American Sports Thread

[Muck Savage]

If they pull off one more piece of magic in the Iron Bowl Auburn will look back at that play as seminal moment in the program's storied history.

Or, you know, the championship they already won three years ago.

?

For one, that was only their second ever national title. That would have absolutely no bearing on whether or not this year could be special for the Tigers, particularly given their decline in the last two years.

Auburn lost pretty much all the key players of the 2011 BSC national title to the draft that April so there's been very little carryover apart form a few seniors and redshirt seniors.

Given it's college football, that turnover is normal. You said if they win the Iron Bowl, a fluke play that was really a defensive c**k-up would become the "seminal moment" in the entire program's history. I dispute that.

A seminal moment, not the seminal moment.

Auburn lost pretty much all the key players of the 2011 BSC national title to the draft that April so there's been very little carry-over apart form a few seniors and redshirt seniors.

While they may not have many of the players from 2011 the carry-over is still there in the recruited players that they picked up that year and 2012 these recruits go to winning programs with a view to winning a title. Most teams have a pretty big turnover, look at Alabama and the number of 1st round draft picks last year 3, and 4 1st rounders in 2012. That's part of college football.

I don't like Alabama for a host of reasons but honestly can't see Auburn get within 15 pts of them in a few weeks. Auburn have come out the right end of too many one score games and another year could have 4 losses.

Also, what is it about Auburn and picking up QB's from other colleges?

It's a common situation in college ball, players don't get picked up by major programs or don't get the chance to play while there and then switch to junior colleges and make enough noise for major programs to pick them up. It's the closest thing to college free agency. It's much easier to get a dispensation to transfer to a big program after one season if you're playing at a lower level, you'd usually have to wait two years or even sit a year if you were switching between top-tier programs.

Aaron Rodgers attended and played for a community college his freshman year before transferring to Cal.

Can Newton from Florida in 2011 and Nick Marshall from Georgia this year, hardly 2nd rate football colleges.

Monday night was a joke, when Gronk turned to face the ball he was beside the player that intercepted it, then they say it was under thrown and not Catchable. Nuts! If that was last year the replacement Ref's would have got run out of town, remember Seattle!

[Syferus]

Cam played junior ball in Texas for a year after his stint in the Swamp. Nick Marshall did likewise after his year with Georgia. Cam wouldn't have been elligable to play for Auburn if he had joined directly from the Gators, he would have had to sit a year.

Cam and the Panthers are really rolling now too.

[ONeill]

The Chargers finally deliver. 5-6 good enough for wild card as it stands.

[AZOffaly]

Go Cards! Great hammering of the Colts.

[RealSpiritof98]

Just watch Manning v Brady. What a game!!!! SKy plus ran out in OT, had to go online to watch the rest.

[Syferus]

The forgotten Iron Bowl that sold out both Jordan-Hare and Bryant-Denny at the same time:

It's easy to understand the hype for this year's matchup of No. 1 Alabama and No. 4 Auburn. But imagine a game so huge that it sold out two stadiums at the same time.

It's the 20th anniversary of the 1993 Iron Bowl, one of the most unusual matchups in the rivalry's history. That year, defending national champion Alabama was 8-1-1 heading into a matchup with 10-0 Auburn.

But since Auburn was on probation, the game at Jordan-Hare Stadium would become the only battle between the Tide and the Tigers not shown on national television since 1981. And fans clamored to watch it: tickets for that game ($500) were more expensive than they are today ($300).

Alabama fans who couldn't get to the '93 Iron Bowl in person watched on the stadium screen at Bryant-Denny Stadium.
As a result, 47,421 tickets were sold at Bryant-Denny Stadium to see the game via simulcast -- to watch a game on an empty field, on a video board that's nowhere near the size or quality seen in stadiums today. It's widely hailed as the only game ever to sell out two stadiums. But in actuality, Bryant-Denny Stadium seated many more; it just didn't make sense to sell more tickets with the limited sight angles.

Whatever hype is being generated now might pale in comparison to the platitudes surrounding the game two decades ago. Not many broadcasts have ever started off like Auburn's did that day.

