’You sunk some deep roots here’: 89 IRON BOWL

[aubiefifty 18,230]

’You sunk some deep roots here’: 30 years later, Auburn still hasn’t forgotten its 1st time

Today 7:00 AM

10-12 minutes

(Editor’s note: This is the second in a three-part series on the 1989 Iron Bowl. Part II examines what moving the 1989 game to the Plains meant and still means to Auburn.)

Mark Rose couldn’t fathom the scene as he looked down South Donahue toward Jordan-Hare Stadium.

An estimated 20,000 people lined the street from Sewell Hall to the southwest gates of the stadium on that cool, gray Saturday on the Plains 30 years ago. Fans stood shoulder-to-shoulder, making the sidewalks nearly impassable in the hours leading up to that year’s Iron Bowl — the first to ever be played on the Tigers’ campus in the rivalry’s storied history.

Rose, a redshirt senior offensive lineman in 1989, experienced five years’ worth of Tiger Walks, but he had never seen anything quite like this one. The team’s ritual pregame walk, which usually took about 5 minutes, took 15 minutes as players had to practically push their way through the masses to make it to the stadium.

“You had people crying, and you could just see it in their eyes — you know, just hugging and shaking their hands,” Rose told AL.com. “… Man, those people just wanted the game here so long, and they were tired of suffering and being treated like second-class citizens.”

It remains one of the most momentous occasions in Auburn football history. Since the Iron Bowl rivalry first began in 1893, Auburn had never hosted its biggest rival on campus.

Six of the first 12 matchups between Auburn and Alabama were played in either Tuscaloosa or Montgomery, with the other six in Birmingham, including a 6-6 tie in 1907 that preceded a 40-year hiatus in the rivalry. After the game was renewed in 1948, every meeting from then through 1988 was played at Birmingham’s Legion Field. Getting the game to the Plains was an eight-year odyssey for Pat Dye, who believed it was his duty as coach and athletics director to bring the program’s biggest game to campus.

After much debate over the game contract, including a lawsuit by the city of Birmingham against both schools, a new four-year agreement was reached. The 1989 game would be played in Auburn, with the Tigers playing one final “home game” against the Tide at Legion Field in 1991; 1990 and 1992 remained Alabama “home games” in Birmingham for the rivalry.

“There’s no way, no way people of this generation can understand what having that game meant here in 1989,” said David Housel, Auburn’s former athletics director and longtime sports information director.

Dye at the time compared it to the falling of the Berlin Wall, which happened less than a month prior to the Iron Bowl that year. Housel likened it to the children of Israel “entering into the promised land for the first time.” Those analogies may seem ridiculous to some, but it’d be difficult to otherwise encapsulate how much getting the Iron Bowl to Auburn meant to the city, the team and its fans.

Many on the Auburn side long believed that the Iron Bowl in Birmingham, despite an even ticket distribution split, was just another home game for Alabama, which still played many of its biggest games — against Tennessee, USC and Notre Dame, among others — at that stadium. Bringing the game to Auburn gave Tigers fans a feeling of being equal to their cross-state rivals, who dominated the rivalry throughout the 1970s while claiming multiple national championships.

“If you’re having to play a team ‘away’ all the time, they don’t respect you,” Quentin Riggins, an Auburn team captain in 1989 and current Board of Trustees member, told AL.com. “There’s some dissatisfaction about being unequal. On Dec. 2, 1989, we gave Auburn people who had wanted that equal footing — we gave it to them. That will always be special to me.”

Auburn fans welcomed the game to the Plains with much fervor that year. RVs rolled into town early in the week, and cars were practically stacked on top of each other along Donahue Drive. There was a growing buzz around campus that felt near chaotic, and Dye was concerned that the atmosphere might be a bit overwhelming for the team as it prepared for undefeated No. 2 Alabama.

Dye wanted to relieve some of the pressure, so the team treated it like a road game and stayed in a hotel outside of town and across the Georgia border. It was the first time the Tigers left town for a home game; after practice and a pep rally at Plainsman Park that Friday, the team loaded up in buses to a hotel before returning to town Saturday morning for Tiger Walk and what Rose described as a “mind-boggling” scene.

“It was near a frenzy,” Dye told AL.com last week. “… It was a lifetime experience walking down the street that day. We had to walk in single file and Auburn fans of every nature and every social status — you saw them all. From people that had no money to people who had lots of money, older people and people holding up babies and children everywhere. It was one-of-a-kind thing. There won’t ever be another one like it.”

Once the team arrived at the stadium and took the field for pregame warmups, a roar erupted from the crowd of 85,319. As Rose and his fellow offensive linemen took the field, they paused and took in the scene.

The stands were packed to the gills and fans lined the ramps in each corner of the stadium. Rose said it appeared as though fans were practically hanging from the railings all the way to the upper deck of Jordan-Hare Stadium. Fans rattled orange-and-blue shakers with such ferocity and force that the tinted bits of paper started coming off them, floating into the air and creating what Dye described as a blue fog above the student section that afternoon.

“I looked around, and my buddies and I said, ‘We ain’t losing this one today; you can forget that,’” Rose said. “We were just going to do whatever it took, because it was a once-in-a-lifetime deal. It was special…. It was just an electric atmosphere and just pure emotion for three hours.”

Alabama entered the game 10-0 and in search of its first outright SEC title in a decade, while Auburn was 8-2 following early-season setbacks against Florida State and Tennessee. The Tigers had won three straight Iron Bowls, and a fourth consecutive win would not only thwart the Tide’s chance at another national title but help hand Auburn a share of the SEC championship with Alabama and Tennessee.

Alabama took a 10-7 lead into halftime, but Auburn’s confidence didn’t waver. The Tigers scored 20 unanswered in the second half as they threatened to turn the rivalry into a rout. After Auburn staked a 27-10 lead in the fourth quarter, Alabama attempted a rally.

