Editor’s Note: These stories reflect AL.com‘s look back at the legendary Auburn career of Cam Newton as he returns to Auburn for his jersey retirement vs. Georgia on Oct. 11 at Jordan-Hare Stadium.
There was still time left on the Georgia Dome clock, but for once during a wild 2010 season, Auburn’s players could breathe and enjoy the moment.
A four-quarter annihilation of South Carolina had captured the program’s first SEC title in six years, and the Tigers were on their way to the BCS National Championship game.
The South Carolina win in the SEC Championship game was different than the others that season. There was no comeback, no intense final drive and no moment during the game in which the Auburn faithful had any reason to be unnerved.
Everything worked for the Tigers on that day, and it started and ended, like it often did, with the play of Cam Newton, Auburn’s superman and third-ever Heisman Trophy winner.
His 335 passing yards, 73 rushing yards and six total touchdowns in the SEC Championship game may have been the final seal on the award for Newton, which was fitting after his Heisman campaign may have started during Auburn’s regular season win over the Gamecocks.
The dominance from Newton and Auburn gave the players a rare opportunity to soak in the win before the final whistle blew, a feeling then starting center Ryan Pugh said doesn’t get talked about enough.
“To be standing on the sideline in the fourth quarter of the SEC Championship game, knowing that you’re going to the national championship game, knowing that he is probably going to win the Heisman trophy and be able to stand on the field for an entire quarter in that big of a moment and really take it all in, I think is probably pretty surreal,” Pugh said in a recent interview with AL.com. “That’s one memory that I think I probably hadn’t talked about enough or gotten as many questions about.”
From watching Newton and Auburn’s play in that game, you would have never assumed that Auburn’s leader was ruled ineligible earlier that week, before being reinstated to play in the game.
It was almost as if the potential distractions made him better, a theme that defined Newton’s Heisman run and Auburn’s unforgettable 2010 national championship season.
The making of a championship team
When then-Auburn defensive coordinator Ted Roof first met Newton inside of Auburn’s indoor facility, he nearly mistook the 6-foot-5, 250-pound junior college transfer for one of his defensive ends.
“I said he could have been the starting defensive end for the Atlanta Falcons,” Roof recalled in an interview with AL.com, “and he was a guy that was competing to be our quarterback.”
Newton’s potential became clear to his coaches and teammates as soon as he arrived on campus. It’s rare to find a college quarterback with that kind those physical attributes, and his strong personality and leadership qualities started to show right away.
“Cam had a really good presence about him, vocally as a leader, and also, just the way he worked,” then-Auburn wide receiver Kodi Burns said in a recent interview with AL.com. “Cam had this charisma to him that was kind of goofy enough to have fun, but also when it’s time to lock in and be serious, everybody would follow.”
Burns and other members of that team described Newton as the “missing piece” for a group that was filled with upperclassmen who had seen the highs and lows of football in the SEC.
Pugh, Burns, Zac Etheridge, Josh Bynes, Lee Ziemba and Craig Stevens were just a few of those seniors who’d seen everything from successful seasons to coaching changes at Auburn, and made up the core of the 2010 team.
Newton had similar experience in terms of age, but hadn’t been through the same highs and lows on the Plains, having transferred in following the 2009 season. Despite that, his personality helped galvanize the group, and it didn’t take longer than an offseason for that to happen.
“The first thing that I always tell people about Cam Newton, he was a transformational leader before I even knew what that word was,” said Missouri head coach Eli Drinkwitz, who was a quality control assistant at Auburn in 2010. “He was the best leader I’ve ever been around in a football locker room.”
For everything Auburn and Newton would have to go through in 2010, any other kind of personality may have altered the course of the season. On the field, Auburn also needed its quarterback to be dynamic, an adjective that probably understates who Newton was as a player.
Comeback wins against Clemson and South Carolina early in the season showed what Newton was made of both physically and mentally. Those performances showed college football that Auburn could handle a little adversity, and had the talent and perseverance to still win under adverse circumstances.
That was important, because the storm that came later in the season put that perseverance to the test.
Blocking out the noise
By the time November rolled around, Newton’s ability was no longer a secret. Auburn was 9-0, Newton was already near the top of the Heisman race and only two SEC games remained.
The outside noise was picking up too.
Reports emerged claiming Newton’s father, Cecil, had allegedly solicited payments in excess of $100,000 from Mississippi State while his son was being recruited out of Blinn College.
With Newton ending up at Auburn, the assumption from some fans who read the report was that the Tigers outbid the Bulldogs to secure Newton’s signature.
Once Auburn began preparing for its Nov. 13 home finale against Georgia, the story had exploded and rumors began spreading like wildfire.
An NCAA investigation was also underway, and Newton’s eligibility status ahead of the Georgia matchup, a game that could clinch an SEC West title for Auburn, was up in the air. After giving a statement defending Newton in his midweek news conference, head coach Gene Chizik refused to answer any other questions about the matter throughout the week.
He later recalled seeing trucks from “every TV station” showing up after practice and following players to class throughout that week, highlighting how much media attention the program was receiving during the investigation.
