Auburn’s recruiting machine kept on chugging Saturday, and, in this instance, threw a kink in Alabama’s.

There was only one team in the country which signed more players than Auburn on National Signing Day, and only one other that cracked 30.

The NCAA gave oft-injured Auburn cornerback Aairon Savage one more shot at redemption Thursday.

Five months ago, Don Dunn wouldn’t have thought the choice between remaining at the high school level and getting another crack at Division I football would be a tough one.

By late June, more than eight months before Wednesday’s National Signing Day, Auburn fans were already toilet-papering trees, a spur-of-the-moment, controversial event that propelled hopes of rejuvenating a program mired in a recruiting standstill.

The hope of making one of the nation’s best signing classes even better Tuesday was zapped faster than you can change your hat.

It started when Gene Chizik’s plane touched down at the Auburn-Opelika Robert G. Pitts Airport in mid-December 2008.

He’s not Marcus Lattimore, but Auburn landed quite possibly the most important late addition to its 2010 signing class Monday when four-star defensive tackle Jeffrey Whitaker committed to the Tigers.