AUBURN — Karen Hoppa has felt the same excitement and anticipation during the opening week of each of her 28 seasons as a soccer coach, including the last 22 at Auburn. But Friday felt “a little bit different.”

AUBURN — Chad Morris made no secret about his expectations for Auburn’s offense in his first season calling the plays.

AUBURN — The effects COVID-19 could have on Auburn's 2020 football season are becoming more and more apparent as kickoff gets closer.

AUBURN — All folks had their own way of getting through the spring COVID-19 shutdown. Some held video-chat happy hours with friends. Others binge-watched TV shows. Maybe you were one of the many who decided to bake homemade bread.

AUBURN — Jay Hardy looks the part. Literally. Seniors Big Kat Bryant and Tyrone Truesdell, the only two returning starters on Auburn’s defensive line, said the 6-foot-4, 299-pound freshman reminded them of Derrick Brown, at least in terms of body type and size.

AUBURN — One of the players Auburn was expected to fill a first-round NFL Draft pick-sized hole at defensive tackle, Coynis Miller Jr., is no longer with the program.

AUBURN — Auburn's preseason schedule ground to a halt this past week.

AUBURN — After months of socially distant workouts, video call meetings and walk-throughs, Auburn finally got to put players through real, live football practices this past week.

AUBURN — Saturday marked the first time Auburn has been able to take the field in full pads since the Jan. 1 Outback Bowl. Coach Gus Malzahn and his staff didn’t waste any time trying to figure out where players were at just five weeks before the team’s Sept. 26 opener against Kentucky.

AUBURN — A third Auburn football player has opted out of the 2020 football season.

AUBURN — For just the third time in Gus Malzahn’s eight years as coach, Auburn entered preseason practice knowing exactly who its starting quarterback was going to be.

AUBURN — The seriousness of the COVID-19 pandemic was evident to Auburn linebacker K.J. Britt way back in March.

2020 SEC Schedules

AUBURN — Two Auburn players took to Twitter over the week to express their frustration with university students and downtown residents who were not wearing recommended facial coverings or practicing social distancing

AUBURN — For the second straight year, Auburn has dipped into the junior college ranks to find talent at cornerback.

The 2020 college football season won't look like any we've seen before.

AUBURN — One day after losing one of its top linebackers for the 2020 season, Auburn lost a reserve defensive back, too.

AUBURN — COVID-19 has now affected more aspects of Auburn's 2020 football season than just the schedule.

For just the second time since 2010, Alabama does not have a top two team in the preseason coaches football poll.

AUBURN — You can eliminate one name from the competition to replace four starters along Auburn's offensive line.

AUBURN — Isaac Okoro will be the first one-and-done player in Auburn men's basketball history.

The Southeastern Conference announced today it will go with a league-only football schedule and the start of the season has been pushed to Sept. 26.

Auburn might not be playing any non-conference games at all this season.

AUBURN — This is normally the time of summer when we start focusing on the biggest questions facing Auburn’s football team.

AUBURN — Allen Greene publicly acknowledged the challenges Auburn may face due to the COVID-19 pandemic on Friday in a letter to donors and season ticket holders, which was published to the university’s athletics website.

AUBURN — Back in March, when COVID-19 had only just begun to ravage America and shut down college sports, Allen Greene was asked how not having a football season in the fall would impact Auburn’s budget.

AUBURN — Gus Malzahn said in February that Auburn had a good plan for what to do at punter in the wake of Arryn Siposs’ early departure to the NFL. The head coach just wasn’t ready to say what it was then.

The Southeastern Conference announced today it is postponing the start of volleyball, soccer and cross country season to at least Aug. 31.

It seemed unlikely that Bryce Brown and Horace Spencer would ever be teammates again when they walked off the court at last season's Final Four, after a last-second loss to eventual NCAA champion Virginia ended their Auburn basketball careers.

AUBURN — Butch Thompson has been a college baseball coach for 28 years. He’s been in the Southeastern Conference for the last 19 of those, and at the head of Auburn’s program for the last five.

AUBURN — Three Auburn football players have tested positive for COVID-19, according to a team spokesman. All three are asymptomatic.

I’ve been seeing a lot of Pat Dye tributes, and I wanted to share my memories of him.

AUBURN — Gus Malzahn said he has had a heavy heart these past few weeks and months after seeing the latest racial injustices in America unfold on video. Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and most recently George Floyd, an unarmed African American man who died with the knee of Minneapolis police officer Derick Chauvin pressed into the back of his neck.

AUBURN — There are so many things on everyone’s minds right now, Auburn athletics director Allen Greene said, that it’s difficult to focus on a topic that dominated the conversation just weeks ago — the return of sports.

Pat Dye and Auburn made for the perfect coach-school marriage.

We really should stop referring to the annual Alabama-Auburn football game as the "Iron Bowl."

AUBURN — Pat Dye, the legendary football coach who led Auburn's football program to great heights in the 1980s, died Monday, according to multiple reports. He was 80 years old.

AUBURN — On Friday, Chandler Wooten tweeted that he was going to continue speaking out. "If you don't like it or you're offended/ & or uncomfortable," he wrote, "please unfollow me NOW !"

AUBURN — Big Kat Bryant thought 2019 was going to be his year.

Auburn landed its potential quarterback of the future when four-star dual-threat Dematrius Davis committed May 17. On Wednesday, it landed a guy who knows how to block for him.

My hometown paper, the Louisville Courier-Journal, just polled readers on which four figures belong on Kentucky’s sports “Rushmore.” Not surprisingly, Muhammad Ali, Secretariat, Adolph Rupp and Denny Crum led voting.

AUBURN — Cam Newton is still looking for a new home in the NFL, but his younger brother, Caylin Newton, has found his in college.

AUBURN — Legendary Auburn football coach Pat Dye recently tested positive for COVID-19 and has since been hospitalized due to ongoing kidney problems, according to an email sent to members of the Toccoa United Methodist Church in Toccoa, Ga.

AUBURN — Redshirt freshman Auburn football player Jashawn Sheffield has been suspended indefinitely following a pair of arrests in Georgia, a team spokesman confirmed to the Montgomery Advertiser.

AUBURN — For a while, it seemed as though Auburn might have gotten off to a slow start recruiting its 2021 class.

AUBURN — Two of the most powerful figures in Auburn University's administration — president Jay Gogue and athletics director Allen Greene — released video updates last week. Their messages were quite different.

AUBURN — Being the head coach of a college football program means talking to reporters. Like, a lot.

AUBURN — It’s still too early to say whether the 2020 college football season will be played as scheduled, given the uncertainty surrounding the coronavirus pandemic. But it is not too early to be talking about games as many as 16 years down the road.

AUBURN — Having six former players selected in this past weekend's NFL draft doesn’t seem like a lot when compared to reigning national champion LSU, which sent a record 14 to the next level, or cross-state rival Alabama, which produced another nine draft picks. Clemson, Georgia and Florida each finished with seven.

AUBURN — One of the reasons Marlon Davidson decided to return to Auburn for his senior season, simply put, was money.