"At a remote outpost in frozen South Korea, an Army sergeant tunes his radio to the Armed Forces Network to listen as he pulls guard duty along the DMZ," Auburn announcer Jim Fyffe said. "A Selma native in Fairbanks, Alaska, is hosting a listening party today with his friends, who will hear the game via telephone, all decked out in orange and blue. A sellout crowd of 85,000 will watch in person, while 44,000 more, who scarfed up all the available tickets, will view a closed-circuit telecast in Tuscaloosa, making this the only game to sell out two stadiums at one time.

"It impacts the lives of just about everyone who lives here or ever has. If your team wins, seashells and balloons. But losing means a whole year of pure agony. It's the annual meeting between Auburn and Alabama. Hello again, everybody. War Eagle! from Jordan-Hare Stadium."

Yet despite its lore, in many ways, it's the forgotten Iron Bowl. Auburn quarterback Patrick Nix, the hero of the game, has lost pieces of it over the last two decades. Former Auburn coach Terry Bowden has, too. And like any good story, its legend has grown thanks to the limited amount of people who saw it.

Patrick Nix knows making a big play in the Iron Bowl is something that will last forever.
But Nix's story carries a message. If current Auburn backup quarterback Jeremy Johnson is listening, Nix says to be ready.

"Someone asked me the other day if this kind of game can make or break somebody, and I think I'm living proof that it can," Nix said. "You don't know if it's going to be Jeremy Johnson, or it's going to be a backup DB who comes in and makes an interception, or a defensive end that's down the line and makes a crucial sack. You don't know who it will be in a game like this and who will be remembered.

"That's what makes this game so special and this rivalry so special is that it is that big and everyone knows exactly where they are when things like that happen."

Nix is speaking from experience, particularly his time coming off the bench for Auburn in the 1993 Iron Bowl. He came on for the injured Stan White and led a remarkable comeback that sealed the Tigers' undefeated season.

He has talked about the game countless times, but now, 20 years later, he can't seem to recall who said what and when.

All Nix remembers of that November afternoon is the blasted fourth-and-14 play after White went down with a knee injury. Oddly enough, Nix remembers exactly where his helmet was -- under the bench where a grad assistant left it, just in case. And he can recall fondly how he lobbied his coaches to go for it. Bowden, Auburn's first-year head coach, finally had to tell him to shut up and run the play that very few actually saw, yet everyone professes to remember.

"The story has been exaggerated over the years," Nix said. "One time it's me throwing the winning pass, a last-second pass and all this kind of stuff, and none of that was true. It was the middle of the third quarter and we were still losing.

"There's been a lot of talk of 'Nix to Sanders,' and it all starts with that '93 game."

"I'll be honest with you: I probably gave a great speech because I was so excited, but I don't remember," said Bowden, now the head coach at Akron. "I'd like to think I gave a speech that had an impact on the players, but I've given too many that I thought were great but didn't do much. If I did, I'm glad that I did, but over the years, this being the 20th anniversary, too many pregame speeches have run together."

Jordan-Hare Stadium will play host to this year's Iron Bowl, but which team will create a lasting memory?
It's funny, Nix explained, that so many fans remember the touchdown he threw to Frank Sanders as the winning play -- a beautiful lob pass down the near sideline just shy of the goal line -- when in fact it only pulled Auburn within two points. It took a field goal and a late touchdown run to seal the victory.

"The hard work paid off," said Nix, who has gone on to lead the football program at Scottsboro High (Ala.). "The coaches knew how hard I prepared for that moment, never knowing it was going to be like that. And when it came, I took advantage of it."

"When I put Patrick Nix in, his arm's not so strong that he could throw the takeoff to the field side, so I flipped my formation and put Frank in the boundary," Bowden said of the famous touchdown pass. "Well, you see Antonio Langham start to come halfway across the field before he waved himself off. The other cornerback was good, but Antonio was a first-rounder. Well, I always wonder if Frank could have out-jumped Antonio."

A replay of the broadcast can be found online, but for those at the center of the game, some memories have faded in the last 20 years.

