Auburn's sports information staff was kind enough to set up a teleconference with newly hired defensive line coach Tracy Rocker, who by no exaggeration is a Tigers football legend.

Here are the highlights:

• Rocker will coach the entire front four. The previous staff split up tackles and ends.

• Rocker knows Gene Chizik from early in his coaching career, back in the mid-'90s. Rocker was at Troy State with Larry Blakeney and Wayne Bolt. Chizik was defensive coordinator at Central Florida, and they would meet every now and then.

• He has a couple other staff connections. He was a freshman at Auburn when defensive coordiantor Ted Roof was a senior linebacker at Georgia Tech. He knew James Willis from his time at Auburn. And he was on the same staff as Gus Malzahn at Arkansas.

• While he and Roof have never crossed paths in the coaching professions, Rocker said he's heard Roof "is a great guy to work for."

• Rocker coached with Houston Nutt for six years -- five at Arkansas and one at Ole Miss. "Working for Houston Nutt, Houston provides a family environment, a very coachable environment for you," he said. "You're able to work, do your job and get it done and enjoy it. And that was hard to do. He's very family oriented. He's all about the players. I enjoyed working with him. It was a great six years. ... I enjoyed it but it comes a time when we all have to part ways and move on in this type of business."

• Rocker said he watched Pat Dye carefully when he played for him from 1985-88, studying his methods to understand why he made certain decisions, something that's helped him as a coach.

• Here's his general philosophy on coaching defensive line: "One thing I know about playing down there is that you don’t really get an off down. You’ve got to lay it on the line on every snap. And the most important thing, it’s not so much as always talent, but the thing is doing your best and leaving it on the field and not getting back and saying, well, coulda, shoulda, woulda. I did my best and I left it all out there on the field. And you’re going to have to play hurt sometimes down there, and those are the things that sometimes playing defensive line, a lot of people don’t quite understand that you run into people every day. And you’re expected to run into them even harder on the weekend. So when coaches say, well, today they just took off the pads and everyone just kind of …. Well, there’s only a few guys that get to play flag football. And defensive linemen and offensive linemen don’t get to play flag football. They run into people."

• Rocker said he hasn't had time to do much personnel research on Auburn. "It's a clean slate right now," he said.