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Rivalry That Built The South

• Michele McAloon • Season 4 • Episode 147

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War Eagel! Roll tide! College game day! The Iron Bowl

A single game can define a state. We sit down with Yahoo Sports senior writer Jay Busbee to unpack how Alabama vs Auburn became the South’s fiercest mirror, reflecting pride, pain, progress, and power from 1893 to NIL. Jay’s new book, Iron in the Blood, traces the Iron Bowl’s evolution from picnic blankets and early tailgates to bowl-driven TV eras and today’s high-dollar recruiting wars, revealing how a rivalry without pro competition in the state grew into a year-round identity.

We go beyond scores to meet the people who built the myth: Bear Bryant’s thunderous authority and complicated path through integration; Sug Jordan’s Normandy-forged steadiness and Auburn family ethos; Nick Saban’s era-defining system that asked five-stars to wait their turn and won anyway. Along the way, we examine the 40-year hiatus, Birmingham’s iron roots, how a tossed-off line became the rivalry’s name, and why the legislature once had to force the schools to play again. Jay explains how football offered the South a way to rebuild civic pride after the Civil War and how the sport later became a public stage for change, even as politics pressed hard on the pace.

We also get honest about money. Boosters shaped both programs for decades, but NIL brought the cash into daylight and opened new fronts against mega-donors in the Big Ten and beyond. What happens to tradition when a playoff softens single-game stakes? Can another Saban rise in an era of transfers and player power? And why do Auburn and Alabama feel so different up close—one centered on family ties, the other scaled by dynasties and reach? Jay leaves us with a grounded prediction for the next Iron Bowl and a sober look at where the sport is heading.

If this conversation adds something to your Saturday, tap follow, share it with a friend, and leave a review with your favorite Iron Bowl memory or hot take on NIL—War Eagle or Roll Tide?

Find Michele https://www.bookclues.com/

https://sports.yahoo.com/author/jay-busbee/

Jay Busbee @jaybusbee on X

Michele McAloon:

War Eagle, Roll Tide. Yes, it's that time of year again. It's Thanksgiving, and that means the Iron Ball. Between Auburn and Alabama this year, it'll be on Saturday, November 28th. You're listening to Crossword or Cultural Clues Lead to the Truth of the Word. And my name is Michele McAloon, your host, and we are talking to Jay Busbee, a Yahoo sports writer, about his book, about the rivalry between Alabama and Auburn and how that shaped the South. I hope you really enjoy this interview. You can find out more about me at BookClues.com. Please tell a friend about my show, and I hope you have a great Thanksgiving. And again, roll tide. War Eagle or Roll Tide, you're going to want to listen to this one. Alabama vs. Auburn is shaped the soul of the South, and it is by none other than a man named Jay Busby. Jay Busby is a senior writer for Yahoo! Sports, where he's covered the Super Bowl, the Olympics, the World Series, the Masters, the Daytona, the Indy 500, the Kentucky Derby, and the national championships of college football and basketball. You're all over it, aren't you? Sports wise. Yeah, my uh I'm kind of all over the map, but it's a lot of fun. That it sounds like, oh my gosh, it sounds like so much fun. His work has been honored by the AP sports editors and best American sports writing. He's the author of Earnhardt Nation, a biography of NASCAR's Earnhardt family, which I would love to read that book. That sounds really good. And it's so Alabama. He also writes for a weekly Southern newsletter, Flashlights and a Biscuit. He lives in Atlanta with his family and worships at the church of SEC football. All right. Jay, welcome to the show. Thank you so much. So glad to be here. And I tip my red solo cup to you. There you go. All right. Let's talk about Iron in the Blood and about this rivalry in the state of Alabama between Auburn University and the University of Alabama. And as you state, there's really nothing like it else in the nation, is there?

Jay Busbee:

It really is very a different rivalry for a number of the other ones because of both the fact that both schools are in close proximity to each other, relatively speaking. There's no pro sports in Alabama, so this is where everybody's focus goes. And there's a deep, deep intermingling of the Auburn and Alabama families. I mean, you will have you'll have families that have uh people that went to both uh schools. You'll have people in your office, people on the golf course, people at the grocery store that you see every single day that went to the other school. And so it's this kind of familiarity breeding, both contempt and a weird kind of affection for the other side that both sides desperately want to win the game, if only that they because they don't want to have to deal with uh taking heat for the next 364 days after it comes.

