nick-marshall-mizzou-td.JPG

Auburn quarterback Nick Marshall celebrates after scoring a first-quarter touchdown during his team's win over Missouri on Dec. 7, 2013, in the SEC Championship Game in the Georgia Dome in Atlanta. (Julie Bennett/jbennett@al.com)

Let's look ahead, past A-Day, past the 2014 season even, and ask a question about the Auburn football program.

Who's most likely to catch the first pass of the 2015 season for the Tigers - D'haquille Williams, Kerryon Johnson or Dorial Green-Beckham?

Just kidding, but not really.

Green-Beckham, of course, is a man without a team after

from the program last week for a series of transgressions, but the joke speaks to a larger truth.

Auburn is becoming Second-Chance U.

Not so much in quantity but in quality. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Auburn is far from the only SEC program to take a chance on a talented player who found trouble in his former life.

See Zach Mettenberger getting dismissed at Georgia, doing the remote junior college image rehabilitation thing and then landing at LSU, where he was the starting quarterback for the Tigers the last two seasons.

See D.J. Pettway getting dismissed at Alabama a year ago, doing his penance at a junior college and then returning to Alabama, where he's expected to be a major player on the Crimson Tide defense this season.

Those are just recent examples that you can't spell second chance without S-E-C.

But Auburn has been more successful than most in identifying players in need of a helping hand who could help the Tigers in return in a big way at the most important position on the field.

That description applies to the program's last two championship quarterbacks, who both ran into trouble at their original schools but turned out to be no trouble at all once their journeys took them to the Plains.

Cam Newton went from Florida to junior college to Auburn, where he won the 2010 Heisman Trophy and led the Tigers to the BCS national championship. Even though he left after one year to become the No. 1 pick in the NFL draft, Newton has been a model former player, returning to campus to take classes in the off-season and showing up to lead the cheers at a basketball game.

Nick Marshall went from Georgia to junior college to Auburn, where he led last year's team to the SEC title and drove them into the lead in the BCS Championship Game with barely a minute left.

The Tigers didn't hold on, but so far Marshall has made the most of the opportunity Gus Malzahn and the school

have given him. The quarterback has one year left to leave even more of a positive and lasting impression.

Auburn's willingness to be inclusive rather than exclusive has extended to its men's basketball program. Bruce Pearl needed another chance, and AD Jay Jacobs and President Jay Gogue gave him one. Cinmeon Bowers needed another chance himself, and Pearl is giving him one.

It makes perfect sense that Bowers, maybe the top junior college basketball recruit in the nation, would be the first player to commit to Pearl's Tigers.

The power forward signed with Florida State last November, choosing the Seminoles over Memphis and Louisville, a pretty good indication of his talent. He got arrested in January and charged with tampering with evidence, along with two Chipola (Fla.) College teammates, after allegedly eating marijuana to conceal it from police during a traffic stop.

The charges were dropped in February and Bowers returned to his junior college team, but FSU dropped him in March, releasing him from his National Letter of Intent.

After the door at FSU closed, the door at Auburn opened. If Bowers takes advantage of his opportunity the way Newton did and Marshall has, the Tigers' 2015 basketball season won't end one game into the SEC Tournament.

And no doubt the door for talented players in search of a fresh start will remain open.