The Alabama football history with Auburn: Part 2, the Bryant Era.
By Ronald Evans
The Alabama football history with the Auburn Tigers. Part two in our series covers the game’s renewal in 1948 through the Bryant years.
Pressure from the state legislature and threats of reduced appropriations to the two schools eventually re-established the Alabama football and Auburn rivalry in 1948.
Since the renewal, Alabama has won 41 games and Auburn has won 28. Both teams have achieved impressive streaks of victories. Most significantly the series has become the measurement of seasonal success or failure for coaches of both schools.
ICYMI: The Iron Bowl History: Part 1, The Early Years
‘Mama Called’
In 1958 “Mama called” and Paul Bryant responded by returning to the Capstone as Alabama’s Head Coach. Auburn and Shug Jordan won in Bryant’s first season. After that 1958 season, Shug Jordan’s Auburn Tigers faced Paul Bryant and Alabama football in seventeen more games. During that span, Auburn won just four times. Jordan decided to retire after the 1975 season, finishing with a career record of 9 wins and 16 losses against Alabama.
Auburn’s replacement for Jordan was their Ears Whitworth, Doug Barfield. Barfield spent five seasons as Auburn’s head coach and never beat Bama and Bryant. Bryant’s teams dominated Auburn during two impressive runs. From 1959-1968, Alabama football won nine of the ten contests. From 1973-1981 Alabama football won nine straight games against the Tigers.
Auburn turned to one of the Bear’s disciples after firing Barfield in 1980. Former Alabama football assistant, Pat Dye left Wyoming after one season to become Auburn’s head coach.
Sixty Minutes
Dye’s first Auburn press conference contained the greatest answer any head coach ever gave to a press question. The question was: “Coach, how long will it take to beat Alabama?” Dye’s immediate, unflinching reply was “Sixty minutes.”
It was the sports world equivalent of “You had me at hello” from the movie Jerry Maguire. From the moment Patrick Fain Dye uttered his two-word answer to the anticipated and perhaps orchestrated question; the Auburn nation immediately fell in love with the man.
Beating Bama took a second round of sixty minutes for Dye’s Tigers as they lost to the Tide in his first season. The following year, 1983, Dye and the Tigers beat Bama as Paul Bryant coached his last Iron Bowl.
For Alabama fans, it was an agonizing loss that quickly turned to tragedy. One day shy of two months later on January 26, 1983, the King of College Football died of a heart attack. For thousands and thousands of Alabama fans, a little of them died with him. Despite the fact that Bryant regularly referred to Auburn as that “cow college down the road”, few, if any Auburn fans, found any joy in Bryant’s passing.
Nonetheless, the end of an era provided Tiger fans relief as the dark shadow of Alabama football vanished from the Plains. Bryant’s record against Auburn was 19 wins and six losses in his 25 year Alabama coaching career.
Next: Why Alabama will beat Auburn
The History of the Iron Bowl is a four-part series. Check back with us for the next two as we all wait for the latest Iron Bowl game on Saturday.