I'd say the IB because I think in-state rivalries are a bit more intense than border state rivalries. Teams from the same state are typically fighting for the same recruits who want to stay within their home state to play.
World's largest cocktail party vs Iron Bowl
- Thread starter Tide&True
- Start date
Currently, the CP is the better game as the fans are evenly divided and it's a neutral site, like the IB used to be.
While recent years have included more high-profile matchups in the IB, I can't get past that 50/50 crowd in a neutral site. It just seems so hateful. I love it and wish the IB had that.
While recent years have included more high-profile matchups in the IB, I can't get past that 50/50 crowd in a neutral site. It just seems so hateful. I love it and wish the IB had that.
To me those two elements is what made the rivalry what it was. I think Auburn thought the game being in Birmingham was an advantage for Bama...kind of like a home game. Before it’s over with Georgia and Florida will be home and home as well...just a matter of time.
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We had it before P Fain Dye decided he could get back at Bama by moving the Iron Bowl. We he got his wish and Bama is still king and Pat is just an old drunk.
There will be more drunks at the Worlds Largest Cocktail Party
than at the Iron Bowl... (I think)
Doing a BAC on fans could easily prove me wrong.
Buck Belue, Lindsay Scott, and Larry Munson beg to differ...
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The alcohol content in the air will be .08 when LSU arrives in Tuscaloosa . . .
For me it's the Iron Bowl.
There's more natural born hate between the two sides.
While the game is not played in B'ham anymore it still has a lot on the line (usually) for one team or the other.
Wouldn't mind it being played at a neutral site again w/the 50/50 split but not at Legion Field.
There's more natural born hate between the two sides.
While the game is not played in B'ham anymore it still has a lot on the line (usually) for one team or the other.
Wouldn't mind it being played at a neutral site again w/the 50/50 split but not at Legion Field.
Legion Field in its prime, I agree. Legion Field as it stands today, it’s a dump that needs to be destroyed.
my biggest memory from there is being in the end zone corner with my grandparents right behind bennett's sack of beuerline. it seemed like the play was in slow motion as it happened in front of us. even my grandma was on her feet yelling after that one.
There are parts of it that are structurally unsafe and then there is the neighborhood around it.
It's an amusing coincidence that I'm proof-reading a write-up to post tomorrow morning on.....wait for it........the 1985 Iron Bowl.
I decided a few weeks ago that the off week would be a good time to explain to the newer generation why that game is so revered among Generation X and - even to a point - the Boomers. And a lot of my epilogue has already been touched on in this post.
What really "made" the Iron Bowl was the fact that the game was televised nationally on ABC during a crucial period of time, 1981-1986.
Prior to the 1984 SCOTUS ruling that demolished the NCAA's oversight regarding televised games for the schools, you RARELY saw
Alabama play on TV except for the bowl game. Once or twice a year. I mean, can you even imagine such nowadays? But some of us lived it.
Go look at the Wikipedia page for each Alabama season. Here are our televised games LIVE (note: ESPN showed games on tape delay prior to September 1, 1984; so when you see that Alabama played Tennessee on ESPN in 1979, that game was NOT seen as it happened but shown later in the day. So here are the Bama games on that aired LIVE:
1981 - LSU (prime time Saturday night, a rarity), Penn State (Bryant ties Stagg), Auburn (Bryant passes Stagg)
1982 - Penn St, Auburn
1983 - Penn St, LSU, Boston College, Auburn*
1984 - Boston College, Ga Tech, Georgia, Auburn
1985 - UGA, ATM, Vandy, Penn St, Tenn, LSU, Auburn
Note: some of those contests in 1983 were REGIONAL telecasts and not NATIONAL ones.
* - I presume the 1983 IB was the national game because I watched it on Armed Forces Network in (then West) Germany.
Did you notice the sudden increase in games AFTER the 1984 court ruling?
So fans saw us play our 1-2 national games a year and they saw us play Auburn, and they got some great highlights:
1981 - Bryant breaks the record (that technically we now know he didn't break) and Auburn keeps it a game until the fourth
1982 - Auburn wins by one with Bo over the top
1983 - Auburn wins by 3 with Bo having a Mike Rozier-like day
1984 - Alabama wins by 2
1985 - no comment necessary
1986 - Auburn wins in the final minute on a reverse to Tillman and by four points
So fans got their first looks nationally at Alabama and Auburn playing each other and always playing a good game.
