The darnedest thing happened in the 1972 Auburn-Alabama game, and
Tiger fans still delight in needling their Crimson Tide friends with "Punt,
Bama, Punt."


"When are you folks going to quit talking about those blocked punts?" an
Alabama man demanded of Terry Henley years later. Henley, who was
Auburn's tailback that day, smiled and said, "When you folks stop singing
about playing in the Rose Bowl."


The Alabama-Auburn rivalry has been called everything from the nation's
greatest to a sickness, but that game almost 30 years ago in which an
overmatched Auburn team blocked two consecutive punts in the final
minutes and returned them for touchdowns to win 17-16 is indisputably
its most famous edition.


Bill Cromartie, author of Braggin' Rights, the definitive history of the
Alabama-Auburn series, didn't hesitate to pronounce it "the most
incredible football game ever played."


Cromartie, who has written histories of Georgia-Georgia Tech,
Michigan-Ohio State, Texas-Oklahoma, Notre Dame-Southern California
and Duke-North Carolina, also says, "This is by far, I think, the nastiest
rivalry in the country. I doubt if anything else touches it. I don't know if it's
because the game of football is so intense in the state and they've both
had good teams. But even when one team is real good and the other is
real bad, it's still nasty."


This is what happened at Birmingham's Legion Field on Dec. 2, 1972:
Alabama was undefeated, untied and ranked second in the nation.
Auburn, having lost quarterback Pat Sullivan, the 1971 Heisman Trophy
winner, and consensus All-America receiver Terry Beasley to graduation,
had been picked to finish in the lower reaches of the Southeastern
Conference. But the Tigers had forged a surprising 8-1 record and were
ranked ninth nationally. Still, a 35-7 loss to LSU marred their record, and
they were 16-point underdogs to the Tide.


Auburn amassed a grand total of eight yards of offense in the first half.
Largely forgotten, because it seemed of no importance at the time, was
Tiger defensive back Roger Mitchell's extra point block after Alabama's
first touchdown. And Auburn further demonstrated its inability to move the
ball when coach Shug Jordan had Gardner Jett kick a 42-yard field goal
with 9:15 left in the game and the Tide ahead 16-0. As Tiger fans booed
Jordan's decision, he turned to trainer Kenny Howard and said, "They
don't think we're going to win, do they?"


With 5:30 to play, the score 16-3 and the ball at midfield, Auburn
linebacker Bill Newton rushed through unchecked and blocked Greg
Gantt's punt. The ball took a perfect hop into the arms of defensive back
David Langner, who sped 25 yards into the end zone. Jett's extra point
made it 16-10.


Then, with 1:34 remaining, Gantt prepared to punt again. The line of
scrimmage was the Alabama 43. And again, Newton blocked Gantt's
punt. It bounded as if by design into Langner's arms, and he returned it 20
yards for the touchdown with 1:24 remaining. Jett's PAT gave Auburn a
most improbable 17-16 victory.


Jordan, who had avoided calling any victory his greatest or any team his
favorite, affirmed both in the locker room after the game. Alabama coach
Bear Bryant, whose Tide teams won 19 of their 25 games against Auburn,
never got over it.


Bryant, whose Tide was headed for a Cotton Bowl match with Texas, had
angered Auburn fans before that 1972 Iron Bowl when he told the
Birmingham Monday Morning Quarterback Club, "I'd rather beat that cow
college once than beat Texas 10 times."


The irrepressible Henley was never one to run away from a headline. In
print, he said Bryant should be ashamed of himself. After Auburn upset
Alabama, Henley said, "When those cows get mad, they kick. There won't
be enough people going back to Auburn to milk them tonight."
The first Alabama-Auburn game was played on Feb. 22, 1893, at
Lakeview Park in Birmingham. Auburn won 32-22. Disagreement
between the sides dates all the way back to that day. Alabama considers
it the last game of the 1892 season, Auburn considers it the first game of
the 1893 season.


College football television analyst Beano Cook said it well:
"Alabama-Auburn is not just a rivalry. It's Gettysburg South."
Former Alabama coach Ray Perkins called it the most important football
game in the world. More people in Alabama care passionately about it
than the Super Bowl, he said. He was right. Alabamians align themselves
on one side against the other from the day they are born.


"Talk about the Texas-Texas A&M game will start a week before the game
and continue for a week after," said former Alabama coach Gene
Stallings, an ex Aggie player and head coach, "but talk about the
Alabama-Auburn game never stops. They're talking about it on the Fourth
of July. That's what makes this one different from all others."


