Four and a half years ago, I became a Cadillac Williams fan.

Well, let me clarify.

Of course I was a fan of Cadillac Williams, the football player. Unless you’re an Alabama fan or a certified hater of all things fun, how can you not like a home-run hitting, take-no-prisoners running back with the nickname “Cadillac?” Even as a teenage kid living in the Chicago suburbs with no affiliation to Auburn outside of the fact that it shared my high school’s colors, I rooted for Cadillac.

But 4 1/2 years ago, I became a fan of Cadillac Williams, the human being.

In a 1-month stretch during the 2018 offseason, I bothered him for 3 different stories. One was a feature for our “G.O.A.T. Week” series on the greatest SEC running back duo of all time, Cadillac and Ronnie Brown. Another story was about another prolific running back duo, Trey Sanders and Noah Cain, who formed a unique bond as inseparable buddies and backfield mates at IMG Academy, where they were coached by Cadillac. And the third story was on Cadillac, the football coach.

Three stories, a couple of “however long you need” conversations and one sit-down interview later, I was sold on Cadillac Williams, the human being.

He looked me in the eye. He spoke with passion. He listened. He was confident while being humble.

Four and a half years later, I was reminded of all those things watching Cadillac embrace his rare role as interim coach of his alma mater. There aren’t many iconic players who get to check that off their bucket list, much less for a program that competed for a national championship 3 times in the past 2 decades. It’s clear that Cadillac is soaking in this unforgettable experience:

I challenge you to listen to that man speak and not run through your nearest wall. Good luck.

Don’t get it twisted, though. This isn’t my plea for Auburn to make Cadillac the full-time coach.

While I believe athletic directors need to be a bit more open-minded about the type of candidates they seriously consider for a vacancy, I’m not going to fault John Cohen if he doesn’t want his first monumental hire at Auburn to be a guy who was a high school position coach as recently as 4 years ago. As incredible of a job as he’s done in these first 2 games on the job, it’d be a massive leap of faith to make a move like that, especially at a time when Auburn just opened its doors to its new $92 million facility.

Related: Check out the latest SEC Championship odds.

Obviously, though, I’d support a roll of the dice like that because I’m a fan of the man and the coach.

But that doesn’t need to be decided just yet. What’s important to understand is why no matter how this plays out, Cadillac’s role is providing immense value, and it could set the foundation for Auburn’s next decade.

Picture if you brought someone from another continent to the game on Saturday night at Jordan-Hare Stadium. That is, assuming you were fortunate enough to get a ticket with a sellout crowd. Imagine the conversation that would likely ensue:

You: “Yeah, so this is Jordan-Hare on a Saturday night. Pretty unbelievable right?”

Foreigner: “My goodness. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

You: “Like I’ve been saying, football in the South just hits different.”

Foreigner: “They really do the lights show after every time they score? Even the field goals?”

You: “Yep.”

Foreigner: “I guess that makes sense. The crowd seems to love it. I mean, you said that the winner of this game goes to the Super Bowl, right?”

You: “No, the winner of this game can still go to a** bowl.”

Foreigner: “That still sounds pretty important. I imagine you still have to be really good in order to go to a bowl.”

You: “Um, not so much. You actually just need to be 6-6. Auburn and A&M are 3-6.”

Foreigner: “THESE TEAMS ARE 3-6?!?!?!”

OK, I suppose the foreigner would’ve picked up on the battle of 3-6 teams based on their inability to throw a forward pass, but you get what I’m saying.

After the year that’s been on The Plains, Cadillac’s presence reminded the outside world why Auburn is special. How many fan bases would’ve shown out like that for a rock fight between 3-6 teams? You can count them on one hand.

Auburn’s next coach saw how that played out Saturday night. They saw tens of thousands of people swag surf after the game until they got their turn to salute Cadillac. They watched what it looked like when a coach loved a university and a university loved them back.

In all likelihood, Auburn’s next coach won’t have the connection to the university that Cadillac has. Well, unless Cam Newton or Bo Jackson are hired … and even they probably don’t have Cadillac’s approval rating. No new coach is going to step in and automatically have what Cadillac has, and understandably so. It’s a 2-way street. Bryan Harsin didn’t realize that until it was too late.

The narrative surrounding Harsin’s lame-duck season as Auburn’s head coach was that it was a place where coaches are chewed up and spit out. Never mind the fact that to that point, it only had 4 total full-time head coaches in the 21st century. Georgia was the only SEC team with fewer than that. But when you pay a coach $21.5 million not to work one year and then you organize a coup to get a 6-7 coach fired after Year 1 the next, well, it’s understandable why people question Auburn’s stability.

There’s no guarantee that Cadillac’s stable presence is going to open Auburn up to a higher echelon of potential candidates. But even if that doesn’t happen, optics are massive right now. They’re massive for getting those NIL collective ducks in a row, and they’re massive for signing recruits and transfers, some of whom could just say, “I don’t care who the coach is. I’m committing to the place that had the best party in America on Saturday night.”

Thank Cadillac for that. With all due respect to Eric Kiesau, there’s a 0.0% chance that Saturday at Jordan-Hare would’ve had the same energy if he’d gotten the interim coaching gig. Cadillac isn’t just the Auburn legend. He’s the guy who stayed on board when Harsin’s staff took over.

In an ideal world, Cadillac will stay on board when the next staff takes over. In my ideal world as someone who wants to see Cadillac continue to progress in his career, I’d love to see him get an opportunity to truly run his own program. Whether that’s at the FCS level or the Group of 5 level, I think there’s a valuable experience awaiting him if he chooses to take on a greater role.

Clearly, he has a knack for leadership. Clearly, he has a special home on The Plains.

When I met with Cadillac 4 1/2 years ago, we sat upstairs at the IMG Academy offices and discussed how his wife got him into coaching, and that he fell in love with it when he got an opportunity through the NFLPA to be a season-long intern at Division II Henderson State in Arkadelphia, Ark. “Instantly, I was hooked. I was like, ‘Man, I think I found my passion. This is what I want to do,'” he told me in 2018.

We discussed what his ultimate goal was at the time, back when he was just hoping to someday work his way up to the FBS ranks. It was the same then as it is now.

“I’m sure a lot of people know that I bleed orange and blue,” he said about Auburn in 2018. “I would love to give back to the school that laid my foundation for helping me become a man where I had so many great memories. The people there are unbelievable.”

Yeah, they are unbelievable. Thanks to Cadillac, we were reminded of that.