The inscription on the brick reads: “THE FINAL BRICK. DECEMBER 2, 1989. JORDAN-HARE STADIUM. AUBURN 30, ALABAMA 20. It is one of former athletic director David Housel’s prized possessions. It is a powerful symbol of triumph for Auburn people everywhere.
For four decades, Auburn fans felt outnumbered and unwelcome when they played Alabama at Birmingham’s Legion Field. Finally, on that memorable day in 1989, the Crimson Tide came to their house.
It was a day that athletics director Jeff Beard and football coach Shug Jordan, Housel’s mentors and heroes, had talked about when they began in the early 1950s to build a program. Beard lived to see it. Jordan did not.
“That’s the final brick in the dream Coach Jordan and Coach Beard had dating back to when they were Auburn athletes in the late ’20s and early ’30s,” Housel says. “It was a dream not just of getting Alabama here, but having a facility big enough, good enough and fine enough that all our conference brothers would come here and play.
“We wouldn’t have to play Georgia Tech in Atlanta and Birmingham. We wouldn’t have to play Tennessee in Birmingham. We wouldn’t have to go to Columbus to play Georgia. We wouldn’t have to go to Birmingham to play the Crimson Tide. They would come to our house.”
Georgia played at Auburn for the first time in 1960. Georgia Tech, no longer a regular opponent but once a bitter rival, came to town in 1971 and Tennessee in 1974. In all those years, the Alabama game was played in Birmingham, the tickets evenly divided between the two schools. But crowds rarely seemed to be even.
“Having the game in Auburn gave Auburn a homefield advantage it never had in Birmingham,” Housel says. “Truth, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. For whatever reason, right or wrong, Auburn people always thought Alabama had a homefield advantage. Most Auburn people thought Legion Field was as neutral as the beaches of Normandy on D-Day.”
Glen Gulledge, owner of Byron’s Smokehouse, an immensely popular Auburn barbecue restaurant, puts it like this: “When you walk in the gate and there is a bronze monument of Bear Bryant, you sure don’t feel like you are the home team.”
No team ever had more of a homefield advantage than Auburn the first time Alabama came to town.
Joe Whitt, now a fundraiser for the athletic department, was an assistant coach in 1981. He smiles at the memory.
“Loud? It was unbelievable,” he says. “I don’t know if anybody can ever outdo that. I was on the sideline, and you couldn’t hear the guy from the press box on the headphones. You couldn’t hear the guy next to you. It was amazing.”
It was a day many Auburn people thought they’d never see. Jordan, who retired as head coach after the 1975 season and died in 1980, was once asked if Auburn’s home games against Alabama would ever be moved to Jordan-Hare.
“There’ll have to be some prominent funerals,” he said.
“But by the mid-1980s, the landscape had changed. Dye had made Auburn a Southeastern Conference power. Jordan-Hare Stadium had been enlarged to seat more than 85,000. Every other SEC team played their home games where they wanted. Why not Auburn?
Alabama athletics director Steve Sloan made the mistake of seeming to have sympathy for Auburn’s claim, a position that played a large role in costing him his job.
“When you get down to it, the home team really has the right to choose where to play its home game,” Sloan said later. “It’s almost indefensible to say someone can’t do that, unless there are contractual obligations that say otherwise.”
The Alabama position was that it had a contract to play at Legion Field through 1992. So contentious was the debate that then-Alabama president Joab Thomas even suggested in a letter to then-Auburn president James Martin that two teams stop playing on an annual basis.
Alabama coach Ray Perkins, who left for the Tampa Bay Bucs after the 1986 season, was adamantly opposed to going where Alabama had never been.
“It won’t happen,” Perkins flatly stated. But it did.
“There wasn’t anything to keep us from playing the game in Auburn,” Dye says. “We had as many seats as they had in Birmingham. As a matter of fact, by the time we played the game, we had more seats than they had in Birmingham. Everything about playing the game in Auburn and going home-and-home with Alabama rather than splitting the tickets was a plus for Auburn and Alabama. Alabama didn’t want to admit it at the time.”
