Regardless of ranking, regardless of future bowl games and playoff spots, betting on the Iron Bowl is simple and endless. If you can give your fans an advantage over the opposition at every cookout, church fellowship hall, grocery store line, and tea box in the state of Alabama all year long, well, that washes away a lot of sins. And right now, there are a few coaches in dire need of the kind of divine providence that comes with an Iron Bowl victory.
It’s always been that way, every time Auburn and Alabama have gotten together. Gene Stallings, Alabama’s national championship winning head coach and Bear Bryant disciple, had a simple rule for coaching in Tuscaloosa. “If you want to be a successful coach at Alabama, you have to beat Auburn,” he said in 2013. “You don’t have to beat them every year, but you have to beat them more than they beat you. “
The same rule applies to The Plains. You can grind your way through Auburn all season, but if you can close out the year with a win over the elite Alabama — even better, if you can destroy their title hopes — you’ll be in good graces and job security.
Between the two of them, Alabama’s Kalen DeBoer and Auburn’s Hugh Freeze have coached a total of one (1) Iron Bowl. That one was an instant classic — last year’s “Undertaker” win at Alabama — but even games that seem routine outside of Alabama carry epochal weight.
“To sit in this spot and lose one like we did last year is still not right,” Freeze said earlier this week. “I know the Auburn faithful have had to endure that and we want to change that feeling in this building and for our great fan base in this state.”
“Since I’ve been here, I think I hear about it every day,” DeBoer said this week, “and I understand what it means and the excitement.” All due respect to the head coach of the Alabama Crimson Tide, but he can’t just yet indeed understand it. Not until kickoff and not after, either way.
For the coaches, the weight of the Iron Bowl looms like storm clouds in the distance. Former Alabama head coach Bill Curry failed to win the Iron Bowl in all three tries for Alabama, including the first ever at Auburn’s Jordan-Hare Stadium, and (allegedly) got a brick through a window for his efforts. After the third loss, he left Tuscaloosa for a less stressful job leading the Kentucky Wildcats.
The reverse is also true. Former Auburn coach Tommy Tuberville once won six straight over Alabama — his last victory coming over first-year Alabama coach Nick Saban — and parlayed the name value of that accomplishment into a U.S. Senate seat a decade later. Freeze got the Auburn job in part because of his success in beating Saban back-to-back in the mid-2010s while at Ole Miss.
“It’s being talked about, not just to me, but it’s being talked about among everybody in their homes, and it’s Thanksgiving weekend, so if you’re not at the game, you’re watching it at home with your friends and family,” DeBoer said. “I’ve heard stories of families being torn apart in a lot of different ways because of it, so that’s what rivalry games are about, and I know this is a rivalry that’s on another level.”
Freeze may have kept the Wolves at bay in last week’s upset win over Texas A&M, but he would quiet them down nicely with a win over Alabama. That would be Auburn’s sixth win of the season, putting the Tigers in a bowl game and allaying concerns that Freeze isn’t the guy to get the program back to national competitiveness.
DeBoer walks an even higher rope. Alabama (8-3) hasn’t lost more than three games — or single-digit wins overall — since Saban’s first year, when the Tide had a 7-6 record on the field. Yes, DeBoer is still in his first year, but an uninspiring record, a 12-team playoff failure, a losing to Auburn? The honeymoon is long behind us, a trial separation is already being considered.
At both Alabama and Auburn, an Iron Bowl win is both necessary and sufficient for a head coach to be successful. National championships get you statues, but Iron Bowl wins make everyday life a lot easier. Beat that blue blood or that cow college across the state and all is right with the world. Lose and it’s a long 364 days… with no guarantee you’ll be around to see another one.