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Drama over: Auburn announces signing of 4-star DL Jay Hardy
By Andrew Olson
Published:
A confusing recruitment is finally, officially, over. On Saturday, Auburn officially announced the signing of 4-star DT Jay Hardy. The announcement came just hours after Hardy told a reporter on Twitter, “I’m not signed yet.”
As a Chattanooga, Tennessee native and product of the McCallie School, Hardy was a top target of the home-state Volunteers. Hardy committed to Auburn on Nov. 6, 2019, but December’s Early Signing Period came and went without any announcement that he had signed with the Tigers, appearing to leave the door open for Tennessee to try to flip Hardy before February’s National Signing Day.
As mentioned above, Hardy pushed back against the media looking into his status as a recruit.
Since Hardy is officially a Tigers signee, it means Tennessee won’t be contacting him trying to flip him during the final weeks of the 2020 recruiting cycle ahead of National Signing Day (Feb. 5, 2020). Recruiting reporter Keith Niebuhr explained that Hardy was keeping his December signing quiet because he wanted to “sign” alongside his friends on NSD.
Once word began to leak, Hardy and his mother felt it was time to put an end to this thing. He wanted to wait until Feb. 5 so he could “sign” with his friends. https://t.co/y4V3ogz8kk
— Keith Niebuhr (@Keith247Sports) January 18, 2020
Hardy is rated the No. 3 Tennessee product, No. 9 defensive tackle and No. 102 prospect overall in the class of 2020 on the 247Sports Composite. Check out his highlights below:
#WarEagle pic.twitter.com/UFZYgG4mXd
— Auburn Football (@AuburnFootball) January 18, 2020
Andrew writes about sports to fund his love of live music and collection of concert posters. He strongly endorses the Hall of Fame campaigns of Fred Taylor and Andruw Jones.