The Tide cut the lead to 10 on a quick 73-yard touchdown drive, but with a chance to make it a three-point game later in the fourth, Alabama stalled inside the Auburn 5-yard line and settled for a short field goal that cut it to seven with 1:49 to play.

“There was a lot on the line for us and we knew what was at stake,” quarterback Reggie Slack told AL.com. “Everyone in the Auburn family knew what was at stake.”

With the game on the line and a chance to run out the clock, Auburn did what was necessary to move the chains behind Rose and the rest of the offensive line before Win Lyle iced the game with a field goal. As the final seconds ticked off the clock, the scoreboard in Jordan-Hare Stadium read Auburn 30, Alabama 20.

Just like that, Auburn secured what many still believe to be one of the most significant victories in program history.

“It was just big to all the people to look at Alabama dead in the eye and be equal,” Rose said.

In the locker room after the game, Slack presented the game ball to Dye, the ninth-year Auburn coach and former Alabama assistant who made it his mission to get the Iron Bowl to campus. With Slack standing to his right, Dye delivered an emotional victory speech to his team — winners of four straight against their hated rivals and SEC champions for a third year in a row.

Dye, who self-effacingly said he “ain’t smart enough” to tell the players how he truly felt about them, tried to find the words to put the win in context. He went on for a minute, at times getting choked up, before settling on this: “You sunk some deep roots in the ground here tonight, men.”

“I think it leveled the playing field for the Auburn-Alabama game, that game did,” Charlie Trotman, a former Auburn quarterback who was the Tigers’ radio analyst in 1989, told AL.com. “I don’t think that’s an overstatement.”

Auburn’s streak in the series ended the next year, when the game returned to Birmingham. The Tide won three straight starting in 1990, all at Legion Field, while each of Auburn’s next three wins in the series all came on the Plains. In 2000, the series finally shifted full-time to each school’s campus, with Auburn hosting in odd-numbered years and Alabama in even years.

Auburn has hosted the Iron Bowl 13 times since that first time ever. The next will come this Saturday, when No. 5 Alabama visits No. 15 Auburn for a 2:30 p.m. kickoff, though it won’t have near the stakes of that 1989 game. The rivalry has since created several classics in the last 30 years, but none has had the kind of impact of that 1989 game because of what it meant to the people of Auburn and the program, which finally had the freedom to dictate where all of its home games from there on out were played.

That 1989 team has been honored multiple times since then. Gene Chizik had members of that team participate in Tiger Walk before the 2009 Iron Bowl to commemorate the 20-year anniversary. The group will again be recognized Saturday to mark 30 years since that historic Iron Bowl at Jordan-Hare Stadium.

“It’s amazing that it’s been that long, and it still seems like yesterday, which is indicative of how poignant a moment it was for everyone involved, especially on the Auburn side,” Slack said.

That’s because, even three decades later, Auburn still remembers its first time.

“We threw Alabama a bone in 1991 and got forever,” Housel said. “A bone in exchange for forever. That’s probably too simplistic… but it was the most emotional day in Auburn football history. Kick Six, Prayer at Jordan-Hare, all that stuff — two blocked punts (in 1972), all the great games in Auburn lore, Dec. 2, 1989 was the day Auburn football became whole because we could determine our own future. No excuses now this year or any other year.”

AL.com reporter Creg Stephenson contributed to this story.

Tom Green is an Auburn beat reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @Tomas_Verde.

[Eagle-1 3,821]

I've seen some great, and not so great moments in that stadium, but my my greatest memory as an Auburn fan was that few minutes at Tiger walk that day. It was a completely euphoric experience that I will forever cherish.

[Timbeaux38 312]

That day is one of my most cherished memories. I was 12 years old, and I've never seen my old man so excited for a ball game. We spent the afternoon high-fiving, hugging, screaming and celebrating. I didn't realize how cool it was at the time, but I certainly do now. Pop and I have seen plenty of games together, but this one is at the top of the list by a mile. 

[SaltyTiger 8,568]

My favorite day ever in Auburn. Build up started the Sunday before. Knew bammer was coming into an impossible situation. Remember seeing Mike Henely at half time. Grinning ear to ear and saying "gottem right where we want em". 

[nixtosanders94 2,180]

Still remember so vividly even though I was only 12.  I probably didn’t realize the full impact until a few years later but I knew it was huge. My mom was teared up at kick off.  My step dad who is a bammer just kept repeating that he couldn’t believe it.  I remember sitting on my couch and watching and being very tense when bama was up early on.  Then we kinda broke it open and it was just the most magical afternoon ever.  Only on a couple of occasions have I felt close to the same feeling watching our Tigers. 

[aubiefifty 18,230]

i still remember that asshat perkins with a sniff of his nose claiming "we will never play in Auburn. " i still cannot stand him to this day. but make no mistake about it bama was scared. they knew they lost their advantage. and ol tech Curry boy calling the fbi. why? threats are pretty normal at every game according to several coaches at the time. i think he was scared too and still do to this day. i am not real big on tennessee either. they pulled the same crap aas well refusing to play Auburn in Auburn. i got to watch the last game tennessee played us at legion field. when they started running onto the field the sky turned orange because all the auburn fans had oranges and pelted them as they hit the field. and they were chanting Go to hell bear baxley go to hell.' anyone remember that as well? and if i am not mistaken when tennessee finally came to jordan hare we stomped those cats pretty bad. good times..........lol

[wde21 344]

Probably my all time favorite game in Jordan Hare- it was electric from beginning to end. I still remember a collective silence right before kickoff as if we could hardly believe it. Getting this game in Jordan Hare is the best part of Coach Dye’s legacy.  I still have chills thinking about it! It