Paramore column: Future looks bright for Tigers, Tide

It has been accurately said on many occasions that recruiting is the lifeblood of college football. If that is indeed so, Alabama and Auburn are facing bright futures.

The recruiting bar in general has been raised throughout the Southeastern Conference, as Georgia, Florida and LSU have consistently landed highly-rated classes of incoming players over the last few years. And you can see it on the field. The Gators and Tigers both own recent national titles and Georgia is many people’s pick for this year’s preseason No. 1.

And as any Crimson Tide fan worth his weight in houndstooth can attest, Nick Saban landed the top-ranked class in the nation back in February.

He’s also off to a good start for the 2009 class. The Tide picked up two more verbal commitments this week, one from 6-foot-4, 265-pound defensive tackle Anthony Orr of Sparkman High outside Huntsville. The other came from offensive lineman Anthony Steen of Clarksdale, Miss. He’s listed at 6-foot-3, 297 pounds.

That gives the Alabama staff 13 verbal commitments, eight of which are interior linemen on one side of the ball or the other. That is in keeping with previous Saban-coached teams that experienced a high level of success — they were dominating in the trenches.

All told, Alabama has five prospects that go into their senior seasons in high school already ranked by Scout.com as four-star players. They include safety Rod Woodson (5-foot-11, 200), defensive end William Ming (6-foot-4, 250), running back Trent Richardson (5-foot-11, 210), defensive tackle D.J. Fluker (6-foot-6, 320) and quarterback A.J. McCarron (6-foot-3, 180).

Meanwhile, Tommy Tuberville and company are off to their fastest start in school history. The Tigers already have a whopping 19 verbal commitments, something Tuberville admitted last week “I’ve never done before.”

Auburn also has five four-star commitments and one from a five-star. The four-star players are tight end Philip Lutzenkirchen (6-foot-4, 240), defensive tackle Terrence Coleman (6-foot-1, 250), quarterback Raymond Cotton (6-foot-4, 220), defensive tackle Nick Fairley (6-foot-4, 265) and defensive end Wilfred Journet (6-foot-2, 250). The five-star rated prospect is linebacker Eltoro Freeman (6-foot, 220). Fairley, Journey and Freeman are all junior college transfers but are expected to qualify.

It bears noting both schools have highly-rated quarterbacks in their respective classes. McCarron is one of the the most sought-after signal-callers in the Deep South and comes from St. Paul’s Episcopal in Mobile, which is one of the winningest prep programs in the state. Cotton also hailed from the Mobile area until his father was transferred with the Coast Guard to Fort Meade, outside the Baltimore area.

In fact, the pair became only the fourth and fifth players from Alabama in the last decade to be invited to the prestigious “Elite 11” quarterback camp held last week in Southern California. McCarron is considered a prototype pocket quarterback who has thrown 51 touchdown passes to just seven interceptions in his two years as a prep starter, while Cotton was called a “rare combination of size, power, speed and arm-strength.”