How Pat Dye got the Iron Bowl home and home

[aubiefifty 18,230]

‘We’ll play ’89 in Auburn’: How Pat Dye helped break Birmingham’s 40-year Iron Bowl stranglehold

Updated Nov 26, 2019;Posted Nov 25, 2019

17-21 minutes

(Editor’s note: This is the first in a three-part series on the 1989 Iron Bowl. Part I examines how Auburn coach Pat Dye made good on his bold declaration that he would host Alabama at Jordan-Hare Stadium as soon as possible).

It all started nearly 40 years ago, with a conversation between mentor and protégé.

Not long after he was hired as head football coach and athletics director at Auburn in 1981, Pat Dye found himself chatting with his old boss. Dye had served as linebackers coach on Paul “Bear” Bryant’s Alabama staff from 1965-73, before taking his first head-coaching job at East Carolina.

After a few initial pleasantries, Bryant got right down to business.

“When I saw Coach Bryant when I first got to Auburn, the first thing he said to me, very first thing, he said, ‘Well, I guess you’re going to want to take that game to Auburn,’” Dye recalled last week. “I said, ‘We’re going to take it to Auburn.’

“He said, ‘Well, we’ve got a contract through (19)88. … I said, ‘Well, we’ll play ’89 in Auburn.’”

Thus began an eight-year odyssey to move the Iron Bowl to Auburn’s Jordan-Hare Stadium. The annual rivalry game between the Crimson Tide and Tigers had been played at Birmingham’s Legion Field since the two schools started playing again in 1948 following a 40-year hiatus, and Bryant had always insisted it would never leave the Magic City if he had anything to say about it.

Little more than a half-decade after Bryant’s retirement and death, the Iron Bowl was played for the first time at Jordan-Hare on Dec. 2, 1989. Dye’s 11th-ranked Tigers ambushed unbeaten and No. 2 Alabama to the tune of a 30-20 victory, and the Iron Bowl was never the same again.

“It was just part of my job as athletic director,” Dye said. “But I didn’t do it alone. I had the great support of the trustees and administration.”

Alabama and Auburn played 12 times in football between 1893 and 1907, with six of those meetings in Birmingham, but four others in Montgomery and two in Tuscaloosa. Following a 6-6 tie in 1907, a 40-year stalemate began.

Why they stopped playing is a matter of some debate. In one telling, Auburn alleged that Alabama had used “ringers” (players who were not students) in 1905 and 1906, both Crimson Tide shutout victories. Other alleged complaints ranged from illegal shifting to per diem amounts for travel to how officials would be chosen.

Even after Alabama and Auburn joined the Southeastern Conference as charter members in 1933, they continued to not play in football. By 1945, the state legislature had begun pushing for the Auburn-Alabama rivalry to be renewed. Two years later, a rider was attached to a state appropriations bill that would withhold funds from both schools if they did not agree to meet on the gridiron.

A banner headline in the May 20, 1948, edition of The Birmingham News read “Alabama-Auburn Game Booked Here.” The story reported that both the 1948 and 1949 Alabama-Auburn games would be played at Legion Field, which was then the largest football stadium in the state.

Legion Field held 47,000 fans in 1948, dwarfing both Tuscaloosa’s Denny Stadium (31,000) and Auburn Stadium (15,000; expanded to 21,500 and renamed Cliff Hare Stadium in 1949). It was only logical to continue playing the game in Birmingham in 1950 and beyond, given the size disparity in the facilities.

Alabama also played major rivals such as Tennessee and Georgia Tech in Birmingham in those days (and would continue to do so well into the 1990s). Auburn did likewise, playing Georgia Tech at Legion Field until 1972 and Tennessee there until a few years later.

At some point in the 1960s, the Alabama-Auburn game was re-christened as the Iron Bowl, a name that was a nod to Birmingham’s legacy in the steel industry and borrowed from a popular motorcycle racing series of the day. The game maintained a 50/50 ticket split between Alabama and Auburn fans, though whatever “neutral site” Legion Field had ever been had begun to fade by the early 1980s.

“Morris Savage, one our trustees who played on the 1957 national championship team, said it best,” remembered David Housel, Auburn’s former sports information director and later its athletics director. “He said, ‘Legion Field was as neutral a location as Normandy was on D-Day in 1944.’