"There are a bunch of stories I've heard about where people were when I completed that pass against Alabama," Nix said. "Probably the craziest one was that someone was at a funeral and they were riding in the procession in the car. They were one of the pallbearers and they all wouldn't get out of the car at the funeral because of the fourth-down play. All the pallbearers stayed in the car listening to the radio, and then when it was completed the car just went crazy, rocking and everything. They all had to get out of the car and be very solemn and they were all trying to control themselves at a funeral.

"It's a different rivalry, a different deal and people don't always act quite sane over it. But it's a lot of fun."

http://espn.go.com/blog/sec/post/_/id/75347/1993-the-forgotten-iron-bowl

Auburn, Al. is going to be electric this weekend.

[cadhlancian]

The Chargers finally deliver. 5-6 good enough for wild card as it stands.

Not for them Shane. 6 teams with the same record, only one spot available. Due to tiebreakers they are further down the pecking order

[Gabriel_Hurl]

Auburn, Al. is going to be electric this weekend.

Friend of mine is heading there this weekend.

His buddy is the cross-country coach at Auburn (who is a Cork man) - http://www.auburntigers.com/sports/c-xctrack/mtt/mark_carroll_462698.html

[Syferus]

Auburn, Al. is going to be electric this weekend.

Friend of mine is heading there this weekend.

His buddy is the cross-country coach at Auburn (who is a Cork man) - http://www.auburntigers.com/sports/c-xctrack/mtt/mark_carroll_462698.html

Lucky fecker..! Graham McDowell was a student at UAB (University of Alabama at Birmingham) under a golf scholarship years ago, winning a bunch of NCAA titles, so there are a few Irish connections!

I'll be settling in for the 8:30pm (Irish) kick-off on the couch.

Really hard to get a hold on what'll happen - the Tide could overwhelm the Auburn option attack and have an easy game of it but it's just as possible Auburn will be the hungier team and at home will put in a monumental shift.

Hoping for an Auburn win but I want whoever does win today to go all the way.

[ONeill]

The Chargers finally deliver. 5-6 good enough for wild card as it stands.

Not for them Shane. 6 teams with the same record, only one spot available. Due to tiebreakers they are further down the pecking order

Disagree - they're very much in the running with 5 games left.

[stringbean]

Auburn, Al. is going to be electric this weekend.

Friend of mine is heading there this weekend.

His buddy is the cross-country coach at Auburn (who is a Cork man) - http://www.auburntigers.com/sports/c-xctrack/mtt/mark_carroll_462698.html

Lucky fecker..! Graham McDowell was a student at UAB (University of Alabama at Birmingham) under a golf scholarship years ago, winning a bunch of NCAA titles, so there are a few Irish connections!

I'll be settling in for the 8:30pm (Irish) kick-off on the couch.

Really hard to get a hold on what'll happen - the Tide could overwhelm the Auburn option attack and have an easy game of it but it's just as possible Auburn will be the hungier team and at home will put in a monumental shift.

Hoping for an Auburn win but I want whoever does win today to go all the way.

The beers are in and ready for a quality night of football. Agree Syferus, not sure what way the Iron Bowl will go, Alabama could easily blow out the Tigers but just as likely Auburn could win a tight game, it's very hard to call but still think Alabama defense will just be too good for the Tigers one-dimensional game.

Alabama v FSU would be some national championship game!

[AZOffaly]

For those of you interested in this sort of thing, Arizona are 7/2 against in the rivalry game v ASU. That's big odds. ASU have already sewn up the PAC 12 South, and this could be Arizonas bowl game. They also just beat Oregon last week. It's in Tempe so ASU are certainly favourites but I've put a sneaky tender on the cats.

[Oraisteach]

Thrilling game at the Big House.  A tie at halftime --  Michigan 21  Ohio State 21.  Two Buckeyes have been elected, one Wolverine.  About 113,000 at the game.

[BallyhaiseMan]

Thrilling game at the Big House.  A tie at halftime --  Michigan 21  Ohio State 21.  Two Buckeyes have been elected, one Wolverine.  About 113,000 at the game.

what have they been elected as Oraisteach? 

[Oraisteach]

Good one, Ballyhaise. LOL.  They have elected to leave the game at the request of the referee.