There's something strange about this series, though, something else that
sets it apart from other rivalries rooted in antiquity. After playing to a 6-6 tie
in 1907, they didn't meet on the gridiron again until 1948, when Alabama
won 55-0. Talk about a timeout.


Some consider the break in relations as fascinating as the games
themselves. Over the years, two myths gained currency, neither of which
is true. According to one, there was a riot at the 1907 game, and that was
why the two schools stopped playing each other. According to the other,
the state legislature forced the two teams to get back together.


The split actually was the result of an inability to reach an agreement on
the terms of a contract. Efforts were made by various parties to bring the
schools together, but it didn't happen until 1948. When Alabama and
Auburn met again, it wasn't because the legislature required it, but
because two reasonable men, Alabama president Dr. John Galalee and
Auburn president Dr. Ralph Draughon decided it was time.


Prior to the long-overdue renewal, Sterling Slappey wrote in The
Montgomery Advertiser, "They'll take the bandages off a 41-year-old
wound tomorrow and see if the scar is healed." The presidents of both
student bodies actually buried a hatchet in a park in Birmingham, but
everyone was uneasy, wondering just what would happen. There were no
unusual problems with fans, but Alabama halfback Ed Salem did lead the
worst mugging Auburn had suffered since 1917.


In 1949, Auburn scored the greatest upset in a series that has had
precious few upsets. The 6-2-1 Tide was a 19-point favorite over the
Tigers, who had won only one game. Billy Tucker, who later would be
crippled by polio, kicked the winning extra point in the 14-13 Auburn win.
Alabama won all four meetings from 1950-53, then the Tide rattled off five
straight from 1954-58. The 1957 contest is noteworthy because it wasn't
much of a game. Auburn breezed to a 40-0 victory in what was the last
building block in its national championship season. The Tigers led 34-0
at intermission. Jordan called it the best team, for a half, he had ever
coached.


Bryant returned to his alma mater in 1958 after coaching stints at
Maryland, Kentucky and Texas A&M, and Auburn's dominance in the
series ended. After dropping his first encounter with the Tigers 14-8, he
won the next four. Bama's 34-0 triumph over Auburn in 1961 was the
centerpiece in the first of Bryant's six national titles. Quarterback Pat
Trammell, Bryant's favorite of all the players he coached, a man who
would die young, led the win.


Only once have the teams met when both were undefeated and untied.
That was in 1971. On Thursday, Sullivan was named the winner of the
Heisman Trophy, and the Tigers weren't down off their cloud on Saturday.
Tide All-American Johnny Musso and company brought them back to
earth, though, by a score of 31-7, with the Crimson Tide defense holding
Sullivan to the lowest yardage total of his career.


Bryant's 315th career coaching victory, a 28-17 win over Auburn in 1981,
made him the all-time winningest coach in Division I-A college football
history. He would win 323 games, a record that stood until broken by
Penn State mentor Joe Paterno this season. Bryant's Tide came from
behind in the fourth period on a pass from Walter Lewis to Jesse
Bendross to secure the win.


Bo Jackson soared over the top to score the winning touchdown for
Auburn with 2:26 to play in Bryant's last Iron Bowl, in 1982. It was the
Tigers' first victory over the Tide since 1972. Pat Dye, in his second year at
the Auburn helm, became the first Bryant pupil to beat the master. Two
months after the 23-22 loss, Bryant was dead of heart failure.
The following year, 1983, Bo was at it again, rushing for 256 yards in a
23-20 Auburn win.


The 1985 meeting was perhaps the most breathtaking game of the
series. The lead changed hands four times in the fourth period. Van Tiffin
kicked a 52-yard field goal on the last play to win it 25-23 for the Tide.
Beginning with the series' revival in 1948, the game was held annually at
neutral Birmingham for over 40 years. Despite protestations by Alabama
that it would never happen, Auburn moved its home games with the Tide
to its campus beginning in 1989. Dye likened it to the fall of the Berlin wall,
and Auburn dropped undefeated Alabama from No. 2 in the polls that year
with a 30-20 win.


In 1993, Auburn's first-year coach Terry Bowden closed an unprecedented
11-0 Division I-A rookie season with a 22-14 victory over Alabama on the
Plain. Backup quarterback Patrick Nix helped him get it with a spectacular
touchdown pass to Frank Sanders.


This year, the Tide rolled to a 31-7 win over the Tigers, with quarterback
Andrew Zow and tailback Santonio Beard leading the way. It was the most
lopsided win in the rivalry in almost a quarter-century and upped the
Alabama lead in the series to 37-27-1.