This year marks the 75th anniversary since the revival of the Alabama-Auburn football rivalry, which has come to be known over the years as the “Iron Bowl” (hat tip to former Tigers coach Ralph “Shug” Jordan for popularizing that moniker).
Little did the fans of the Crimson Tide and Tigers know that the game would eventually develop into what many consider to be the greatest rivalry in college sports when they buried the hatchet (literally) in Birmingham in 1948 to end 40 years of tense relations between the two schools. For over 40 years, the Iron Bowl was held solely at Legion Field in Birmingham. In 1989, it moved to Jordan-Hare Stadium in Auburn, and in 2000, it moved to Bryant-Denny Stadium in Tuscaloosa.
The 76th edition of the Iron Bowl will take place at Jordan-Hare on Saturday at 2:30 p.m. Alabama and Auburn will square off. The Crimson Tide leads the series 45-30 (or 49-37-1 if you include games played between 1893 and 1907). Since 1983, the Crimson Tide has had a much closer advantage of 21-19; this century, Alabama’s advantage is 12-11.
As you read them, you’ll see that we’ve tried to rank the games from 1 to 75 in honor of the 75th anniversary of the modern Iron Bowl. In order to arrive at this conclusion, we have taken into consideration a variety of both specific and non-specific factors, such as the record and/or national ranking of each team heading into the Iron Bowl, the competi
We understand that this list may be difficult to read, but you have all day on Thursday and Friday in addition to the early hours of Saturday before kickoff. It is similar to Thanksgiving turkey in that it can be eaten in two or three sessions.
tiveness of the match, any particularly noteworthy plays or performances, and ultimately, pure subjectivity.
Though we’re sure your list will differ from ours, we hope you enjoy this trip back in time through the last 75 years of Iron Bowl history. Much of the narrative detail of games from the 1940s through the 1970s, which occurred before this writer was born or at least before he had formed a concept of competitive sports, let alone the Iron Bowl, came from Bill Cromartie’s excellent 1982 book “Alabama vs. Auburn: Braggin’ Rights.”