In the years since, Alabama has seen the light. Bryant-Denny Stadium has been enlarged to seat more than 90,000. The Tide, which once played its most important games at Legion Field, no longer plays there either.
Trustees Bobby Lowder, Morris Savage and Mike McCartney were given the responsibility of representing Auburn in negotiations. Ultimately, it came down to talks between Lowder for Auburn and Winton “Red” Blount for Alabama.
“Alabama fought us and fought us,” Lowder said later. “They had some sort of contract they claimed Bear Bryant had signed and everything else that ran through 1992. We met with them and pretty well said ‘We’re going to play the 1989 game in Auburn.’
“They sure didn’t want to play there. They were pretty hostile. It didn’t make sense to me. What I said from the very beginning is that it is our home game and we can play it wherever we want to.”
Finally, a deal was reached. The 50-50 ticket split at Legion Field, the practice since 1949, would be changed and Alabama would have the home team’s share of tickets in 1988. The game would go to Auburn in 1989.
Auburn’s concession was to play one more home game against Alabama in Birmingham in 1991.
The buildup was immense as the 1989 game approached. Alabama was 10-0 and ranked No. 2 in the nation. Auburn was 8-2, having lost close games at Tennessee and Florida State. Alabama could win the SEC championship outright with a victory and hold on to hope for a national championship. Auburn, which had won the previous two titles, could make it a three-way tie with Alabama and Tennessee.
Fans began to arrive early in the week. At game time, thousands were outside the stadium, unable to get tickets. The noise was deafening from the start and never abated. It was the most memorable day of Dye’s coaching career.
“Oh, hell yeah,” he says. “Nobody could predict the emotions of that day. It would have been impossible. There’s never been one like that before and there hasn’t been one like that since. There never will be, because we won’t ever have that kind of occasion again. I never had any doubt we were going to win the game.”
Tiger Walk, the traditional trek to the stadium by Auburn players and coaches, was a madhouse. A record crowd of 85,319 filled the stadium. Thousands more milled around outside.
“There is no way to describe how this football team felt coming down to the stadium today with all the people lining the street,” Dye said after Auburn had won. “I tried to stay out of the way, but seeing the looks in the faces of Auburn people must have been like seeing the Berlin Wall coming down. It was as if they were freed and coming out of bondage.
“I made a concerted effort to calm (the players) down. They were as high as I’ve ever seen. James Joseph is as tough as they come, but he hyperventilated before we came on the field.”
If they didn’t know already, Alabama players and coaches saw what they were up against when they arrived. Fans rocked their buses, banging on the windows as they went past. Jimmy Fuller, recently retired as the athletics director at Jacksonville State, was Alabama’s offensive line coach.
“I’ve said many times that, on that day in that game, Auburn was going to win,” Fuller says. “I didn’t have that feeling before the game, but during the course of the game I did. That was Auburn’s day. It was a first. It was a big event. It was something they’d been looking forward to for a long time.”
Auburn moved quickly to take the lead, scoring on its first possession when Joseph went in from the 1-yard line. Alabama went ahead 10-7 at halftime, but there was no panic in the Auburn locker room.
Joseph ran 2 yards for a touchdown in the third quarter. Win Lyle’s extra point made it 14-10. Lyle kicked a 22-yard field goal to make it 17-10 and Lectron Williams ran 12 yards for another touchdown. Lyle kicked the extra point to make it 24-10 and a 31-yard field goal to make it 17-10.
Alabama wasn’t unbeaten by accident. The Tide fought back to within 27-20. But as the hour grew late, Lyle kicked a 34-yarder to make it 30-20. The celebration began.
Quarterback Reggie Slack completed 14-of-26 passes for 274 yards for Auburn. Alexander Wright, a wide receiver with world-class speed, caught seven of those passes for 141 yards. Stacy Danley rushed 35 times for 130 yards.
Auburn won its share of big games at Jordan-Hare Stadium before. It has won its share of big games at Jordan-Hare Stadium since. But Dec. 2, 1989, stands alone. It always will.
