Liston Eddins ached all over. It was late on the afternoon of Nov. 29, 1974. Eddins had played a football game of great importance against the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s Legion Field. Even walking was difficult.
Eddins, wearing his blue Auburn blazer, leaned on his wife, Nancy, and her aunt for support as he waited to cross the street. Waiting at the same intersection was an Alabama player wearing his crimson blazer.
“His face was all battered and bruised up,” says Eddins, who was a junior defensive end. “We just kind of looked at each other. He nodded at me and I nodded at him. We didn’t have to say a word.
“It was mutual respect.”
Alabama won 17-13 that day, holding off a late Auburn charge in one of the series’ more memorable games.
“It was a brutal game,” Eddins says. “That’s the kind of game you want to play in. You just lay it all on the line. When I left the field, I knew in my heard I’d done everything I could do.”
Eddins never experienced a victory over Alabama. But his middle son, Bret, was 3-1 against the Tide as a defensive end. His youngest son, Bart, is a junior offensive guard at Auburn now.
A generation later, Willie Anderson, Jessie McCovery, Dameyune Craig and Bobby Daffin made a heavenly trip home to Mobile. All true freshmen, they celebrated Auburn’s 22-14 victory and a perfect 1993 season by painting their numbers on the outside of Anderson’s Dodge Spirit.
“It was probably the happiest time in my life,” Anderson says. “We took shoe polish and wrote our numbers and the score all over the car. We were blowing our horn, acting crazy. Auburn people were honking at us. I went to every Thanksgiving basketball tournament, every Christmas tournament, wearing my Auburn stuff.”
It’s all part of the tapestry and fabric of the game late Auburn coach Shug Jordan dubbed the Iron Bowl. On Nov. 27, players from Auburn and Alabama will write another chapter in an ongoing story.
Children playing football in the back yards dream of being part of our state’s biggest sports spectacle. The lucky few live those dreams and have their chances on the big stage.
“I wish everybody could line up one time and walk the Tiger Walk and walk on that field in uniform,” Craig says. “That’s the best feeling I think any young man from Alabama can experience. I wasn’t even mad when I wasn’t playing. I was just happy to be on the field and be part of it.”
Those childhood dreams came true for Carnell Williams when he made a run for the ages, sprinting 80 yards on the first play from scrimmage in Auburn’s 28-23 victory in 2003.
“As soon as I got it and I broke out, they kind of took a bad angle and I cut out,” Williams says. “I didn’t see anything but green grass. I said ‘Man, I think I’m about to go the distance.’ Growing up in this state, watching that game, watching Bo (Jackson) break long runs, watching other guys do their stuff, to do that on the first play was the greatest feeling ever.”
The good plays and the bad, the blowouts and the nail-biters, all become part of the state’s football lore. The stories are retold through generations. Even players who come from other states are soon swept up in the drama and emotion of Iron Bowl day.
“That game changes you forever,” says Ben Leard, who came from Hartwell, Ga., to be an All-Southeastern Conference Auburn quarterback. “Nothing compares to it. It is the epitome of intensity. Every backyard football game, every high school game you’ve ever played, every workout you’ve ever had leads to that game. It’s the pinnacle of football to be involved in it.
“There’s always a hero on one sideline or the other you wouldn’t think would do it. Guys suddenly step to the top and are heroes in this game. And they’ll remember it forever.”
For all their days, Bill Newton and David Langner will be remembered for what happened on Dec. 2, 1972. Newton blocked two punts and Langner ran them both in for touchdowns as Auburn stunned unbeaten Alabama 17-16. But their story is only one of many.
The 1989 Tigers will be remembered as the team that won 30-20 when Alabama finally played at Jordan-Hare Stadium for the first time.
Mailon Kent owns a successful insurance agency in Birmingham. His life has been one of accomplishment. But mention his name, and invariably the discussion will go to a day 45 years ago.
After he was Auburn’s starting quarterback in 1962, Kent had sustained a partially torn medial collateral ligament shortly before the 1963 season. By the time he was healthy enough to play, Jimmy Side was on his way to becoming an All-American.
Kent was the better passer, but Sidle would become the only quarterback in Southeastern Conference history to rush for more than 1,000 yards in a season. Kent, a senior, had played a few snaps against Florida State and a few snaps against Georgia as Auburn confounded the experts by winning eight of its first nine games. As the annual game against Alabama, also 8-1, neared, the talk was of the duel between Sidle and Alabama’s Joe Namath.
But fate smiled on Kent on Nov. 30, 1963.
