I think a lot of Auburn fans who formed their views of the college football world during the Bryant era have a bit of myopia with respect to the big picture. The fact is this--the period between 1958 and 1982 was an abberation from the norm caused by the fact that Alabama had the most effective coach in the history of college football.
Here's an analogy: I teach high school. In 1931, our varsity high school baseball team lost a game to our elementary school. The high school team wasn't particularly bad, nor did they play particularly poorly in that game; nonetheless had they played ten games the elementary would have won eight. Despite this, I can say with great certainty that had the teams played every year since and were to play each year for the next thousand the elementary wouldn't win a single game. The 1931 game was not a fluke, but it was an aberration, caused by the fact that the elementary pitcher was a sixth-grader by the name of Bob Feller.
What Feller was to that game, Bryant was to the AU-UAT series when he was coach. No other man could have beaten Auburn 19 out of 25, period. Bryant had the foresight to know how to manipulate a system that still thought of college football in terms of George Gipp and Nile Kinnick and the "scholar-athlete" of Grantland Rice in a way that no coach would have done before and no coach could have done since, and combined it with ruthless control and a truly awesome coaching talent. No coach, no team, would have consistently beaten Bryant had they played his team every year. It simply was not possibile.
When Bryant died, all this evaporated. Alabama football was a function of Bryant, not vice versa, and so any SEC-caliber Auburn coach would get the best of Alabama because that is the natural order of things:
AU-UAT series record, 1892-1957: 12-9-1 (0.568)
AU-UAT series record, 1983-2006: 14-10-0 (0.583)
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I think a lot of Auburn fans who formed their views of the college football world during the Bryant era have a bit of myopia with respect to the big picture. The fact is this--the period between 1958 and 1982 was an abberation from the norm caused by the fact that Alabama had the most effective coach in the history of college football.
Here's an analogy: I teach high school. In 1931, our varsity high school baseball team lost a game to our elementary school. The high school team wasn't particularly bad, nor did they play particularly poorly in that game; nonetheless had they played ten games the elementary would have won eight. Despite this, I can say with great certainty that had the teams played every year since and were to play each year for the next thousand the elementary wouldn't win a single game. The 1931 game was not a fluke, but it was an aberration, caused by the fact that the elementary pitcher was a sixth-grader by the name of Bob Feller.
What Feller was to that game, Bryant was to the AU-UAT series when he was coach. No other man could have beaten Auburn 19 out of 25, period. Bryant had the foresight to know how to manipulate a system that still thought of college football in terms of George Gipp and Nile Kinnick and the "scholar-athlete" of Grantland Rice in a way that no coach would have done before and no coach could have done since, and combined it with ruthless control and a truly awesome coaching talent. No coach, no team, would have consistently beaten Bryant had they played his team every year. It simply was not possibile.
When Bryant died, all this evaporated. Alabama football was a function of Bryant, not vice versa, and so any SEC-caliber Auburn coach would get the best of Alabama because that is the natural order of things:
AU-UAT series record, 1892-1957: 12-9-1 (0.568)
AU-UAT series record, 1983-2006: 14-10-0 (0.583)
Auburn, all things being equal, will generally win six of ten over Alabama. Not because of Dye, but because of the lack of Bryant. Yes, Dye helped. Had another coach been in his place, things might have been delayed a few more years before getting back to normal, but the natural order of the Auburn-Alabama series would have returned by 1990 even without Dye.
What you see right now is normalcy in this series. It isn't special, it isn't a gift. There will never be another Bryant, and so there will never be another 6-19-0. Alabama will no more return to the program of your youth than will my elementary school produce another Bob Feller.
Enjoy it boys, it's here to stay.
