Friday, November 27, 2009

The 3-hour stomach cramp that was Iron Bowl '09

Like I tried to tell my Auburn brethren all week, this one had the feel of an ulcer farm.

Congrats to Auburn. Congrats to Gene Chizik. Your team played hard and competed the entire game.

That said, the best team won, and maybe learned something about themselves and the best rivalry in the sport. Now Florida.

Spencer Tillman on CBS said something interesting after the game: He said Auburn-Alabama is the only rivalry of the weekend where the stats and season records don't matter. Auburn could have won. Many of its faithful will say the Tigers should have won. But they didn't, and Alabama did, for this reason. In the end, Alabama was good enough and disciplined enough to do what it needed to do to win when things up to that moment had all been going wrong.

In a day or two, I may feel differently, but right now I believe this is one of the great Iron Bowls of my lifetime. I think I would say that even if Auburn had won. Fortunately, I don't have to find out. Roll Tide. War Eagle. Take a deep breath.
Michael Gordon

5 comments:

Bud said...

Thanks for the entertainment guys. As a relatively unbiased observer it was an exciting game to watch. Something tells me I enjoyed the game more than the hard core Bama and Auburn fans.

Anonymous said...

Take note that all the talking heads said at halftime that 'Bama had taken Auburn's best punch and would end up winning by double digits.

3-hour stomach cramp? Good description. Give me a month or two to get over this before I can declare it a great game.

Chizik & Co have a lot to learn about clock management, but if they can recruit worth a crap, I think the talent gap with 'Bama can be closed fairly quickly.

Michael said...

J, I thought you're team did itself proud, while snapping our heads back a bit when it comes to the matter of defending Florida or running the ball against their defense.

Back to our afternoon of incidental contact: Great day, beautiful stadium, strange CBS throwback technology that turned every replay sudsy. Wonder if the odd absence of a review of Julio's first catch may have had more to the absence of a decent camera than anything else.

Hey Big Dawg, great win last night.
mg

Bud said...

It was a glorious win over the Techsters. I can't remember when I enjoyed a UGA game so much. That's because it has been a long time since UGA won a game like that, a game where we were solid underdogs and we played a great game to win.

Anonymous said...

MG, don't forget about the putrid announcing team. Can't understand why CBS would send its #1 college crew to Florida, when everyone not named Bowden knew it would be a blowout, and send their far-less-talented hacks to the Iron Bowl?

It was a great game, for about 59 minutes. If Chizik and Co continue to recruit as well as it seems they are, and if Saban doesn't bolt for Notre Dame, imagine what the Iron Bowls can be for the next decade?

Bigdawg - see, I told you the Big Ol' Hairy Dawgs were going to win! I had that feeling ever since Tech beat Vandy by a whole 3 points.