The Iron Bowl is an American college football rivalry game played annually by the football teams of the two largest public universities in the U.S. state of Alabama, the University of Alabama Crimson Tide and the Auburn University Tigers. The series is considered one of the best and most hard-fought rivalries in all of sports. As the rivalry was mainly played in Birmingham, Alabama, for many years, the name of the Iron Bowl comes from Birmingham's historic role in the steel industry. Alabama leads the series with an overall record of 42–34–1.
Since 2000, the games are played at Jordan–Hare Stadium in Auburn every odd-numbered year, and in Bryant–Denny Stadium at Tuscaloosa every even-numbered year. For much of the 20th century the game was played every year at Legion Field in Birmingham. Alabama has a 32–15 record in games played at Legion Field, while Auburn has a 7–4 record in games played at Jordan–Hare Stadium and a 7–2 record in games played in Tuscaloosa (5–2 at Bryant–Denny Stadium). The game is traditionally played on Thanksgiving Day weekend. In 1993 both schools agreed to move the game up to the week before Thanksgiving to give themselves a bye for a potential SEC Championship Game berth, but in 2007 the conference voted to disallow any team from having a bye before the league championship game, returning the game to its traditional Thanksgiving weekend spot.
Read more about Iron Bowl: History, Foy-ODK Sportsmanship Award, Notable Games, Game Results
Famous quotes containing the words iron and/or bowl:
“Should the German people lay down their arms, the Soviets ... would occupy all eastern and south-eastern Europe together with the greater part of the Reich. Over all this territory, which with the Soviet Union included, would be of enormous extent, an iron curtain would at once descend.”
—Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945)
“Clearly, some time ago makers and consumers of American junk food passed jointly through some kind of sensibility barrier in the endless quest for new taste sensations. Now they are a little like those desperate junkies who have tried every known drug and are finally reduced to mainlining toilet bowl cleanser in an effort to get still higher.”
—Bill Bryson (b. 1951)