Jay G. Tate
AuburnSports.com Publisher
AUBURN -- Cam Newton is back.
The Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback has returned to campus in an effort to make good on a promise he made years ago to his mother. Jackie Newton encouraged her son's athletic career -- for very good reason -- yet insisted that a college degree was the most important part of playing college ball.
He's here to make good.
For the first time since early October 2010, Newton isn't in the national spotlight. He's simply trying to ease into the university system as anonymously as possible. He's a student taking courses, not the millionaire quarterback who's become a fixture on ESPN and the NFL Network.
It's surely not easy.
Twitter was flooded with reconnaissance photos Tuesday afternoon of Newton in class. He wore a black toboggan hat, black sweatpants, red Beats headphones. If he wasn't 6-foot-5 and owner of perhaps the most recognizable face in the history of Auburn football, Cam Newton might not even be noticed.
Then again, how many students can pass their own statue on the way to class?
Auburn fans never will forget the salvos lobbed at their school and their football program during the final months of 2010. Many pundits, some published and some not, concurrently reached the conclusion that Newton shouldn't be playing college football. Despite a lack of meaningful evidence, they assumed that Newton had been paid to play at Auburn.
He wasn't paid anything. Nor was his father.
That's an objective statement now, of course, since the NCAA long ago abandoned its investigation into Newton's recruitment. Investigators found nothing. No bag man. No bag. Not even a trumped-up secondary violation to justify all the hubbub.
When Newton left school and entered the NFL Draft in 2011, many assumed he'd never return. The quarterback used Auburn, they postulated, and would toss aside all allegiances once the Carolina Panthers picked him No. 1 overall.
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