“You’ve got Coach Bryant’s (marker) out front — and it ought to be out front. … But it gets kind of rough when the overwhelming majority of concessions sellers, both in the stands and in the booths, had on Alabama (gear). The ushers had on Alabama stuff. I remember going up there one time and parking in the officials lot, and the guy said ‘hey, Auburn boy, park over there if you can figure out how to get there.’”

That disparity in fan numbers between Auburn and Alabama was due at least in part to the Crimson Tide’s on-field dominance under Bryant. The Alabama won six national championships and 13 SEC titles during Bryant’s 25-year tenure, and beat Auburn in 19 of those years.

Most excruciating for Auburn was a 9-year Alabama winning streak from 1973-81, the last of which was Bryant’s record-setting 315th career victory. That streak had begun against legendary Auburn coach Ralph “Shug” Jordan, whose own 25-year tenure from 1951-75 included a losing record (9-16) vs. Alabama.

“I think Auburn developed a complex about going to Birmingham,” Housel said. “I don’t necessarily think that spilled over into the team, but Auburn’s fans sure had a complex about going. We played Oregon State up there in 1973, and we played Louisville up there in 1974, and a lot of Auburn season-ticket holders just said they weren’t going.”

Auburn began to phase out playing at Legion Field over the years, playing its last game vs. Tennessee there in 1978. By 1980, the Tigers were playing only Alabama in Birmingham.

The watershed year for the Iron Bowl was 1982, Bryant’s last at Alabama and Dye’s second at Auburn. The Tigers won 23-22 on Bo Jackson’s famed touchdown dive “Over the Top” in the fourth quarter, a moment so exhilarating for Auburn fans that they tore down the goal posts at Legion Field.

Dye knew he had legal grounds to move the Iron Bowl to Auburn, based on the language in the contractual agreement between the two schools. But he was smart enough not to bring it up while Bryant was still alive, let alone still coaching.

Ray Perkins replaced Bryant as Alabama’s head coach in late 1982, and ascended to athletics director after Bryant’s sudden death on Jan. 26, 1983. Perkins echoed his old coach’s viewpoint that the Iron Bowl should always be played in Birmingham.

The Montgomery Advertiser’s Phillip Marshall wrote in a column published on Dec. 9, 1984, that an anonymous member of Auburn’s board of trustees was going to “demand” that the Iron Bowl be played on campus after the schools’ contract with Birmingham expired at the end of the 1988 season. Quoted in the same column, Perkins was nonplussed.

“Demand? That’s pretty strong, isn’t it?,” Perkins said. “I’m not going to worry about it. I’ve said in the past that the game traditionally has been played on neutral turf and that it should stay that way. … They can demand anything they want, but that doesn’t mean they are going to get it.”

Auburn was in the process of expanding Jordan-Hare Stadium from 72,169 seats to 85,214 for the 1987 season, so the old arguments that the on-campus facilities were not large enough for the Iron Bowl wouldn’t hold up much longer. Legion Field by the mid-1980s had a capacity of 75,808. (Alabama’s Bryant-Denny Stadium then seated a little over 60,000, but expanded to 70,123 in 1988).

By mid-1985, Dye began to talk openly of moving the game to Auburn in 1989. Though tickets were split evenly between the two schools for games at Legion Field, Auburn was designated the “home team” on the scoreboard (and in terms of uniform color) for odd-year games, while Alabama was home team in even years.

Consequently, the 1987 Iron Bowl was the last Auburn was contractually obligated to play as the home team at Legion Field. Dye told The Birmingham News on June 23, 1985, that he was prepared to bring the Iron Bowl to Jordan-Hare Stadium in 1989.

“Birmingham has been good to Auburn,” Dye said at the time. “But I just believe that when it’s our home game we have the right to play where we want to play and Alabama has the right to play where it wants to play. … It’s inevitable. We’re going to have one of the finest stadiums in the country and it would be foolish on our part if we didn’t play Alabama at our place when we’re the home team.”

On Dec. 21, 1985, Auburn’s board of trustees “unanimously authorized” Dye to play the Iron Bowl at Jordan-Hare Stadium every other year and to “negotiate a contract with the University of Alabama to that end.” But Alabama officials appeared unmoved.

Perkins was still intent on keeping the game in Birmingham, and even worried (some might say threatened) that the rivalry would be canceled again over the move. Alabama president Joab Thomas told the Associated Press the day after Auburn’s trustees voted to move the game, that Birmingham was the “ideal location” for the Iron Bowl and said that the Auburn board resolution “is not something we’ll be acting on in the near future.”

