Let’s get the first order of business out of the way right off the top, since we’re discussing the top rivalry in all of college football.
There’s a slew of wonderful rivalries that adorn this sport, especially in late November when the regular-season ride comes to a close against the team you hate the most. But there’s only 1 rivalry that shares the top tier with the Iron Bowl and that’s Ohio State-Michigan. The 2 classic matchups ride shotgun while all of the others take a backseat, because we must have some order among all of that hatred.
So, what’s the tiebreaker between the 2 rivalries of all rivalries? Ohio State and Michigan, as bitter, bloody and traditional as it is, don’t share the same state. Alabama and Auburn do, and that puts the Iron Bowl combatants alone on the mountaintop of rivalries, looking down at all the others with a smile and a sneer as 1 team tries to push the other down the mountain when they aren’t looking.
This Saturday night, that team from Tuscaloosa and that other team from the Plains will come together for the 90th time. This particular year, the southern spectacle will play out in primetime at Jordan-Hare Stadium, with the Crimson Tide and Tigers kicking it off at 7:30 p.m. ET on ABC. Alabama holds a healthy 51-37-1 lead in the all-time series that began way back in 1893, and the Tide have taken the past 5 meetings, which won’t help them one bit as Auburn tries to ruin Bama’s national title dreams.
And that’s what this treasured rivalry is truly all about. It’s got all the right ingredients that make a rivalry iconic and the best one there is. There’s a long list of reasons why, but we’ll narrow it down to the 5 things that make the Iron Bowl college football’s best rivalry:
1. The pure hatred — it’s very, very real
All rivalries carry a certain level of hate. If they don’t, it’s simply not a rivalry. The Iron Bowl never has to worry about not having enough hate, because there’s enough hatred contained in that 2-hour, 31-minute drive from T-Town to the Plains to fill 10 round trips. Maybe 20.
When you’re born in the Heart of Dixie, you must declare your allegiance and stick to it, for life, no questions asked. That fictional college football ID card you carry in your wallet with your driver’s license, credit card and whatever else either says “Alabama” or it says “Auburn,” and your very being is identified by 1 or the other. That’s just the way it works. There’s no gray area, only crimson and white or burnt orange and navy blue.
While Alabama is a sports-crazed state, there are no professional sports teams there, so Alabama and Auburn serve as those de facto pro franchises. In NFL ancient rivalry terms, it would be like the Green Bay Packers and Chicago Bears residing in the same state, a few hours apart, with their passion-raged fan bases snarling at each other, wanting a piece of each other and wishing failure on each other. While SEC pride runs way deep, no honorable Alabama fan ever roots for Auburn against another opponent, and the same goes for any true-blue Auburn fan.
The layers of hate are thick and they are plentiful. And they get replenished with each generation, with no drop-off since the rivalry was launched 132 years ago. Every year in late November, when the rivalry is renewed, that college football ID card gets punched, the Iron Bowl is staged, and you are either ecstatic or miserable for the next 12 months. There’s no in between.
2. How 1 day counts after 364 days of trash talk
While the Alabama-Auburn rivalry is a 12-month investment, no questions asked, the bottom line is revealed on 1 day, also no questions asked. The breathless blather between these football-crazed fan bases rages on for 364 days every year, with every talking point under the sun being fair game. What makes the rivalry so darn dramatic is that it all comes down to 1 day per year for Roll Tide and War Eagle, when all of that year-round trash talk gets sucked into a 3-and-half-hour steel-cage match.
There’s no escaping either. During those 3 and a half hours, the state of Alabama turns into a southern prairie comprised of ghost towns, with everyone inside glued to the game, in some form or fashion. If aliens somehow landed in Birmingham, Montgomery, Mobile or any small village in the state on the last Saturday in November, they would wonder if there was still life on our planet.
The irony is, it’s this 1 day every year when citizens of Alabama live the most. They are nervous beyond imagination, excited beyond belief, praying for the right result because the wrong one means hearing about it from your neighbor, your co-worker or, the worst of all, someone in your house divided. And after that 1 single, special day with everything at stake, the cycle starts anew, and a state clears its throat for maybe a second or 2 before the barbs start flying about next year’s game.
