Credit this Alabama fan for keeping his word and owning up after losing an Iron Bowl bet on Reddit.

Reddit user sctider lost a bet to fellow Redditor classofnever following last year’s Iron Bowl. The loser of the bet had to write a congratulatory letter to the winning coach. As a man of his word, sctider came thru after Auburn locked up the SEC West title and earned a trip to Atlanta to face Georgia in the league title game.

Here’s the letter sctider wrote to Malzahn:

Dear Coach Malzahn,

As a lifelong Alabama Crimson Tide fan, I would like to offer you my sincerest congratulations for your win on Saturday. Auburn’s season has been a series of ups and downs, but every dominate Auburn team in the past decade has burned brightest down the home stretch of the season, and this year’s Tiger squad has continuously improved throughout the season. I believe that Georgia will be but a small roadblock in your quest to make the College Football Playoffs if you execute your game plan with the same mastery that your team displayed against my beloved Tide on Saturday.

While it was painful to watch my Crimson Tide lose to our biggest rival, your team’s running power was truly one of the most impressive displays I have seen against a Crimson Tide defensive line in years. The effectiveness with which Kerryon Johnson and Jarrett Stidham put our defense to shame with the ground game was something that every great team has had to do in order to beat a Saban-lead Alabama squad; and your Tigers executed that plan to near-perfection. However, I was also most impressed (and distressed) at your repeated slip-screen calls in the first half; with Alabama’s injuries at linebacker, these short screens were a fatal blow to the Alabama defense throughout the first thirty minutes of play. In general, your team’s offense was incredibly effective against our defense; and while I think that we made some key mistakes in execution, I am not sure that even a perfect college defense could have stopped Auburn’s rolling offense.

Furthermore, I can not stress how impressively your defense played against us last weekend. I am not sure if you borrowed your defensive plan from Mississippi State, but the packages and overall defensive demeanor that your team showed on Saturday was very similar to that of the Bulldogs earlier in the season. In their case, the Alabama offense was eventually able to break this plan and out-score Mississippi State; unfortunately for us Alabama fans, we were unable to do the same in the Iron Bowl. The fact that your defense was able to contain our offense, with its many strengths, deserves nothing but the highest praise and I, while disappointed, was incredibly impressed with the Auburn Tiger defensive play against Alabama.

I hope that this letter finds you well and that preparations for the SEC Championship game are going off without a hitch. While it is against my policy to ever cheer for an Auburn Tiger football team, I do hope that players on both sides of the Championship game will be safe, sportsmanlike, and good ambassadors of our conference to a national audience. Yours, very truly,”

Nice to see that even in the most heated of rivalries, fans can still show some class.

Believe it or not, Malzahn eventually wrote back. The RedditCFB Twitter account shared this followup letter from the Auburn coach:

A pretty cool story all the way around.