AJ McCarron and the Crimson Tide need a win over Auburn to go to Atlanta to play for the SEC title. (Derick E. Hingle-US PRESSWIRE)
It is the fourth installment of rivalry week in the Southeastern Conference — the Iron Bowl.
The Auburn-Alabama game, or the Alabama-Auburn game depending on which side of the rivalry you are sitting, is the most important day in the state of Alabama, It is not just the most important sports day of the year, it is the most important day period.
There is not a lot of drama about the outcome of this year’s game with Alabama coming in at 10-1 and ranked No. 2 in the nation and Auburn limping in with a 3-8 record and no wins in the SEC. Alabama is a prohibitive favorite and is expected to use Auburn as a warm-up for an SEC Championship Game date with Georgia.
But Auburn has pulled off unexpected victories against great odds before. Two years ago, Alabama took a 24-0 lead before Cam Newton led a comeback to post a victory in Tuscaloosa. In 1972, Alabama led 16-0 before Auburn got two Bill Newton blocked punts late that David Langner recovered and never stopped running until he scored with both for a 17-16 win by the Amazins’. There was the sack game when Auburn sacked Tide quarterback Brodie Croyle 11 times in the 2005.
This is a series that has seen its share of memorable plays on both sides. Alabama fans remember with pride Van Tiffin’s game-winning field goal in 1985 for a 25-23 Alabama victory, or to Kenny Stabler’s 47-yard touchdown run in the mud to give the Crimson Tide a 7-3 win in the 1967 game.
It has been a series of streaks. Alabama won nine consecutive games from 1973-81. Auburn won six in a row from 2002-07. Alabama has won three of the last four games, with the only loss coming in the Newton comeback game. Even though people are quick to say you can throw out the records when these two teams get together, seldom has one team been as heavily favored asAlabamais this season.
But once a game starts, anything can happen. Just ask Kansas State and Oregon. Will Alabama be on guard against the same thing happening against Auburn?
“I think what we try to stress to our players is to learn from your previous experience,” said Nick Saban. “What I see happening is, people get emotionally stressed out relative to their circumstances, which is where they are ranked, who they are playing and all of the sudden you get tentative and don’t play aggressively. You don’t prepare the same way, you are worried emotionally, which affects your ability to focus and you don’t play as well.
“None of these things are bad things — there is nobody taking anybody out and shooting them behind the barn, because we have an opportunity to play in this game. We have an opportunity to play in this game and maybe another game and that’s a good thing — that’s something that everybody worked hard to create,” he said.
That being said, Saban is expecting Auburn, with Jonathan Wallace at quarterback, to be a different looking team than the one that stumbled through the first 10 games of the season.
“To me he has done a really good job of managing the game for them,” said Saban.
“That’s a good thing to me – so don’t take that the wrong way. He’s done a good job of throwing the football. They’ve got some decent skill guys. They’ve made some more explosive plays in the passing game and their just an effective running team and he is doing all the quarterback runs that they do. He’s athletic enough to do it and makes good decisions about it. I think the whole idea of processing the idea of making good decisions at that position. I think that’s something he has done extremely well in the last three games that he has played.”
While Alabama comes into the game with national championship aspirations, Auburn enters having one of its worst seasons in decades. The 3-8 record has head coach Gene Chizik on the hot seat and candidate to be another coaching casualty in the SEC.
Joker Phillips has already been fired at Kentucky, and last week Derek Dooley got the axe at Tennessee.
“I think it is what it is,” said Saban. “There is a lot of attention to what we do. I think there is a high expectation of what we do. Derek Dooley is a good friend. He has been very loyal for seven years of working on our staff and regardless of what he did or didn’t do atTennessee, he is still someone who is a professional colleague and a friend who we would love to help in any way we can.
“I personally think Gene Chizik has done a really good job. All I know is playing against him, it’s always a tough game, they are always well-coached and they are always well-prepared.”
Chizik knows that this game is always special, especially this year.
“I’ve been in a lot of great rivalries and there is a difference in this game – just the importance that it has with the fans on both sides, former players, alumni, so many people that hold this game in very high regard – and so it is very important for our players and our coaches and certainly our fans,” Chizik said.
“We’ve got a great football team that we are getting ready to play inTuscaloosa, and we know that. For us to be able to have a chance to be successful, we are going to have to, obviously, play the best game we’ve played all year and be very sound in everything that we do in all three phases of our game.”
Chizik said he can see a different attitude from his players as they prepare for the Iron Bowl.
“I just think that is what comes with this game,” he said. “Certainly, we have a lot of guys on our football team that are from this state, so they grew up from birth hearing about this game, and quite frankly, the ones that we have on our roster from other places understand the magnitude of how big this rivalry game is. I think even if you weren’t born in this state, you at some point watched it on TV or have heard about it through the years. It’s a very unique game, so I think that there’s an extra focus and an extra intent in terms of just being ready to prepare. Our team looks at this game differently.”
This year’s Iron Bowl represents a chance for the Tigers to put a disastrous year behind them and end the season on a high note, especially for the seniors. With all that is on the line for Alabama, it would be easy for fans to overlook how important this game is for Auburn. And the pressure falls squarely on the shoulders Wallace, a freshman quarterback who is about to make his first road start in a place that will be extremely unfriendly.
“The sound factor, the noise factor is something that we started working on yesterday. It will be definitely a different venue for him,” said Chizik. “With him being a young man that’s grown up around this game his whole life and heard about it and seen it and understands it, it’s going to be different for him. But he’s a young guy that really embraces these types of moments, and I think that he is a young guy that will prepare as a professional like he usually does, but it will be different for him. He knows that.
“We’ve talked to all of our quarterbacks, and really all of our team, about the poise that you have to have when you go up there. There will be ebbs and flows in the game that you have to live through and get to the other side of those valleys that can happen in the game.
“I think he is a young guy that you can tell him everything that you want to tell him about it, but he is going to have to go up there and get a feel for it and experience it. Early in the game it is going to be very unique for him, but I think as the game goes on, like he’s really done in all the other games, he’ll adapt and adjust,” Chizik said.