Paul Bryant was in his sixth season as Alabama’s head coach and Auburn had come under his spell. The Tide had shut out Auburn four straight seasons, winning 10-0, 3-0, 34-0 and 38-0. Kent would complete just two passes that cold, raw day against Alabama, but they would be the two biggest passes of his career.
“On second down, we had the wind and the ball about midfield,” Kent remembers. “Eddie Vesperille hit Jimmy and about three or four of them fell on top of him. They knocked the breath out of him.”
Offensive coordinator Buck Braderry turned to Kent and told him to go into the game and keep the offense moving.
“It was freezing cold and I wasn’t even warmed up,” Kent says. It didn’t matter. Kent threw a 12-yard pass to Bucky Waid for a first down. That set up Woody Woodall’s 32-yard field goal that gave Auburn its first points and first lead against Alabama since 1958.
Sidle returned, but when Auburn faced third-and-goal at the Alabama 8 in the third quarter, Kent got the call again. He hit Tucker Frederickson for a touchdown. Auburn took a 10-0 lead and won 10-8.
The march of time has failed to dim the feats of Auburn’s Iron Bowl heroes – Travis Tidwell leading a 14-13 upset in 1949; Connie Frederick running 82 yards on a fake punt as the Tigers broke a five-game losing streak in the series 49-26 in 1969; Pat Sullivan and Terry Beasley leading a rally from a 17-0 deficit to a 33-28 victory in 1970; Newton and Langner’s version of Instant Replay in 1972; Bo Jackson going over the top for the winning touchdown on one of the more famous plays in Auburn history as the Tigers ended 10 years of frustration 23-22 in 1982; Jackson assaulting the Tide defense for 256 yards in a 23-20 victory in 1983; Lawyer Tillman’s run to glory on a reverse as Auburn won 21-17 in 1986; Patrick Nix’s fourth-down touchdown pass that turned the game as Auburn finished a perfect season with a 22-14 victory in 1993; Jaret Holmes’ field goal that put the Tigers in the SEC Championship Game with an 18-17 victory in 1997; the heroics of reserve tailback Tre Smith as Auburn won 17-7 in Tuscaloosa in 2000; Williams run on the first play in 2003. The list could go on and on.
It’s difficult to comprehend that, for 41 years, the Tide and Tigers did not play at all. Though legend has it that the series was discontinued because of a fight, it wasn’t that way at all. Auburn wanted expenses of $3.50 per day for 22 players and Alabama offered $3 per day for 20 players. Auburn coach Mike Donahue wanted a northerner to officiate the game and Alabama wanted a southerner. The dispute turned into a football separation that lasted more than four decades.
In 1947, the Alabama House of Representatives passed a resolution urging the schools to “make possible the inauguration of a full athletic program between the two schools.” Finally, on Dec. 4, 1948, Auburn and Alabama met again at Legion Field. It was no contest. Alabama won 55-0. But Tidwell led the Auburn upset a year later and the seeds of what would become an historic rivalry were planted.
Alabama, which leads the series 39-33-1, won the next four, but Auburn was closing fast under Shug Jordan. The Tigers won 28-0 in 1954 and were off on a five-game winning streak. Bryant arrived at Alabama in 1958 and won 19 of the next 25. Since Auburn broke through in 1982, the Tigers have won 16 and lost 11.
Pat Dye turned things around in the 1980s. Tuberville put together a six-game winning streak.
Tommy Tuberville had heard stories of the Iron Bowl before he arrived at Auburn in late 1998. Experiencing it, he says, is an opportunity to be cherished for a player or a coach.
“It’s something special,” Tuberville says. “You can feel it the week before the game. The atmosphere at the game is different than any other. You never know what’s going to happen. It’s a lifelong dream for a lot of kids to make a difference in the outcome of that game.”
Did you know Bo Jackson almost left Auburn before the end of his freshman season? How did Lloyd Nix go from being a halfback to not losing a game in two seasons at quarterback? What fell out of Tucker Frederickson's suitcase when he arrived at Auburn for his official visit? How did David Marsh become perhaps the greatest swim coach of our time? What made Charles Barkley a force on the court? What's the real story of Toomer's Corner? These and many other stories are told in Phillip's book, "The Auburn Experience," an oversized coffee table book published in December 2004. It features more than 300 slick pages of stories and photographs of many of Auburn's greatest traditions, teams, players and coaches in every sport. The book is available for $10, plus $5 shipping and handling. It would make a great Christmas present for any Auburn fan. Send check or money order made payable to Phillip Marshall to Phillip Marshall, 703 Groce St., Opelika, AL 36801.
