Who's number 1? When all the January 1 bowl games are over, the Auburn Tigers will still be undefeated and could find themselves with a share of the national championship

Sporting News, The, Nov 29, 1993 by Tony Barnhart

When the history of the 1993 college football season is written, it will state for the record that Auburn won 11 games, lost none and finished on an emotional high by beating archrival Alabama, 22-14. It will also mention that Auburn was not allowed to play in a bowl game because the school was on NCAA probation.

But those few lines are only a footnote to what really transpired at Auburn in the Fall of 1993. Auburn's undefeated season is not a story about football as much as it is about heart, passion and a determination succeed. In short, there isn't enough room in any record book to capture the magnitude of what has happened on the Plains of Auburn.

Call it what you will. A Cinderella season. A dream season. A season for the ages. Auburn's '93 campaign was all that and more, not because of the record, but because of the obstacles, both physical and emotional, that were cleared to make it a reality.

As such seasons do, this one had a storybook ending.

Right or wrong, there is nothing more important in the life of an Auburn football player than to beat Alabama. And the fact that Auburn did just that in Alabama's second visit ever to Jordan-Hare Stadium, put the perfect cap on a season that is now sweetness without measure.

"This is truly unbelievable," says Coach Terry Bowden, who became the first Division I-A coach to go 1 1-0 in his first season. "We are not the best team in terms of talent, but you put these guys on the field with anybody and they will find a way to win. "

Auburn has had great teams before. Former coach Pat Dye won four Southeastern Conference championships in 12 years. And the Tigers have certainly beaten Alabama, as they were 6-6 against the Tide during the Dye years. What made this season special is history and context, as Dye said recently, "the circumstances."

To understand the circumstances that made Auburn's 11-0 season so special, one must go back to December 2, 1989. That's when Alabama -- haughty, proud Alabama -- made its first trip to Jordan-Hare Stadium in Auburn.

Until then, at least in modern terms, the game had always been played in "Birmingham", a city, Auburn folks are quick to point out, that is controlled by the powerful political and financial interests of Alabama graduates. From Auburn's perspective, Alabama spent most of its time looking down its nose at the agricultural college in the southern part of the state.

That's why Alabama's first trip here was so important. Dye says he can still see the faces of the people that day as Auburn's team made its traditional Tiger Walk to the stadium.

"I guess it'd be like a mother's eyes when her son got out of prison," he says. "Or the folks over in Germany when they broke down that wall. It was an excitement, a passion."

That day Dye and Auburn reached their zenith. Alabama arrived with a 10-0 record and ranked No. 2 in the nation. A date with Miami in the Sugar Bowl, presumably for the national title, was already set. But first there was this little matter called Auburn to take care of.

Auburn defeated Alabama that day, 30-20, and it looked as though Dye and the Tigers would control the state and the rivalry for many years to come.

But then came the revelations of former player Eric Ramsey, who claimed that he received cash and other benefits while at Auburn. To this day, Auburn faithful remain convinced that Alabama was behind Ramsey's decision to go public.

Things weren't going so well on the field either. After dominating the SEC for so long, Auburn went 8-3-1 in 1990, 5-6 in 1991 and 5-5-1 in 1992. Each of those seasons ended with a loss to Alabama.

To make matters worse in 1992, Alabama went 13-0 and won the national championship while Dye was forced to resign because of an NCAA investigation that was sparked by the Ramsey charges. In just three years, Dye and Auburn had gone from the top of the heap to the bottom of the barrel, and it appeared Alabama was ready to run off another long string of domination.

Auburn entered this season with a probation that banned the Tigers from television and prohibited them from competing for the SEC championship. Given their struggles in the past, given that they had a 37-year old coach with no head-coaching experience in Division I-A and given that Auburn's players had little -- on the surface at least -- to play for, the Tigers were projected to barely survive a season of gloom and doom. They were projected as the little country bumpkins who had to sit on the sideline while Alabama was in the process of defending its national championship.

But come the game with Alabama, the parallels to the 1957 season were thick in the air. That year, Auburn was also sitting out an NCAA probation but used a rugged defense to spark a team that just simply found ways to win. The Tigers finished 10-0 but could not go to a bowl. But to their good fortune, in those days the national champion was crowned before the bowls. They finished that season with a 40-0 victory against Alabama. It embarrassed the Crimson Tide faithful so much they went out and hired a guy named Bryant to run their football program the following year.