Michele McAloon:

But I have to tell you, the men that have coached both Auburn and Alabama are kind of outsized figures. Is that just because I'm from the state of Alabama, but they really capture the national attention. Bear Bryant, Nick Saban, who else is out there? Shug Jordan, these are men that have captured the national imagination. Why is that? Well, they're kind of the apex of what you expect.

Jay Busbee:

Well, first of all, they win. Okay, that's the main thing. They win, they win football. I mean, let's let's just get that started right now. They win football games and they win a lot of football games. And that's the fastest way to put yourself on the national radar in the most effective way. But beyond that, they're big personalities. They are they they embody more than just X's and O's on the football field. They're about more than just getting the touchdown on the next try. They embody more than that. They're leaders of men, they have a charisma about them, they have a single-mindedness about them. They might not be the best person to have as your boss or as your best friend or as a family member. They're rather single-minded in their pursuit of football. But when it comes to coaching, there's no equal. I talked to many, many players who have played under these coaches, and it's remarkable the degree to which these coaches influenced their life. They were just on campus for three or four years in their late teens, early twenties. And the lessons that they learned from a Bear Bryant, from a Nick Saban, from a Sug Jordan, from a Pat Dye carried them with them for the rest of their lives. And so I think that that's that's a great part of it. I mean, they're they're mythical figures in the state of Alabama, and it's not mythical, I should say legendary. They're very much real, but their powers are almost mythical. So uh yeah, it's it's it's well worth uh focusing on the coaches if you want to again to start to get at the heart of what this rivalry is about.

Michele McAloon:

One of the best things about your book is not just the history of Alabama football, it's kind of the history of college football. And even from the very beginning, it started with what, 1892, 1893, at least 1893 was the first iron ball. It starts with a fair amount of drama, and it has been pretty consistent for a long time.

Jay Busbee:

What is tremendous about college football is that the elements that we see today, just over the top fan bases, the pageantry, the deep, deep, DNA deep love that uh people have for these programs, the way that college football just gets you fired up and ready to do incredibly stupid stuff, often with the help of alcohol. That stuff was intrinsic to the game from the very start. And that's what fascinated me about this is that this isn't just a book about, and this isn't just a story about a couple of football teams on the field. It's about a larger cultural significance, it's uh it's about a larger societal significance, what these teams and what these schools represent to, you know, to their greater state and to the region as a whole. So it's a lot of fun to see what we saw in college football way back in 1893 is still very much present in the game in 2025.

Michele McAloon:

And I like the guy who said, well, you know, college football encourages drinking, you know. This was like 1913, right? Or something.

Jay Busbee:

Isn't it a good thing that we got uh drinking out of the college game, isn't it? I mean, it's it's a good thing that they stamped out that problem early on.

Michele McAloon:

That's funny. And I tell you, folks, you say that you know, the bucket list of items is to go to Tuscaloosa's, go to Auburn, go to these games. But the thing you didn't touch upon was the tailgate, the southern tailgate. There is nothing like a southern tailgate. And you know what? Leave your arteries and your cholesterol medicine at home. Come. If you ever, ever get an invitation to a southern tailgate and you are out there, you say yes and you cancel everything else and you go, right?

Jay Busbee:

That is absolutely true. I mean, there is just nothing like the kind of camaraderie that you have at a southern tailgate. Even if you have somebody from the other, the other team, you know, they'll get a little bit of grief, but they'll be welcomed in at the bounty of food, the bounty of drink. Someone's always got a TV hooked up so you can watch the games that are going on out elsewhere. They've got it hooked up to a satellite dish. You bring your camp chair, you plop it down, you sit there, and hell, you don't even need to go to the game. You don't even go to the game. I do more than one college football tailgate where I was just like, ah, I'm gonna stay here and watch the game from right here. And you put it on TV, and then you could hear the noise from the stadium about 10 or 15 seconds before it comes through the TV. So you know something big happened one way or the other. But yeah, you're right. It is tremendous. The tailgate experience is unmatched and unparalleled.

Michele McAloon:

And you said as early as I think 1926, or even earlier than that, they were having tailgates. So at the first, they had one of the first iron bowls, they had a tailgate, right?

Jay Busbee:

At the very first iron bowl, they showed up back in 1893. They showed up with picnic baskets and blankets, and they sat out there, they you know, ate their chicken or whatever they might have pulled out of the picnic baskets and sat there and watched football. I mean, it's you know, it's as classic as it gets. That's great.

