Pigskin pipeline

Step aside, me.

Running back extraordinaire Michael Dyer deserves the “Sports Seer” tag for now.

It’s one thing to flash superior field vision, the kind that leads to an Arkansas-record 8,097 yards and 84 touchdowns in high school and earns billing as the nation’s top prep running back before setting a freshman-record 950 yards at Auburn.

It’s quite another thing to see into the future.

Flash back to fall 2009. As a senior at Little Rock Christian High School, Dyer’s the toast of the Arkansas prep football world. Hog Nation grunts for a commitment to Fayetteville, but, alas, the fit isn’t right. Dyer instead inks with Auburn, citing a strong relationship with offensive coordinator Gus Malzahn as the primary reason. He tells ESPN.com on Nov. 6 he sees something special brewing in Malzahn’s system: “Auburn is on the rise,” he says. “We want it to be that team that everybody talks about like Florida or LSU. Auburn is going to be that one day. Once we all get there and get on the same page, we are going to make history.”

Boy did they.

Auburn has won its first 13 games, earned the No. 1 BCS ranking for the first time in school history and will play in its first BCS National Championship game on Tuesday against Oregon State.

Its brightest star is Heisman Trophy winner Cam Newton, but the supporting cast is stuffed full of Arkansans. Indeed, from starting tackle Lee Ziemba to wide receiver Kodi Burns to offensive graduate assistant Rhett Lashlee and Malzahn, a Henderson State grad, there were eight players and coaches with deep ties to Arkansas on Auburn’s 2010 squad.

If Auburn wins, the team’s four Arkansan players — which include Dyer’s high school teammate Dakota Mosley — will represent the largest contingent of Arkansas players on a BCS championship team. Indeed, three Arkansans in total have filled the rosters of the previous 11 BCS champion teams compared to a total of six players from states with populations smaller than Arkansas’ (about 3 million people).

The current Arkansas to Auburn exodus started four years ago when Ziemba (whose parents attended Auburn) and Burns chose to play for Camden native Tommy Tuberville, then Auburn’s head coach. Burns, a dual-threat quarterback at Fort Smith Northside, was so good that he was the only quarterback offered a scholarship by the University of Arkansas. But when he donned Auburn’s cap on Nov. 9, 2006, UA made a futile grab at some scrub from Texarkana named Ryan Mallett. But by that time, Mallett had already been committed to Michigan for two months.

In the ESPN.com article, Dyer said he’d been influenced by Burns when deciding to leave Arkansas. Burns “said there was hard pressure to go to Arkansas being an Arkansas kid,” Dyer said. “He said we lived in Arkansas and we can’t help that, but we wanted to expand and do something for ourselves. He chose to go to Auburn for himself. He wanted to go out and do something for his life.”

Although Razorback coach Bobby Petrino has slowed the talent exodus from the state — and will continue to do so on the strength of the Hogs’ BCS bowl appearance — the flow isn’t yet staunched. Shiloh Christian’s Kiehl Frazier, the 2010 USA Today national offensive player of the year, will soon head to Auburn too.

In Arkansas, it seems to matter very much that native sons are playing such a vital role in the Tigers’ recent burst into the national spotlight. The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette voted it the sixth biggest sports story of 2010. “I’ve taken to calling AU southeastern Ark[ansas],” wrote Lynn Brown of the Alabama Chapter of the [University of] Arkansas Alumni Organization.

The chapter’s president, Areta Mosely of Birmingham, wrote the main reason she supports Auburn — and rescheduled at least three meetings to watch the national championship — is because she is friends with Lashlee and his wife.

But for other UA alumni living in Alabama, the Arkansas background is actually a deterrent. “As far as the Arkansas natives playing for Auburn, I have no support or love for them,” Philip Selig wrote. “If they had an opportunity to play for the Hawgs and turned us down, they are traitors to Arkansas in my opinion (Ziemba may be an exception because of his parents’ connection to Auburn.)”

Still, Selig plans to root for Auburn against Oregon because it is an SEC team, “not because of the Arkansas natives playing for them. In fact, I will pull for Auburn in spite of those players.”

Kathy Beaumont agreed: “I think all of us are solidly Hog fans and the ‘former’ Arkies playing or coaching for Auburn has no bearing on whether we will pull for the Tigers.”