The idea began in the summer as members of Auburn’s athletics marketing staff began planning for the 10th anniversary of the Kick Six.

Daniel Watkins, Auburn’s senior associate athletic director for marketing and revenue generation, said they had to find some unique way to honor the most famous play in Auburn’s history. The staff talked with Auburn legends Chris Davis and Ricardo Louis. Then the idea came to display the football Davis carried 109-yards across the Jordan-Hare Stadium field. They wanted to have it be part of an eventual pop-up shop selling commemorative merchandise from the legendary 2013 game before this year’s edition of the Iron Bowl.

But Watkins didn’t know where the ball was.

“I didn’t think to ask about the ball,” Watkins said.

Turns out, it was in a storage cabinet within the Auburn athletics building, AL.com previously reported.

Once the ball was retrieved, Watkins said the next step was finding a way to display the ball which would both allow fans to take pictures with it and shop the Louis and Davis jerseys — which the two former Auburn players both made a royalty on — along with other gear including a Yeti tumbler with the radio call of the Kick Six printed on the side.

The Kick Six ball has really never been properly displayed. After Davis scored in 2013, he dropped the ball near the first “U” in the word Auburn painted in the north endzone. In the swarm of chaos storming the field around him, somehow no one picked up the ball until a student equipment manager had the wise thought to grab it.

He then brought the ball back to then-head equipment manager Dana Marquez who delivered the ball to then-athletic director Jay Jacobs. Jacobs never put the ball on display or in a case. He left it on his desk for people to take pictures of and him to look back at the memories. When he left Auburn, plans to display the ball were never fulfilled and the ball ended up with sports information director Kirk Sampson in a storage cabinet.

“We need to put this thing in a place that it looks presentable,” Watkins said. “The last thing we need is for somebody to grab the ball and run. We wanted to put in a really nice trophy case and luckily between the football and basketball offices we got plenty of trophy cases around here.”

This was the next step in the ball’s 10-year timeline since it was made famous. It was the largest public viewing since the 87,451 people who saw Davis catch the ball in the back of the south endzone.

But what’s next?

Before the ball ended up in a cabinet, Auburn had planned on putting the ball in case in Neville Arena or the newly constructed Woltosz Football Performance Center. But between a pandemic, multiple athletic director and football coaching changes since Jacobs left, it never happened.

Watkins said Auburn is currently considering either making plans to display the ball on campus or send it to the College Football Hall of Fame in Atlanta.

No decision has been made just yet.

“It’s one of the most iconic college football plays in football history,” Watkins said. “Ten years ago, there’s a 2013 team that played on this field that’s really special to this fanbase. They’re SEC champions. They had not only the Kick Six, but the Prayer (at Jordan-Hare). For us, it’s something to celebrate.”

Matt Cohen covers Auburn sports for AL.com. You can follow him on X at @Matt_Cohen_ or email him at [email protected]