Michele McAloon:

One of the things you really show too in your book is how Southern football really integrated the South into the northern culture, and how uh football was actually used to kind of break segregation. And these are two really important things in the state of Alabama.

Jay Busbee:

Yeah, the the difficulty that the South had, and it was very much a self-imposed difficulty. So this is not, I'm not trying to passive voice my way out of this. In the years after the Civil War, the South was economically ravaged and they were also spiritually ravaged. They were in a frame of mind where they had been beaten down by the North in every possible way. And so they found out, they realized that they weren't too bad at football. And then the kind of the key moment of that came in 1926 when Alabama was invited to the Rose Bowl to play Washington, and over much concern and reluctance, they didn't, they were not sure that Alabama was going to stink up the joint, and they they won the game and they managed to kind of bring honor to the South in that way. Now, again, you could take plenty of issue with the Southern mindset that revered the Civil War, but the fact of the matter is that this gave Southerners something positive to rally around, that college football gave them something positive to focus on and helped themselves in it. The rest of the country might be out of the South economically, educationally, every other way. And again, you know, this is not to absolve the South, but the South played good football, even better football than the rest of the country. And the priorities may be a bit out of whack there in terms of focus on football versus education, but the end result was that the South managed to start to rebuild a bit of its ego, a bit of its esteem through football, and then moving forward into the civil rights area helped the South take that next step forward because the region could not have functioned without some measure of understanding of what it did well and what it what it had to offer the nation as a whole. And football was a start to that. Obviously, the South now is economically thriving much more than many other areas of the country. And football was one of many elements, I mean very tangible elements that kickstarted that.

Michele McAloon:

Absolutely. And Alabama's thriving now economically better than it has in years past. I think it's growing, it's absolutely growing with Birmingham and the technical that has come to Alabama. So that is a good thing. I just read recently in a New York Times article that people are flocking to Alabama and Auburn from the Northeast. Oh, yeah. They want to have fun. I've been on some of those Ivy League campuses up north, and that's where fun goes to die. My goodness. Sorry, Ivy Leaguers out there, but I mean, come to Alabama, come to Auburn, come to Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and I tell you what, it's a lot of fun. It really is. It's just and part of the football culture.

Jay Busbee:

Part of it's a football culture, certainly. And as a result of the football culture, they're able to offer pretty generous scholarship opportunities to a lot of out of state kids to bring them in, you know, and bolster the states and the and the universities, the university's plural images and scholastic weight. And I think that there's there's a lot to be said for the idea of, yeah, come on down south, enjoy better weather, you know, enjoy some football, have some fun in a way that you can't in a colder northeastern state. But also, it does give a kind of cosmopolitan, blended, diverse culture to the universities that I think is desperately needed. If you're raised in one environment, if you're just raised in one southern environment and you go straight on to college in Auburn or Alabama, and you don't have a whole lot of exposure to people from outside of your region, your thinking is limited. Your impressions of the world are limited. You have people coming in from New Jersey, from Ohio, from Long Island, and it opens your mind as a student. It opens your mind as a university. I think that there's there's nothing but good things that come from that. And football had a had a large part in that happening as well.

Michele McAloon:

Two of my three sons went to Auburn, and they were going to school with people from California, from really kind of all over the nation, which was surprising to me. But yeah, and it was in Auburn was a great experience from them. And I also have a lot of family that went to Alabama, so I'm not there's no partiality here. So And you do very well at handling that in this book. You really do. Thank you. Appreciate that. Tell me about the differences between Auburn and Alabama, and you bring that out really good. That Auburn and Alabama actually do have a very different tenor in the way in their fan base. So what is that difference? And that's a good one.

