This is true. Alabama fans look forward to the Iron Bowl like you do to brushing your teeth. You know it’s necessary, but you have to do it anyway. In the best case, you come out feeling exactly the same; In the worst case, you will have to endure the pain for an entire year. There’s no real advantage here for Alabama, just a desperate need to survive the week without too much physical or psychological damage.
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Take this year’s game, for example, which is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. Eastern this Saturday at Auburn – well after sunset. On the surface, this might not seem like a competition; No. 10 Alabama is a powerful, sometimes erratic, offensive machine that has a clear path to the SEC championship game, while Auburn is 5-6, down to a coach and unsure of its identity and its future.
But this is the Iron Bowl and strange things happen here. That’s why the line is only 5.5 points in Alabama’s favor, by contrast, Georgia is getting 13.5 points against a Georgia Tech team that is far more accomplished than Auburn this year. The mojo is completely different in the Iron Bowl, and that’s why Alabama is nervous going into a game where, against any other opponent, they would be extremely, perhaps overly, confident.
(Jason Clark via Getty Images)
Which brings us to Auburn’s feelings at the Iron Bowl, which can best be described as, “Hey, let’s see what happens this year.” Auburn is about to bring chaos to college football, a program that produced two of the greatest finishes in sports history in back-to-back games, and also a program that has been wandering in the desert for the past decade, lost in a fog of coach-culture misfits. You never know which Auburn is going to show up in the Iron Bowl, which is what makes it such a fascinating – and, for Alabama, terrifying – game.
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“We understand it’s going to be a great experience out there, and it’s going to be one where we’re facing a team that wants to take us away from our goals and our expectations and all of these things,” Alabama head coach Kalen DeBoer said earlier this week. “You really have to take it simple. You have to prepare. Prepare for the noise, prepare for the emotions that are going to come.”
May you be successful. The quiet atmosphere of a late November evening at Jordan-Hare Stadium has a way of summoning ghosts. Untouched players come forward to play the game of their lives. The balls bounce in unexpected directions. Field goals fly very far… or, in one memorable case, just a little short.
Few college football fans – and certainly not those at Alabama – who were conscious in 2013 will never forget the Kick-Six, the moment when Auburn struck the most decisive knockout blow in the history of the rivalry. Auburn fans can read the late Rod Bramblett’s call (“Auburn will win the football game!”) like a pledge of allegiance or the Lord’s Prayer. Let’s enjoy it once again:
(Sorry, Alabama fans.)
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In 2017, No. 6 Auburn defeated No. 1 Alabama at Jordan-Hare. Two years later, in a shootout that featured a 48-point second quarter, No. 16 Auburn knocked No. 5 Alabama out of the playoff and a New Year’s Six bowl appearance for the first time since 2010 with a 48–45 upset victory.
The problem for Auburn is that the two most recent Jordan-Hare Iron Bowls have seen the Ghosts go against the home team. In 2021, Alabama defeated Auburn in four overtimes thanks to miraculous heroics from Bryce Young and John Meechie. Two years later, Auburn pinned Alabama on fourth-and-31, and Alabama’s Jalen Miller executed a play called “Gravedigger” that gave the Tide the game-winning touchdown. Jordan-Hare’s suffering was visible and palpable both nights.
The flow of time and college football has dulled the Iron Bowl’s luster a bit; It is now possible to lose a game and still win a national championship. (See: 2017 Alabama, which would defeat Georgia for the title in Tua Tagovailoa’s miraculous second and 26th game.) At 9-2, Alabama does not have the luxury of suffering an Iron Bowl loss this year, as a third loss almost certainly knocks them out of playoff contention.
You can debate whether Auburn-Alabama is the best college football rivalry in the country. There has been a lot at stake for Michigan-Ohio State in recent years; The tradition of red, white and blue is more prevalent in the Army and Navy. What is undeniable, however, is that neither rivalry has inspired absurd, unruly, even hooligan behavior in its fan bases. (Notre Dame-USC says no one is poisoning any trees.)
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“I don’t care where you live or where you’re from, you know about the Iron Bowl,” Auburn interim head coach DJ Durkin said Monday. “Certainly, there is nothing bigger than this for this area.”
The Iron Bowl also has the highest per capita rate of named games, matchups you know not by their year or score, but by the nickname that still hangs over them. Of course, there are the Kick-Six and the Gravedigger, and the Punt Bama Punt, the Run in the Mud, the Comeback, the Bow Over the Top… names that come to mind over and over again days of triumph and futility, glee and desolation.
Because that’s the heart of the Iron Bowl, the way fans in Tuscaloosa and The Plains stop by for one day a year, and then relive it for the next 364. Maybe Alabama will run away with it and start looking toward the SEC Championship Game… but maybe not. These games have a way of coming down to the last second.
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