News Article: Debunking The Myths Of The Iron Bowl

92tide

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May 9, 2000
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Sports fans can be some of the most superstitious people, honestly. Two teams will take the field this saturday, and the better team will almost certainly win. It won't be because of the football gods, or fate. There is no difference between an Alabama vs. Auburn game and an Alabama vs. some other 3-8 team. Auburn is not going to suddenly become great because they are playing against Alabama. You cannot just will your way to being a great football team, and Auburn is by no means even a decent football team. Bama is going to smoke Auburn this saturday, rtr.
well if i dont find my lucky hat before saturday, we are hosed against auburn ;)
 

We_are_Bama

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I really don't get some of the comparisons to past Iron Bowls. Seriously, how can this current season be compared to seasons like 1982, 1986, 1989, 2002, and 2005? Was auburn 3-8 with no SEC wins coming in to any of those games? The answer is no.

1982-auburn came into the game 7-3 with two very close losses and one lopsided loss to Nebraska.

1986-auburn came into the game 8-2 with two very close losses. They were literally a play or two away from being undefeated. Not to mention, we had faded down the stretch, failing to beat LSU, a game that would have clinched the SEC Title for us (this was well before divisions and the SEC Title Game) Not to mention, the team was dealing with the imminent departure of Perkins.

1989-auburn came into the game with two losses, both on the road to Tennessee (by 7) and Florida State (by 8) This was our first ever trip to jordan-hare stadium, not to mention, Bill Curry never got the auburn monkey off his back. We still won the SEC Title that year, but we had pretty well clinched it weeks before. Maybe a slight upset here, but still, 8-2 is far cry from 3-8.

2002-This one was just plain weird. Franphony to Texas A&M was a done deal. The team did not prepare for this game, and it showed from the first play. auburn was an underdog at 7-4, but again, they were not winless in the SEC.

2005-I REALLY do not get this comparison. We started the year 9-0, but once Prothro went down, not to mention JB Clausner, our starting center, we never recovered. Even the wins we had after the injuries we extremely ugly. The team was mentally out of it after that overtime home loss to LSU that would have clinched the SEC West for us. Meanwhile, auburn was 8-2 with one loss by 7 to Georgia Tech and a 3 point overtime loss to LSU in Baton Rouge. The game was in auburn, and like Bill Curry, Shula never even got close to beating auburn.

None of those are even the least bit comparable to this season. There is one comparison, and even this one is a stretch. 1998. auburn came in 3-7. We were 6-4 and not exactly having a banner year ourselves. But, at least that auburn team had one SEC win. A 17-0 win over the man who would be their head coach the following season. But, nonetheless, we won that one 31-17.

When has a three win team (either us or the barn) EVER won the Iron Bowl, especially when going up against a 10 win team?
 
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BamaSully

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Oct 13, 1999
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Sports fans can be some of the most superstitious people, honestly. Two teams will take the field this saturday, and the better team will almost certainly win. It won't be because of the football gods, or fate. There is no difference between an Alabama vs. Auburn game and an Alabama vs. some other 3-8 team. Auburn is not going to suddenly become great because they are playing against Alabama. You cannot just will your way to being a great football team, and Auburn is by no means even a decent football team. Bama is going to smoke Auburn this saturday, rtr.
Boy I think you are right but I do think you are over-simplifying something that is genuinely complex. All 3-8 teams are NOT created equal. Auburn has quite a bit of SEC talent, a coach with a national title under his belt (I know that was Cam Newton's title but Chizik still possesses the experience gained in the process), and they are not scared of Alabama.

Some typical 3-8 Sun Belt team has NONE of those attributes. Those attributes mean it is entirely possible that Auburn could suddenly pull it together and play their best game this Saturday. I don't know if their best game would even get them close to a win, but if we combined their best game with some untimely turnovers, then you got yourself an upset brewing.

It happens. If you don't think so then you haven't been watching college football long.

That said, I predict 41-10. :)
 

We_are_Bama

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It's the Iron Bowl. Through out the record books. Anything can happen. And most of the time, the underdog wins. Especially when the underdog has not won all year. Gee, hope we can change that trend this weekend. :wink:
 

Al A Bama

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It’s late November, time for the trees to shed their leaves and become bare (except for those with toilet paper hanging from them), #1 to lose a big game, and Alabama to pulverize Auburn in the annual Iron Bowl. Due mostly to improvement in the football product put out by Auburn since the arrival of Pat Dye, a number of myths have cropped up surrounding the aura of the Iron Bowl. You are going to hear a number of those myths this week. In fact, you’ll probably hear more this week than normal because the circumstances surrounding both programs.

MYTH #1: Either team can win this game.