Jay Busbee:

Yeah, the the fan base of Auburn tends to call themselves a family. You know, we're part of the Auburn family. And generally, if you are a fan of Auburn, and I'm gonna make some big, broad generalizations here, but if you're a fan of Auburn, you have a connection to Auburn. You know, you either went there or a family member went there or a close friend went there. Auburn doesn't really attract the casual fans quite to the degree that Alabama does. And I think that's in large part due to the fact that people tend to bandwagon on a winner. It's indisputable that Alabama has had a much more winning history between the Bear Bryant era and the Nick Saban era than Auburn has. Auburn's got a lot of championships, Auburn's got a lot of things to hang their hat on, and we'll talk about that later. But Alabama has these huge winning dynasties, and people will jump on that, and people want to be a part of that. And so there is the element of uh Alabama that's kind of the elitist. This is where the state's future leaders go to school to train. And then there's also what they call the dirt road alumni, the people who didn't actually go to the school but still wear the roll-tide sweatshirts, cheer for Alabama on every Saturday in a way that they don't necessarily for Auburn. Auburn started as an agricultural school. Obviously, it has transcended that immensely. Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, is an Auburn guy. That's all you need to know about how Auburn has outgrown its agricultural roots. But those kind of white-collar, blue-collar, sort of that attitude persists, if not necessarily the facts of it. So it is an interesting dynamic, an interesting contrast between the two because both of them believe that they are superior to the other in one degree or another for one reason or another. And that's what makes it fun. I mean, it wouldn't be fun if everybody felt that one side was clearly inferior and one side was clearly superior.

Michele McAloon:

Okay, let's talk a little bit about the Iron Bowl, because that is one of the great rivalries in college football. It's Auburn, Alabama, and I think it's coming up on the 28th, and I uh yes, it's coming up on on this the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving, right. And this has been really consistent since 1893, right? It uh 92.

Jay Busbee:

Right, right. 1893 with a 40-year break in the in the middle of it because they got into a bit of a dispute. I mean, there's a lot of pride here on both sides of this rivalry, and they got into a dispute over a bunch of silliness, basically how many players could be involved, what their per diems would be, and that kind of thing. Mythology grew up that there was a huge fight and both sides canceled. That wasn't true at all. It was just a just a little bureaucratic spat about money. They stopped playing for 40-some odd years, and in that course of that time, both sides went and made new rivals, basically. You know, Alabama's facing Tennessee, Auburn's facing Georgia. They both kind of grew out on their own until the state legislature said basically, all right, you two, get your act together and get back together. People want to see you playing. And if you don't do it, we're gonna start taking a little closer look at your finances. And there's nothing that spurs a university to action faster than the threat of a politician kind of digging into their till and taking a look and seeing uh what their books look like. So they have played ever since for many, many decades now. Yeah, it remains one of the best rivalries in college football, without a doubt. I didn't realize there was a 40-year break. I didn't think Wow, so when was that? That was from 1908 to the 1940s to the late 1940s. So they took a little break in there and they both went in their separate directions, but but soon reunited.

Michele McAloon:

Why is it named the Iron Bowl?

Jay Busbee:

Because it takes place in Birmingham, took place, I should say, in Birmingham. And uh it was Sug Jordan that came up with this name, the Iron Bowl. Uh, I call it the Iron Bowl from the start, even though the name didn't come around until 1957. Birmingham, before it became a hotbed of technical and medical industry, which it is right now, was the center of a thriving mining operation. It was the Pittsburgh of the South until the mines collapsed and basically went out of business for the large part, and and mining moved elsewhere to less expensive locations. Birmingham was the centerpiece of this. So, you know, it was a it was an iron city. And Suge Jordan was asked one at one point if uh late in one season, whether he his year was over, if he couldn't make it to a bowl game, and he said, no, we still got a bowl game. We've got the iron bowl. Kind of off-handedly came up with a name and and and it's stuck ever since. And I and I use it to refer to the uh to the games before he said that just because it's a lot easier. But it's a memorable title, and it's one that that reflects the city of Birmingham where they used to play until 1989 when they started actually playing on the campuses of both schools.

Michele McAloon:

I didn't realize also how big the bowls loomed so early in football history. 1953 was the first time that all four bowls were televised, or you could watch it on television. I didn't realize, I mean, from very early on, that really was important for them to get to a bowl. And so that is something that has developed along with football.

Jay Busbee:

Yeah, and it was also a way for the the smarter coaches like Bear Bryant to get an extra month of uh practice out of their guys because otherwise the schedule would end in you know in late November and the bowls were scheduled for around New Year's. So if your season was done, that was it. You were done. You couldn't practice anymore. But if you were practicing for a bowl game, then you could definitely keep it going for another month, but get another month's head start on the next season. So guys like Bear Bryant definitely were all about that.