Keep in mind also that this game would almost always be played either the weekend after Thanksgiving or the following week.
Back then the NFL didn't have games on Thursday night (they usually had one a year), didn't have off weeks, and didn't start playing
Saturday games until December.
So you had fans that tuned in the 1981 Iron Bowl and had good memories and then got a series of great games.
I hate both Oklahoma and Nebraska but back in the day that game was "must-see TV" every year.
When fans no longer had to sit at home listening to the radio to have the Iron Bowl, it lost a little something.
When the game got moved from the 50/50 split in B'ham, it lost something.
And the reality is that for every 2009 or 2013 Iron Bowl, there are 2-3 mid-level to dud games that you know before November who is
going to win the game.
I'm not some old dude waxing nostalgic for a time gone, but there WAS something to be said for listening to games on the radio and using your imagination as to what actually happened or what the play looked like.
Let's also be clear - BOTH the IB AND the CP are RECENT in the long history of college football. The Iron Bowl didn't even crank up until 1948 (after that four-decade hiatus), and you couldn't even call it a rivalry. Except for the five-year span starting with Ears Whitworth and ending Bryant's first year, the Iron Bowl was not even remotely a rivalry or a close game most times. From 1959-1980, Alabama went 18-4 in the series, which is more akin to the 20th Century Yankees-Red Sox than to an actual rivalry. And look at the scores from MOST of those games, it's not even close: 34-0, 38-0, 30-3, 31-0, 31-7, 35-0, 28-0, 38-7 - all Tide wins in that 22-game span. One Auburn win was a blowout (49-26) and another was the infamous Punt game.
The Iron Bowl was a in-state scrap among two schools that didn't even register nationally until 1981. Much like Nebraska's "football dynasty," it is the result of an accidental confluence of factors at the right time. In 1971, nobody outside of Alabama gave a damn who won the game unless they were originally from the state or went to one of the schools.
If you look at the CP, it's kinda close (51-43-2 in favor of UGA), but even that's misleading. It's a series full of long periods of time and dominance by one team or the other (Florida going 10-2 in the mid-50s to mid-60s, UGA going 13-3 in the 70s and 80s, Florida owning 1990-2010). And again, most of the games weren't even really close regardless who won.
Let me put it this way: if you're a CASUAL CFB fan and not a fan of either team.....and you're my age.....
WHAT SPECIFICALLY do you remember about any UGA-UF game prior to 2007 OTHER THAN "Buck Belue to Lindsay Scott"?
The game IS a big deal and as the late Lewis Grizzard called it, "The Annual Celebration of the Repeal of Prohibition," but I honestly think that because of the 80s and 90s and a series of close games, the IB is better known nationally.
Of course, 81 hit it right on the head, too - which is better for what?
I decided a few weeks ago that the off week would be a good time to explain to the newer generation why that game is so revered among Generation X and - even to a point - the Boomers. And a lot of my epilogue has already been touched on in this post.
What really "made" the Iron Bowl was the fact that the game was televised nationally on ABC during a crucial period of time, 1981-1986.
Prior to the 1984 SCOTUS ruling that demolished the NCAA's oversight regarding televised games for the schools, you RARELY saw
Alabama play on TV except for the bowl game. Once or twice a year. I mean, can you even imagine such nowadays? But some of us lived it.
Go look at the Wikipedia page for each Alabama season. Here are our televised games LIVE (note: ESPN showed games on tape delay prior to September 1, 1984; so when you see that Alabama played Tennessee on ESPN in 1979, that game was NOT seen as it happened but shown later in the day. So here are the Bama games on that aired LIVE:
1981 - LSU (prime time Saturday night, a rarity), Penn State (Bryant ties Stagg), Auburn (Bryant passes Stagg)
1982 - Penn St, Auburn
1983 - Penn St, LSU, Boston College, Auburn*
1984 - Boston College, Ga Tech, Georgia, Auburn
1985 - UGA, ATM, Vandy, Penn St, Tenn, LSU, Auburn
Note: some of those contests in 1983 were REGIONAL telecasts and not NATIONAL ones.
