The famed Toomer’s Corners oaks have beengone for more than two years now. The Auburn icons, poisoned by a way-too-enthusiastic Alabama fan in 2011, are now souvenir shards; in their place stand newer, tinier oaks protected by fences. “This is tradition,” reads a small sign on the fence. “This is worth the wait. This is Auburn.”
It’s a fine sentiment, patience, one that has little place in college football. And yet that’s exactly what Auburn fans will need: patience, and truckloads of it. Auburn lost Saturday’s Iron Bowl 29-13 to relentless rival Alabama thanks to Derrick Henry's 271 yards on 46 carries, but not before a healthy serving of the strangeness that always characterizes this rivalry.
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This is how we got there. Start with a perfect college football day, 73 degrees and sunny, a light breeze keeping everyone in perfect comfort – it’s the kind of day that makes alumni wish they were still undergrads, and makes undergrads believe they’ll live forever.
Alabama needs a win to clinch the SEC West and level up one more notch en route to the College Football Playoff. There’s nothing really at stake here for Auburn but pride—not that pride is inconsequential, but for a man like Nick Saban, pride is what losers cling to when they can’t win on the field.
Still, this is a blood rivalry. Strange things happen when Auburn and Alabama meet. No one knows that better, or with more acute pain, than Saban himself.
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“Let me tell you about Auburn,” the pregame hype video intones, and then comes the kicker: “It’ll only take a second.”
Kick Six looms large over this rivalry, as it always will. Saturday was the first time the Iron Bowl returned to the scene of one of the most spectacular plays in college football history, a night when one second, one missed kick, one improbable run to a touchdown altered the entire balance of power in this rivalry.
Echoes of Auburn’s Kick Six victory are everywhere. The Auburn crowd boos every Alabama starter save Adam Griffith, the kicker who missed that fateful 57-yard attempt. Another video in the instants before kickoff showed the entirety of the play—Griffith’s miss, Chris Davis’s catch, the run, the celebration—and the Auburn crowd cheered as loud as if it was happening live. On the Alabama sideline, a few players watched defiantly, but most turned away.
Alabama has more recent national championships, yes, but Auburn will always own a tiny corner of the Tide mind.
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In his first field goal attempt at Jordan-Hare since Kick Six, Griffith doesn’t miss. Of course, he’s about 30 yards closer this time around, but it’s enough to put the Tide up 3-0 early in the game. Auburn reels off big gains on the ensuing possession, but stalls out at the Alabama 7 and ends up merely matching the Tide’s field goal. On the ensuing possession, Auburn again gouges deep into Alabama territory, and again comes away with only a field goal. You get the sense that Auburn doesn’t quite have Alabama’s full attention just yet.
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Auburn entered the season with hope and a couple easy wins over out-of-conference opponents, but consecutive losses to LSU and Mississippi State knocked the life out of the Tigers’ season before September even ended.
But this is the Iron Bowl. This is blood. This is war. Outside Toomer’s Drugstore, within sight of the new oaks, scalpers aren’t even listening to offers of $100 a ticket. At Price’s Barbecue Shop a few blocks away, a few old-timers are discussing the provenance of the day’s ref’s—“One’s from south Alabama, down Route 43”—and trying to decide whether that bodes well or ill for the Tigers. Profiteers walking the crowd play both sides, hawking “BEAT AUBURN” and “BEAT BAMA” buttons, but they’re selling many more of the latter than the former.
Closer to the stadium, students and alumni alike gather under party tents along Roosevelt. The older fans hug in recognition as the students try hard to impress their significant others’ parents-slash-potential internship bosses. Signs adorning the tents feature every imaginable riff on “War Eagle,” including the hint-of-discord duo of “War Damn Fam Jam” and “Original War Damn Fam Jam” close to one another, but not too close.
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Alabama ends the first half with, yes, a field goal – its fourth, the sixth overall, of the half. As Bama set up for the 50-yard attempt, Auburn sent a man to stand deep in the end zone. You know, just in case.
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Rivalry is everywhere. Auburn knows it’s outmanned and outgunned in this game, the “STATE OF AUBURN” and “HEY NICK, GOT A SECOND?” t-shirts notwithstanding. When the stadium’s public address announcer reveals that Auburn has out-charitied Alabama, gathering 211,625 pounds of canned goods to the Tide’s 116,370, the Auburn crowd offers up one of the louder cheers of the day. Any edge. Take any edge.
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Over on the Alabama sideline, offensive coordinator Lane Kiffin hobbles in a red-and-white oversized shoe, necessary protection for a broken toe. Kiffin claimed, apparently with a straight face, that his daughter broke his toe over the Thanksgiving holiday by jumping on his foot while dancing to “Sweet Home Alabama.” Kiffin has been leading a convincing Alabama offensive attack most of the year, but this game is as awkward as, yes, a man trying to dance with a broken toe.
Then, with 7 minutes left in the third quarter, the yellow hammer at last begins to pound. Coker scrambles like he’s fighting relatives for the last turkey leg, first keeping the drive alive during a critical third down, then eluding Tiger bodies to find ArDarius Stewart in the end zone for a how-the-hell-did-he-do-that 34-yard touchdown.
And then crazy happens, because crazy always happens in the Iron Bowl, even one as numbing and kick-heavy as this one. Johnson steps back and slings it deep to Jason Smith. Johnson has thrown it too far; Smith can only fingertip it. But he’s able to knock the ball up into the air, run underneath it, and outrun the Tide defenders who, quite reasonably, thought there was no way an overthrown ball would suddenly turn into six points.
Such things happen here.
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Wide angle of Jason Smith's TD pic.twitter.com/cNKA5Ii1nF
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Cam Newton, the former Auburn quarterback who’s now one of the finest players in the NFL, is in the house. So too is Josh Donaldson of the Blue Jays, the reigning American League MVP. And, of course, Bo Jackson, probably the greatest all-around athlete in American sports history. Auburn’s got one hell of an alumni contingent.
The present doesn’t look quite as bright. The Tigers aren’t able to follow up their Tip-Six touchdown with anything meaningful, and Alabama kept running with Henry, who looked more and more like a Heisman Trophy winner.
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