Michele McAloon:

Okay, the only time I ever saw my dad cry was when Bear Bryant died. And Bear Bryant was, I mean, and my father went to Auburn. His father went to Auburn, right? So, but when Bear Bryant died, who uh coach of Alabama, such a legend in the the state of Alabama. Let's talk a little bit about the boy from Morrow, as you call it. Morrow Bottom, Arkansas, yes. Yeah, tell let's talk a little bit about Bear Bryant and why, first thing, how he got his name, which I thought was really interesting. I never knew why he wore the hound's tooth hat and his real genius was.

Jay Busbee:

Yeah, I mean, he got his name from from when he was a young man, and uh, Carnival came through town offering money to wrestle a bear, and he wrestled the bear, and depending on which account you believe, he either you know wrestled the bear or the bear got a good lick on in on him, and and then he ran out of the out of the theater where he was wrestling the bear to avoid getting uh doing more damage. And it turns out that he didn't get paid for it. It's an unfortunate occurrence for him, but he ended up with a good nickname, one that stuck with him for the rest of uh his life. So he was a deeply charismatic figure. I had a voice that was just beyond deep, you know, beyond low, would rumble up. He would bring that that terrifying voice to bear on anybody. He would, he, he was always definitely in support of his players. He would go to the wall for his players, but he would also expect the world out of his players. He would expect his players to give everything that they had in service of the program. And if they did, then he was there with them for life. And if they didn't, he would thank them for their time and send them on their way. And uh he was the kind of guy that you did not want to disappoint no matter what. And he was, as a result, he was the most uh famous man in Alabama for for many, many years, for three decades. He was at the top of the of the heap there in Alabama.

Michele McAloon:

He really was. I mean, and he's still a legend. I mean, people when you go to the Alabama games, people are still wearing houndstooth. Uh I mean, he is an absolute legend. He had to deal with a lot. He, I thought he dealt with the segregation. He wanted to recruit his black players. He, I mean, he was very realistic. And all these men have been very realistic about that. They knew that they knew they were cutting themselves off from talent, but they had to really kind of the winds of politics of Alabama and of the South and of the greater country, too.

Jay Busbee:

Yeah, he and Governor George Wallace, famous for the stand in the schoolhouse door, a famous, just ardent segregationist. Two of them were the two most powerful men in Alabama. And, you know, as for who was the more powerful, well, you know, you can debate. And I think that that you know, on a personal level, Bryant was far more charismatic, was far more beloved than George Wallace was. But George Wallace could do a lot of damage to the University of Alabama. There's a lot of people who say Bear should have, you know, he was the most powerful man in Alabama. He should have brought black players in earlier. Well, if he had done that, he would have earned the contempt of George Wallace, who had the ability to cause all kinds of hardship for the university by being the man in charge of Alabama's state coffers. And so Bryant had to walk a fine line there. He knew the progress was coming, he understood this, he recruited black players long before he started playing them, but he also had to be aware of the way that the that the tides, no pun intended, were flowing in the state of Alabama. And as they were flowing inexorably toward integration, he could move in that direction, but but he could not move faster than the tides. He had to be paying attention to the to the overall drift of history. I mean, you could argue that he moved faster, you could argue that he moved too slowly. He didn't get integration done at the speed of other states, but it did eventually get done.

Michele McAloon:

Sure. And what, you know what, Alabama didn't get integration done as fast as the other states. So Right, yeah.

Jay Busbee:

It's not like he was he was not exactly in the most progressive state in the Union. He was he was fighting an uphill battle to try to get the kind of acclaim and admiration and integration that he wanted to get for these black players.

Michele McAloon:

Talk to us a little bit about Sug Jordan. Sugar Jordan, right?

Jay Busbee:

Sug Jordan. Jordan like J-E-R-R-D-N. It's his Selma Alabama accent there. He was a character and a half. He fought in D-Day. He was charged to beaches in Normandy. He um didn't talk a whole lot about that, but it shaped him definitely. He was an Auburn man through and through. And he also, you know, he was he presided over some of the most successful eras in Auburn history. And he also was involved in, you know, or at least was in charge when there were quite a few recruiting scandals and things of that nature going on. Auburn always seems to be bouncing back and forth over the line of legal and illegal as it attempts to kind of keep pace with the bigger, more wealthy Alabama. So Shu Jordan was the kind of guy that was, he was a little bit rumpled, he was a little bit uh homey, he used to like to drink to drink buttermilk in the evenings to settle his stomach. He was a beloved figure in in Auburn Moore because he just treated his players like they were members of his own family. He would, you know, he would have no problem chewing their butts off if they failed for him, but he was the kind of coach that you want to have leading your men. And he also was the kind of guy who was gentle enough to understand when a player needed something that wasn't working through just screaming at him. And so as a result, he was he still is one of the most beloved figures in Auburn history. His name is on the stadium. His statue up in front of the stadium has him in his rumpled khakis and his fishing cap. And it's it's it's pretty funny to see that were it not for Bear Bryant, he would absolutely be one of the most famous figures in uh the entire state of Alabama.