3. How the records coming in truly don’t matter
How many times have you heard the phrase “you can throw the records out the window?” That’s the generic description used for rivalry games and, generally, it fits. It makes sense. But with Alabama and Auburn, it’s perfect. Because lost seasons can be made with 1 heroic effort by whoever the underdog is that particular year and dream seasons can be shattered with 1 loose effort by whoever the favorite is.
That’s the way it works in rivalries, and the Iron Bowl is the best illustration you can find for this. There are so many examples throughout the decades that older men and women on both sides of the rivalry can surely recount. You never quite know what’s going to happen in any Iron Bowl until it flows out of the hearts of the players on both sides. Just go back 2 years for the latest lesson, when the game was last at Jordan-Hare Stadium and a 10-1 Alabama team needed a miracle on 4th-and-31 to avoid having its season ruined by an Auburn team that was 6-5 and going nowhere.
Does that sound familiar? Is that some form of foreshadowing? Here we are, 2 years later, with the Iron Bowl back on the Plains and a 9-2 Alabama team having everything on the line as it rolls into town against a 5-6 Auburn squad that’s being led by an interim head coach. The storyline, the backdrop, even the 4-game difference in the records — it’s all the same. And these underdog Tigers will have the same burning desire to bury Bama’s College Football Playoff chances, just like the 2023 Auburn team came 1 play from doing.
So, yet again in the Iron Bowl, it’s time to throw those records out the window. They are meaningless, like always.
4. The talent level is always elite, like the rivalry
The Iron Bowl really does check off every box. Every season, when the Tide and Tigers take the field together, there is NFL talent everywhere — in the trenches, in the backfield, on the outside. At every level of the defense, you can find special players who will be drafted the next spring or maybe in a few springs, who will become rich and stars on Sundays. It’s the same deal on offense.
When you bring 2 proud programs together and combine pure hatred with pure talent, it’s something to behold. That’s what the Iron Bowl has been and always will be. Even when 1 of the teams, like Auburn this time around, has struggled for the better part of 3 months, there is talent there, because it’s the SEC and the competition is so intense.
Alabama-Auburn isn’t just a source of pride for the state and a show for the college football world. It’s an annual showcase for NFL scouts, because players who can thrive in this rivalry, with so much pressure and such high stakes, become super attractive in draft war rooms. Go back and take a look at any Bama-Auburn box score from any year and scan those names. It’ll be the same deal this Saturday night — talent everywhere, college studs and future pros, adding 1 more layer to the rivalry.
5. The stakes, for at least 1 team and sometimes both
Very, very few times do we get an Iron Bowl where neither team has a shot to win it all that season. If the stars align, we get both teams who have a shot to do something special, but 2025 is yet another example of having 1 of the teams with an SEC and national title trophies to play for. Saturday’s case study is particularly juicy, because that team, Alabama, already has 2 losses and can’t afford another if it hopes to be playing for anything meaningful in December and maybe January.
That makes the Iron Bowl a playoff game of sorts for Bama, even if it’s not really a Playoff game. And that will make for the greatest theater imaginable under the bright lights at Jordan-Hare Stadium, with Kalen DeBoer trying to complete his first 10-win regular season at Alabama and avoid having that 8-game win streak be all for naught in the most painful way. Trying to inflict that pain will be a rival with a roster full of possessed players, all looking to make a lifetime memory in their stadium.
This is why an Alabama team with national title aspirations is only about a touchdown favorite against a 5-6 Auburn team that fired its head coach less than 4 weeks ago. The oddsmakers know. They get it, too. Weird things tend to happen in rivalry games and, in the ultimate rivalry, really weird things can happen for a favored road team with everything to lose. Pressure will bleed from every blade of grass at Jordan-Hare on Saturday night, for Bama but for Auburn, too, because this is the Iron Bowl.
There is no bigger stage and no greater college football rivalry.
Cory Nightingale, a former sportswriter and sports editor at the Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post, is a South Florida-based freelance writer who covers Alabama for SaturdayDownSouth.com.
