Documentaries have been made about Alabama-Auburn. Or is it Auburn-Alabama — heck, you can even get into a decent-sized argument about that in just about any barber shop or meat & 3 in the state.

It is hard to even agree on the nickname of Saturday’s annual clash between the Alabama Crimson Tide and Auburn Tigers anymore. Many if not most will call it the Iron Bowl, though there are certainly those who would quarrel that any Alabama-Auburn game (or Auburn-Alabama?) that isn’t played at Birmingham’s Legion Field isn’t the Iron Bowl at all.

No matter what you call it, Alabama-Auburn (we are going to keep it there, siding with alphabetical order …) is one of the saltiest, nastiest, most visceral rivalries in all of college football. Literal trees have died over this game — and we aren’t talking about the ones that have already been harvested for toilet paper to be thrown at Toomer’s Corner, either.

But for the 1st time in close to 20 years, Saturday’s Iron Bowl (again, using the colloquial with no offense meant toward our friends in the Magic City) is virtually meaningless in the bigger picture. For the 1st time in close to 20 years, the Iron Bowl is — gasp — just another rivalry game and not a matchup that matters to the postseason picture.

How is this possible? No possible trips to Atlanta for the SEC Championship Game on the line? No berths in the expanded 12-team College Football Playoff up for grabs?

Well, the short answer to all that is that the rest of the sport rapidly caught up with the Crimson Tide the moment Nick Saban submitted his resignation back on Jan. 10. Alabama fans might not have come to grips with that fact immediately, and certainly, it took a lot of time for the rest of us to catch on as well. But Saban’s replacement — Kalen DeBoer — has arguably underachieved with the talent at his disposal in 2024.

That underachievement resulted in a pair of ridiculous losses: falling at Vanderbilt in a generational upset on Oct. 5, and then absolutely laying an egg at Oklahoma just this past Saturday — the latter effectively eliminating the Tide from Playoff contention. Combine those with a loss at Tennessee on the 3rd Saturday in October, and Alabama is now playing for absolutely nothing of meaning in the final week of the regular season.

It hasn’t been that way for Alabama since 2010, when, coming off a national championship season, the Tide lost to South Carolina and LSU to make the Iron Bowl pretty much irrelevant. But Auburn was VERY much relevant that season, ranked No. 2 in America and needing a come-from-behind win in Tuscaloosa to keep a perfect season alive en route to the national title.

Auburn’s more recent history has been far less spectacular. The Tigers haven’t won 10 games in a season since 2017 and are very much in danger of a 4th straight 7-loss season. Hugh Freeze is very much going through the same things that Bryan Harsin did as his predecessor on The Plains, without any real SEC relevance in sight.

In reality, the last time the annual Iron Bowl didn’t have postseason ramifications was Saban’s 1st season with Alabama — Nov. 24, 2007. The Crimson Tide were still working on the Death Star blueprints at this point, and the foundational recruiting class led by wide receiver Julio Jones was still a couple months away from locking in, while Auburn was en route to a respectable 9-4 record under Tommy Tuberville.

That day at Jordan-Hare Stadium, it was the Tigers that got the better of the Tide — as a salty Auburn defense limited Alabama’s John Parker Wilson to just 113 passing yards in a 17-10 victory. That win set off the usual celebration amid the original Toomer’s trees. But outside state lines, it barely resonated.

Now, 17 years later — with 12 SEC titles (9 for Alabama, 3 for Auburn) and 7 national titles (6 for Alabama, the 1 for Auburn) — we are right back where we were in 2007. A 1st-year Alabama coach is trying to find his way to the end of a forgettable season against an Auburn team eager for more than its perpetual Little Brother status.

The Iron Bowl always means more inside the state of Alabama — with the Crimson Tide and Tigers at odds 365 days a year over this single date on the schedule. But this year, for the 1st time in a long time, Alabama-Auburn (or Auburn-Alabama) simply doesn’t matter to the rest of the college football landscape anymore.