AUBURN, Ala. -- How would you feel if for your whole life you were told you were the best at something and suddenly you’re not?

Welcome to the reality for most freshmen in college football.

For years, they’re lionized, coddled, enabled, told they’re the greatest.

But once they get to college, things change. Players have to be taken down a notch, brought back to the reality that they’re not going to be able to get by on natural ability and will actually have to work -- gasp! -- for a featured role.

Auburn running backs coach Curtis Luper calls it “de-recruiting,” and it happens all the time.

“Oh yeah,” he said. “That’s universal.”

Blame everyone involved in the recruiting circus.

We, the media, are culpable, giving high school kids platforms on national TV to trumpet their choice, then writing articles about their potential that are prone to exaggeration.

Message boards treat recruiting as the end-all goal of college football. I think Auburn fans took more pleasure in a consensus top-five signing class in February than the winning the BCS national title the previous month. (At least Internet traffic suggests that’s so.)

But most of the blame is on the coaches. They promise recruits everything under the sun, telling them exactly what they want to hear in order to get a signature on the dotted line, consequences be damned.

“For so long it’s just about them,” Luper said. “It’s I, I, I. Me, me, me. And it is a selfish decision that they have to make, because essentially they make the best decisions for them and their families. But that’s the only thing that’s selfish about it.

“Now, it’s incumbent upon us to make them good teammates. And some are more challenging than others. But we get it done.”

What does the de-recruiting process entail? Actually, not much.

The natural order usually takes over once players arrive for two-a-days. Reality checks come quick when 300-pound behemoths knock you around a few times.

“When they step on the field and get hit in the mouth the first time, they know it’s for real then,” Luper said.

“A lot of them get rudely awakened,” senior offensive tackle A.J. Greene said. “That’s part of the game.”

If you’re not planted on the ground a few times, you’re mesmerized by the speed and size of the players.

“They say it’s a man’s sport and now after a month I’m really seeing that,” Tigers freshman tight end Brandon Fulse said. “It takes a man to be in the SEC.”

There’s a good way to avoid a prolonged indoctrination.

“If they come in with a great deal of humility and just go to work, I think the guys embrace them,” Auburn head coach Gene Chizik said.

Still, some de-recruitments take longer than others. Luper said it’s usually reserved for players “who are pretty flashy on signing day.”

Former Carver High defensive tackle Gabe Wright gets a never-ending dose of it.

After teammate Isaiah Crowell upped the ante by pulling out a live Bulldog to announce his intention to go to Georgia last February, Wright took out a custom-made blue-and-orange hat with the message, “Nick Who?” written on the back, a reference to Auburn’s Lombardi Award-winning tackle Nick Fairley.

Although Wright has quietly gone about his business this fall, his teammates won’t let it go.

“He hears it all the time,” Luper said with a laugh. “‘Nick who?’ He hears it all … the … time.”

It’ll be over soon. Just in time for a new class to be taken down a peg.