• No news yet of how he plans to split the duties in the secondary between Phillip Lolley and Tommy Thigpen. One will coach safeties and one secondary, though. Chizik says it will come down to the "best fit."

• Chizik's followed Thigpen for a while, going back to his time as a graduate assistant at Clemson in 1988. Thigpen was a linebacker, and a good one, for North Carolina at the time.

• He said putting together a staff at Iowa State just two years ago helped him "structurally and methodically" when putting together this staff. But more interestingly, he said this: "You don't really get to do this usually not more than once or twice. For me, this will be my last go-around at doing it." Auburn fans have got to like that. No wandering eyes with this coach.

• Asked how much of an affect James Willis' defection to Alabama had on how he split up coaching duties on his staff, Chizik didn't mince words: "Uhh, none." A small tumbleweed then blew across the open space in the Rane Room to break the awkward silence. I sense some bitter feelings there.

• Chizik, like Curtis Luper, thinks the team is still playing catch-up on the recruiting front for 2010: "We'll be catching up probably for a little bit more time. But we'll be caught up shortly," he said.

• On loading up seven guys to recruit Alabama: "We just want to make sure that -- this state has great football -- we don't want to miss one of them. We want to be in the game with every one of them that we need to be in the game with. And we don't want guys to be spread too thin. We don't want to send guys all the way out over here when we've got one in our own backyard. I think we just got to be really thorough. You got to have a starting point and a home base and this state will be it. And then after that, we'll move outside the state. We got to make sure we capture what we need to capture in this state."

• Admittedly, Chizik has said he hasn't been able to watch as much tape as he'd like. And he claims to love watching tape when he has time. (Remember, he's not a multi-tasker.) "I'm at the point in the process that there's so many administrative issues that I'm handling, and won't be able to really delve into those type of things for a little bit longer, and then I'll be able to jump into it full bore," he said. "But there's too many other things going on right now, but if I had my wishes, I'd have already watched the season three or four times, but I haven't had the chance to do that yet. It'll get to that point."

• Finally, he outlined two major needs in next year's recruiting class: offfensive line and linebackers. Both areas were light this year, with Auburn grabbing two linemen and three linebackers.

• On offensive linemen: "I think there's got to be a major emphasis on offensive linemen. I think that's a no-brainer. That's kind of where we'll start. We need upgrades everywhere but that's glaring. If you want to say is there one position now and it's offensive line. And you'd like to start with tackles, Those are the hardest ones to find. That's where we'd like to start."
• On linebackers: "I think that's the other glaring thing that's out there for us. From the naked eye, that's probably the first thing you'd see."