“I just told them, ‘You can choose to listen to whoever you want to listen to,” Chizik recalled telling his players in AL.com’s 2020 documentary on the 2010 team, “but unless you’re hearing it directly from me, there’s no truth to it.”
The question of whether or not Newton would play in the game remained throughout the week. The collective anxiety from the Auburn fanbase didn’t go away until Newton took the field that Saturday. Once he did, none of the outside noise that consumed the week seemed to matter.
Auburn had to come back from a 21-7 first-half deficit, but Newton was himself, throwing for 148 yards and rushing for another 151, leading Auburn to a 49-31 win.
“When he finally got released, that he can actually play in the Georgia game. Man, he was so locked in, so focused,” Burns said. “We knew that we were not going to lose any games.”
The win over Georgia was the first example of Auburn’s ability to perform under that pressure and Newton’s ability to only get better as the scrutiny toward him picked up.
However, that’s not to say the time was easy.
“He’s a human being like we all are. And, you know, there’s some days that are better than others,” Roof said. “There was days where Cam lifted his teammates up, and there were days when his teammates lifted him up.”
On the field, Auburn kept winning, but off the field, an investigation, and as a byproduct of that, a media frenzy, was ongoing. Every local newspaper and national outlet was on the ground trying to pin down the story, meanwhile message board rumors and internet tall tales gained traction.
“It was especially divisive and tense. And may, to some degree, have taken some of the joy out of the season,” said then Birmingham News sports editor Tom Arenberg in an interview with AL.com. “You had a group of sports fans who believed that clearly the Newtons and Auburn had done something wrong, and they were about to win an illegitimate national championship.
“And then you had a whole other group of devoted sports fans who felt like this was a made-up case, made up allegations that were trying to blow everything out of the water.”
The tense and at times vitriolic energy that existed on message boards and local radio shows boiled over in Auburn’s next and final game of the regular season.
The Iron Bowl is always tense. It’s arguably the biggest rivalry in college football, but this one was a little bit different.
Alabama played host to the game, as over 100,000 fans inside Bryant-Denny Stadium greeted Newton with nothing short of hatred. To them, he and Auburn had cheated their way to an 11-0 record and potential berth in the national championship game. Stopping that from happening meant everything to a fanbase whose team still held the title of reigning national champions.
The stadium loudspeakers played “Take the Money and Run” by the Steve Miller Band as Newton took the field. Alabama fans threw monopoly money in his direction when Newton was close enough to the stands. Alabama was going to do everything it could make things as hard for Newton as possible.
“I’ve never witnessed a more hostile environment for a visiting team in any sport at any time, as what Auburn walked into in Bryant-Denny that day,” said longtime Birmingham News columnist Kevin Scarbinsky. “The vibe in that stadium was, they didn’t just want to beat Auburn. They wanted to destroy Auburn. They wanted to figuratively tear Cam Newton limb from limb.”
For a half, that seemed to work, as Auburn trailed Alabama 24-0 at one point during the second quarter and 24-7 at halftime. But the Tigers once again proved that they couldn’t be rattled, something Burns attributed to how close-knit and player-led the team had become.
“I don’t know if a coach really even talked,” Burns said, recalling the locker room scene at halftime of the game. “It was really the players that made the adjustments and really took charge and understood what we needed to do.”
Three touchdown passes from Newton sparked the comeback, as he once again only seemed to get better as the circumstances became more adverse. His confidence, easygoing personality and supreme talent on the field all helped lead Auburn through scandal to create a season that won’t be forgotten any time soon.
By then, the team’s confidence was so high that losing seemed like a foreign concept. Auburn blew out South Carolina in the SEC Championship game after Newton was ruled ineligible by the NCAA, then reinstated in the week leading up to it.
However, winning games didn’t make the dark cloud created by the NCAA investigation go away. Newton won the Heisman Trophy, but his father couldn’t be present at the ceremony, a decision that still bothers Newton today.
“I didn’t wanna be there. I wanted to be with by dad, I wanted to be with my family,” Newton said on Shannon Sharpe’s “Club Shay Shay” podcast in 2024. “Everybody was excited, but they stripped that from me.”
Auburn went on to win the national championship, as 265 passing yards from Newton and some late-game magic by running back Michael Dyer pushed the Tigers past Oregon.
It was the perfect ending to a season that was defined by closeness, senior leadership and a generational talent at quarterback leading the way. The team never wavered in the face of in-game adversity, an NCAA investigation and the media scrutiny that defined much of the second half of the year.
Nine months on from the national championship game, the NCAA concluded its investigation, stating it did not find any rule violations in Auburn’s signing of Newton.
Not only did Auburn win on the field, but the NCAA ruled that the Tigers had done so without breaking any rules. It was an extra level of vindication for Newton, who’s still beloved by Auburn fans and greeted like royalty whenever he returns to campus.
Fifteen years on from his magical season, Auburn is officially honoring him by retiring his number, immortalizing his name inside Jordan-Hare Stadium next to legends Pat Sullivan, Terry Beasley and Bo Jackson.
Newton’s path to that status didn’t look anything like the other three, but to Auburn fans, that only makes him more endearing.