During a November 1986 speech to the Montgomery Quarterback Club, Perkins asked for a show of hands among Auburn fans who wanted the Iron Bowl at Jordan-Hare Stadium every other year. After virtually all of them raised their hands, Perkins told them “it won’t happen.”

Perkins later clarified his remarks to explain that he meant that the people of the state “won’t let it happen.” He insisted, “I didn’t say ‘never.’”

When reminded last week of Perkins’ 1986 remarks, Dye said flatly “he didn’t have a choice.”

Perkins would exit the scene entirely a few months later, when he left Alabama to become head coach of the NFL’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers. At that point, Alabama split the athletics director and football coach jobs, appointing former Crimson Tide quarterback Steve Sloan as AD.

Sloan took a softer tone than Perkins had, telling the Huntsville Times in February 1987 that the Iron Bowl would continue regardless of the venue. He added that playing games on campus didn’t take away from such rivalries as Ohio State-Michigan or Southern Cal-Notre Dame.

“I just think the game is bigger than some feelings that we might have about our program,” Sloan said. “We’re obviously going to negotiate hard about the things we believe and obviously we like playing the game in Birmingham. Everybody knows that. We’ll probably keep playing the game in Birmingham even if Auburn plays their game in Auburn.”

Sounds simple, right? But when it comes to the Auburn-Alabama rivalry, nothing ever is.

In May 1987, with the final scheduled Auburn “home” Iron Bowl at Legion Field a few months away, The Tuscaloosa News published an explosive article about the game’s future.

According to the story, Thomas produced a 1980 letter signed by former Auburn athletics director Lee Hayley and former Alabama associate AD Sam Bailey, which appeared to extend the agreement to play the Iron Bowl at Legion Field through 1991.

The original Iron Bowl contract, agreed to in 1972, called for the game to be played at Legion Field through 1987 (as Auburn believed at the time). However, there was also a second letter to Hayley from Bryant containing the handwritten notation “1988-91 added attached.”

“We are enclosing signed copy of extension of games scheduled for 1988, 1989, 1990, and 1991,” Bryant wrote to Hayley. “One copy of agreement is being retained for our files.”

Though Auburn officials declined comment, The Montgomery Advertiser reported that same day that a “highly placed Auburn University source” rejected Alabama’s claims, saying “we plan to say we are going to play the game in Auburn in 1989. If they show up, fine. If not, we’ll consider it a forfeit.”

Into this hornet’s nest stepped a man who had no direct experience with the Iron Bowl. Following Perkins’ departure, Alabama hired former Georgia Tech and NFL center Bill Curry, who had been coach at his alma mater from 1980-86.

Curry, already viewed with suspicion by Alabama fans and insiders alike, had little choice but to try and stay out of the way.

“There was a tradition of never playing (the Iron Bowl on campus),” Curry told AL.com recently. “Steve Sloan and I had talked about it many, many times. Of course, he represented Coach Bryant’s position by being one of Coach Bryant’s greatest players and greatest leaders. And I represented quite the opposite in the minds of a lot of people.”

The negotiations over the future location of the Iron Bowl continued throughout the summer of 1987 and into the fall and winter, with even threats that the state legislature would eventually have to get involved. In January 1988, the city of Birmingham sued both schools, arguing that it had an “iron-clad” contract to keep the game at Legion Field through 1991 based on the Bryant-Hayley letters.

With the future of the Alabama-Auburn rivalry in the hands of the courts, no one was sure when a solution might come. Finally, in April 1988, a compromise was reached.

Birmingham mayor Richard Arrington announced that the 1989 Iron Bowl would be played at Jordan-Hare Stadium according to the terms of a new four-year agreement between the city and the two schools. In exchange, Auburn would play one final “home” game in Birmingham vs. Alabama in 1991 (the 1988 and 1990 Iron Bowls would remain Alabama home games at Legion Field).

“I think it’s very, very important that Auburn said the 1989 game would be played at Auburn,” Housel said. “Alabama wanted to play in Birmingham in ’89 and then come to Auburn in ’91. But Auburn said ‘no way.’ We said ‘it’s going to be in Auburn in ’89, and we’ll go to Birmingham in ’91.' So it all balanced out, but perception-wise, because Auburn got ’89, it appears as though Auburn got the upper-hand on them.”

After Alabama won the 1984 and 1985 Iron Bowls, Auburn put together its longest streak since the 1950s when it beat the Crimson Tide at Legion Field in 1986, 1987 and 1988. The latter game was the first not to feature a 50/50 ticket split, a change that was also part of the agreement reached that spring with the city of Birmingham.