* - I presume the 1983 IB was the national game because I watched it on Armed Forces Network in (then West) Germany.
Did you notice the sudden increase in games AFTER the 1984 court ruling?
So fans saw us play our 1-2 national games a year and they saw us play Auburn, and they got some great highlights:
1981 - Bryant breaks the record (that technically we now know he didn't break) and Auburn keeps it a game until the fourth
1982 - Auburn wins by one with Bo over the top
1983 - Auburn wins by 3 with Bo having a Mike Rozier-like day
1984 - Alabama wins by 2
1985 - no comment necessary
1986 - Auburn wins in the final minute on a reverse to Tillman and by four points
So fans got their first looks nationally at Alabama and Auburn playing each other and always playing a good game.
Keep in mind also that this game would almost always be played either the weekend after Thanksgiving or the following week.
Back then the NFL didn't have games on Thursday night (they usually had one a year), didn't have off weeks, and didn't start playing
Saturday games until December.
So you had fans that tuned in the 1981 Iron Bowl and had good memories and then got a series of great games.
I hate both Oklahoma and Nebraska but back in the day that game was "must-see TV" every year.
When fans no longer had to sit at home listening to the radio to have the Iron Bowl, it lost a little something.
When the game got moved from the 50/50 split in B'ham, it lost something.
And the reality is that for every 2009 or 2013 Iron Bowl, there are 2-3 mid-level to dud games that you know before November who is
going to win the game.
I'm not some old dude waxing nostalgic for a time gone, but there WAS something to be said for listening to games on the radio and using your imagination as to what actually happened or what the play looked like.
Let's also be clear - BOTH the IB AND the CP are RECENT in the long history of college football. The Iron Bowl didn't even crank up until 1948 (after that four-decade hiatus), and you couldn't even call it a rivalry. Except for the five-year span starting with Ears Whitworth and ending Bryant's first year, the Iron Bowl was not even remotely a rivalry or a close game most times. From 1959-1980, Alabama went 18-4 in the series, which is more akin to the 20th Century Yankees-Red Sox than to an actual rivalry. And look at the scores from MOST of those games, it's not even close: 34-0, 38-0, 30-3, 31-0, 31-7, 35-0, 28-0, 38-7 - all Tide wins in that 22-game span. One Auburn win was a blowout (49-26) and another was the infamous Punt game.
The Iron Bowl was a in-state scrap among two schools that didn't even register nationally until 1981. Much like Nebraska's "football dynasty," it is the result of an accidental confluence of factors at the right time. In 1971, nobody outside of Alabama gave a damn who won the game unless they were originally from the state or went to one of the schools.
If you look at the CP, it's kinda close (51-43-2 in favor of UGA), but even that's misleading. It's a series full of long periods of time and dominance by one team or the other (Florida going 10-2 in the mid-50s to mid-60s, UGA going 13-3 in the 70s and 80s, Florida owning 1990-2010). And again, most of the games weren't even really close regardless who won.
Let me put it this way: if you're a CASUAL CFB fan and not a fan of either team.....and you're my age.....
WHAT SPECIFICALLY do you remember about any UGA-UF game prior to 2007 OTHER THAN "Buck Belue to Lindsay Scott"?
The game IS a big deal and as the late Lewis Grizzard called it, "The Annual Celebration of the Repeal of Prohibition," but I honestly think that because of the 80s and 90s and a series of close games, the IB is better known nationally.
Of course, 81 hit it right on the head, too - which is better for what?
There's more natural hate between the two sides because they live in the SAME STATE.
There's probably more hate between UGA and Tech in terms of everyday than with Florida - in terms of daily interaction.
My family likes the World's Largest Cocktail Party better because I can watch without caring who wins thus saving much angst over the weekend.
Was at that game as well. Little did any of us know how iconic a play that would be in the history of Bama football. One of my favorite IB's that I've attended was the "Wrong Way Bo" game. We were having a down year but it was a great day for Tide fans at Legion Field.
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