcons, his NFL career and much more. Come back each Wednesday for another installment. The series is part of a partnership between our colleagues at Campus Lore and the NFLPA.]
For as long as anyone can remember, Auburn has gone into the state of Georgia and landed some of the Peach State’s biggest players.
The list is quite astonishing. Derrick Brown, Tray Blackmon, Montravius Adams, Carl Lawson, Owen Pappoe. That’s half of Auburn’s highest-ranked signees of all time. They all hail from Georgia.
So too, does Takeo Spikes, who left Sandersville, Georgia, for the Plains in 1995 after finding the environment welcoming.
“Auburn is like a safe haven,” Spikes told Auburn Wire. “And speaking from my experience, the campus, the little town of Auburn, the school makes up the town. There’s so many people there who actually care.”
Although Auburn isn’t a large city, the negative recruitment that Spikes heard of “you’re in the middle of nowhere” made no sense to him.
“Even though you come from different places, some guys come from bigger cities. Some guys come from smaller cities. They found a way to be able to say, ‘Look,’ other people talk about, ‘if you come here, there’s nothing to do.’
“What else are you going to be doing if you go to any other school? That was their (Auburn coaches) way of neutralizing that.”
Nothing to do? Well, we are quite certain that the student-athletes arriving from all over can find myriad activities, but as Spikes points out, the life of a student-athlete doesn’t include much free time.
Instead, Spikes tells potential recruits that once you arrive in Auburn, the whole town rallies around you.
“One thing that we can promise you is, the whole community will get behind you in your academics and the entire community will get behind you in football and also on a personal level with just life,” he said.
“So I think not only did they talk that, but they made you feel that as you were having the conversation. So that’s what made it so easy to be able to go there.”
The trip from some parts of Georgia to Auburn can be extremely short, including in talent-rich Columbus. The state capital, Atlanta, is just an hour and a half up I-85. The close proximity leads to a large portion of the Auburn student body coming from Georgia and one of the most vicious rivalries in college football between the Tigers and Georgia Bulldogs.
So close, in fact, that Spikes has an idea for consideration.
“So technically, I know it’s in Alabama, but we really can be claiming it could be the west side of Georgia.”
We aren’t sure how Auburn fans would feel about switching states, but as long as the talent keeps arriving on the Plains, we’ll continue to enjoy watching some of Georgia’s heroes spurn the red and black for orange and navy blue.