Sloan resigned from his job as Alabama’s AD under pressure in August 1989. Though school president Roger Sayers (who had replaced Joab Thomas the previous year) said at the time “no single event or action” led to Sloan’s departure, many believed then and still believe now that he was being held responsible for allowing Dye and Auburn to take the Iron Bowl out of Birmingham.

Thirty years later, Curry agrees with Dye’s sentiment that the move was “inevitable.”

“There was such a groundswell for it, I don’t think anything would have kept it from happening,” Curry said. “There was no one at Alabama that could have said ‘I don’t think we ought to go over there.’ There was only one person that could have made that statement, and he (Bryant) had passed away a few years before.”

Though he’d lost his first two Iron Bowls in Birmingham, Curry had his best Alabama team yet in 1989. The Crimson Tide surged out to a 10-0 record on the strength of back-to-back victories over national powers Tennessee and Penn State in October, and took over the No. 2 ranking in the polls the week before the first Iron Bowl in Auburn.

Auburn was plugging along at 8-2 and ranked No. 11, having lost by seven at Tennessee in September and by eight at Florida State in October. The Tigers carried a 14-game home winning streak into the Alabama game at Jordan-Hare on the first Saturday in December.

Alabama led 10-7 at halftime, but Auburn scored on four straight possessions to take control of the game at 27-10 with 9:36 remaining. The Crimson Tide then scored 10 straight points to get within a touchdown, but a Win Lyle field goal with 33 seconds to play finally put the game out of reach.

Many of those in attendance said Jordan-Hare Stadium was never louder or more raucous than it was on that day. Former Auburn running back Stacy Danley maintains the Tigers were not going to lose in that atmosphere, regardless of the opponent.

“The day of the game, and seeing the crowd for Tiger Walk, and going through Tiger Walk, it was over,” Danley told AL.com. “The game was over that morning at Tiger Walk. It wouldn’t have mattered who we played. If we played the Dallas Cowboys that day, they were going to be in a for a run for their money.”

Though Auburn had shown what an on-campus Iron Bowl could be, there was no immediate momentum for Alabama to move its home games against the Tigers to Bryant-Denny Stadium. For one thing, the Crimson Tide’s on-campus facility was still quite a bit smaller than Legion Field.

Alabama renewed its contract with the city Birmingham beginning in 1992, agreeing to play three home games a year (including the Iron Bowl, when applicable) at Legion Field. Bryant-Denny Stadium expanded to 83,818 for the 1998 season, and the Crimson Tide played Tennessee for the first time in Tuscaloosa the following year (Alabama finally played its last home game at Legion Field in 2003).

The Iron Bowl came to Bryant-Denny Stadium in 2000, making it a true home-and-home rivalry. There have still been many Alabama supporters over the years who have lamented the game leaving Birmingham, but Dye says even the hard-liners have come around.

“Alabama didn’t like it,” Dye said. “But when Alabama folks came down and saw the atmosphere, and the tailgating and things going on in and around the stadium … I knew that they would have to take the Auburn-Alabama game to Tuscaloosa.

“You couldn't do it in Birmingham because they didn't have the same set-up for tailgating and that sort of thing in and around Legion Field. But that took it just closer. And now they've got, not only for the Auburn-Alabama game, when its plays there, every other game that they play there, they've got great atmosphere in and around the stadium at Tuscaloosa, just like we have.”

(Coming Tuesday: Auburn players, coaches and supporters reflect on the emotion of Dec. 2, 1989, and the pride they take in being involved in — and winning — the first Iron Bowl at Jordan-Hare Stadium).

[aucanucktiger 1,889]

I remember the buttload of Bammers screaming THEY would never abandon Bamaham like Auburn did. Yeah that lasted like a year. 

[SaltyTiger 8,568]

Always agreed that much of the "Eric Ramsey" mess from one B'ham law firm was a bit of payback for Dye pulling that game out of Birmingham. 

 

[gr82be 14,906]

Vision and leadership 

Thank goodness he wanted better for the Auburn and its fans. Just because it has always happened one way doesn't mean you can't want more.

Hmmm, wonder if that could be applied to other things or even people. Nah, we're Auburn, we know our place. 

 

 

[Dan-0 479]

I remember tons of Bammers crying that Auburn was ruining the Iron Bowl. They claimed it just would never be the same, it just had to played in B´ham to be the Iron Bowl.