OK, so in a technical sense, I guess that’s true. Appalachian State did beat Michigan, after all. But this statement is usually nested among a discussion of how “the Iron Bowl is competitive and either team can pull out the victory even if they’re 0-10.” The only words for this are “unadulterated hogwash.” If anyone says this, simply ask them to list for you the upsets they can name in this series. Since it only rekindled in 1947 and Alabama rolled Auburn for most of the 1960s and 1970s, what examples can be given that substantiate this idea? Invariably, they will list in order: 1972, 1982, 1984, 2001, and 2002. Let’s dispense with the obvious ones. 2002 was an anomaly because it is clear that Dennis Franchione was already plotting his getaway a couple of weeks later. 1972 is not so memorable because it was an upset as it is how Auburn won: two blocked punts in the final five minutes, both returned for touchdowns that turned a 16-3 Tide rout into a 17-16 Auburn win. But Auburn was ranked in the top ten entering that game. While the way they won was truly phenomenal and ranks in Bama lore of painful moments right alongside the nutty pass from the end zone by Tom Clements in the 1973 Sugar Bowl and the “Cam-back” in the 2010 Iron Bowl, it can hardly be called an upset. 1982 was only considered an upset at the time because Alabama had been number 2 earlier in the year, and Auburn had not won in a decade. ANY Auburn win at that point even against an 0-10 Alabama would have been considered an upset. And the later loss by Auburn to LSU in 2001 proves that Auburn was not really all that great that year anyway. Thus, the only “true upset” of the last 65 years in the Iron Bowl is Alabama’s stunning win on December 1, 1984. And even that upset is tainted by the fact that Pat Dye simply outsmarted himself. Trailing 17-7 in the fourth quarter, Brent Fullwood hit a touchdown. Dye opted to gamble for the win early by calling for a two-point conversion that was successful and brought Auburn to within 17-15. Moments later thanks to a Tide fumble, Auburn was knocking at the door again. They got it to fourth down and goal from the one. Had Dye simply stuck with his prior plan of a field goal, Auburn gets a chip shot and – probably – wins the game. For whatever reason, he sent in a toss to Fullwood, who collided with Bo Jackson and bought the defense enough time to wrap up Fullwood and bring him down.

That one case simply does not give anyone the ammunition to argue that the Iron Bowl is closely contested and anyone can win it. The favorite nearly always wins the game – and a huge favorite ALWAYS wins the game. Bet the house on Alabama this Saturday.

MYTH #2: Coaches Are Hired And Fired on The Basis of the Iron Bowl

This is another waste of time argument that people on both sides of this rivalry actually say. It is then picked up by the clueless press (insert ESPN logo here) and proliferated. Almost every Iron Bowl and especially those telecast on ESPN feature a reference to this claim. But nobody at the four-letter network has ever bothered to do his homework. Once again – how many coaches can you name that have been fired SOLELY or even PRIMARILY because they couldn’t win the Iron Bowl?

Bill Curry? He wasn’t fired. He resigned and went to Kentucky.

Tommy Tuberville? Whatever the truth about that case, Tuberville was not fired because of the 36-0 blowout in 2008. Word on the street is he resigned and only the Auburn mafia knows. But he had won six in a row. He was not fired because of the Iron Bowl.

Terry Bowden? No, he resigned in the middle of the season. So WHO exactly has ever been fired because he couldn’t beat Alabama or Auburn?

Not counting the interims (Bill Oliver, Joe Kines), there have been eleven Alabama coaches since 1947 and seven Auburn head coaches. One of those (Mike Price) never coached a game, and the other two will coach next week. That leaves fifteen head coaches in the last 65 years whose reputation supposedly depended on the Iron Bowl win. Yet out of those fifteen coaches, only six were fired: Earl Brown, Harold “Red” Drew, JB “Ears” Whitworth, Doug Barfield, Mike DuBose, and Mike Shula. And even Drew’s case is somewhat strange as he remained the Tide track coach for another decade. Thus, we have five coaches on which this case could be made. Earl Brown had a three-year record at Auburn of 3-22-4. To make this even stranger, one of Brown’s three wins was against Alabama in 1949. Given that he was 0-10 in 1950, you would be hard-pressed to say he got fired because he lost the Iron Bowl. The same is true regarding the disastrous regime of J.B. “Ears” Whitworth, who compiled the worst record of any coach in modern Alabama football history. His 4-24-2 record coincided with Auburn’s 1957 national title, which probably had more to do with his firing than anything else.

More recent history suggests that only perhaps Barfield’s case could be considered proof of this myth. DuBose was a disaster from day one, undone by off-the-field shenanigans and on-the-field under-achievement. And I should point out that on the day DuBose was fired shortly after the Central Florida debacle in 2000, he had a 2-1 record in the Iron Bowl that should have been 3-0. Shula never beat Auburn, but he also never beat LSU and his lone victory over Tennessee had more to do with luck than anything else. A 1-11 record against those three teams would get Nick Saban fired, and it wouldn’t be because he couldn’t beat Auburn.

So does Barfield then prove the myth? Not really. Doug Barfield had the misfortune of taking over from a coach who towered over his university in the same way Johnny Vaught and Vince Dooley ruled their prospective campuses. Barfield was not such a big man, but his firing wasn’t due to his failure to win the Iron Bowl but rather his 0-6 record in the SEC in his fifth season. Thus, we have debunked the second myth.

MYTH #3: If You Go 1-11 But Win The Iron Bowl, You Had A Great Year

This myth is unquestionably the invention of Auburn fans during the heyday of a certain man in the hound’s tooth hat. For starters, the expansion of FBS to include unworthy teams at the lower end has virtually guaranteed neither team will ever enter the Iron Bowl winless. Even a terrible Auburn team managed to hang 51 points on Alabama A&M. The worst Alabama team of the last 50 years (2000) won three SEC games, two by double-digit margins. So the likelihood of this even happening is virtually nil.

But let’s assume for the sake of argument that it actually happened: does anybody REALLY believe that Alabama fans would celebrate a 1-11 year just because they happened to beat Auburn? Alabama fans begin every season looking forward to the possibility of winning the national championship. Auburn fans begin every season looking forward to seeing how they measure up to Alabama, even in years Auburn is better.

Let’s not overcome ourselves with bull. These three myths need to be abandoned immediately. Remember that – you’re going to hear a lot about them the next five days or so.

Roll Tide
Looks like you have the outline and basis for a new book about Bama vs Barn.
 

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