Michele McAloon:

Talk to me about the boosters. Boosters have been a problem ever since the beginning, haven't they? Or not a problem, or let's not be sort of of a booster, but talk to me. It's a difference between Alabama and Auburn. Talk to me about that.

Jay Busbee:

Yeah, particularly at Auburn, the boosters take a very, very, very active interest in what goes on at the university. And they have a whole lot of power, and it takes a very special kind of coach to be able to put them in check. Nick Saban did this at Alabama when he got hired. He basically gathered all the boosters and said, You're done here. I am running the show. I'm gonna run it the way that I want to run it, and you can step aside and watch and cheer. But, you know, this you your your days of influence are done. And Saban was good enough that it paid off. The problem is that at Auburn, some of the uh boosters that had influence, the the coaches were struggling with all kinds of scandals or personal issues, and the boosters were and remain impatient and unhappy. And that's that has led us to the situation that we've had at Auburn for the last 35 years or so, where boosters have really sort of to a large extent guided where the university goes. And as a result, sometimes you've ended up with coaching hires that are extremely bad culture fits or extremely bad strategic fits. And the result is unfortunately what you have now with Auburn, where it's a it's a school that is a bit adrift, as much money as they have and as much interest as there is from boosters, it is a tough environment to coach in. And there's there are a lot of coaches who would rather not have to answer to that booster consortium that keeps a very close eye on how Auburn runs.

Michele McAloon:

We're gonna diverge them a little bit, but where do you think boosters fit now into the NIL, into all of that? Where, I mean, into the money now that is being thrown around. It's the money is incredible, Jay.

Jay Busbee:

Yeah, I mean, the boosters fit in because their money all of a sudden is legal. The days of them passing a duffel bag full of cash at the Waffle House are not entirely done. For the most part, they're done. You know, you can get a player now, a five-star player out of high school, you can get it with a perfectly legal above-board offer of a couple of million dollars. You can draw them in. The trick, though, for Auburn and Alabama is now that boosterism is a great extent legal, people who don't want to be involved with the illegality, with the illegal side of college football, but have money, are getting involved. And they're not getting involved necessarily in the SEC. They're getting involved with Michigan, with Ohio State, with the Big Ten, with these other schools. And Auburn and Alabama, they have significant booster endowment, but they don't have it to the level of a Michigan or an Ohio State or even a Texas in their conference. And so I think that that down the line, that is going to be a challenge because there is so much money that is flowing into the universities now. And if you don't have a booster base that's capable of matching that, you know, where does that money come from?

Michele McAloon:

Interesting. Interesting. And I mean, we're looking at Alabama's, what, rated 10 right now? And Auburn's not even a map. I mean, so it's so interesting. Now we've got to talk about, I mean, he is Alabama, he's an Alabama god, Nick Saban. Yes. I mean, and if you guys don't understand how Nick Sabin affects Alabama, I would we I was voting, I think it was in the 2017 election when Jones was running, and I'm in a room full of people and we're filling out our ballots, and someone someone raised their voice and said, When you spell Sabin, is it A N or Ian at the end? Because you were writing his name in. So I mean, he carries like 10% of the vote. I mean, absolutely. This is, I mean, Saban's serious. So let's talk about Nick Saban, Mr. Nick Saban and Miss Terry.

Jay Busbee:

Yes, Nick and Miss Terry are the royal family of Alabama football. They have taken the mantle that Bear Bryant left behind when he when he retired and then shortly afterward passed away. Saban has been without a doubt the best thing to happen to Alabama football, and and to some people, the worst thing to happen to college football in half a century because he just was single-minded in his focus of putting together a machine, a self-sustaining machine that simply could not function in today's current college football environment. He would get player after player after player to buy into the idea of Alabama football. And you would he would have these five-star players who were the most talented player in five counties in high school get them to sign up to be on the bench for two seasons or three seasons while they waited for their turn with a bunch of other five-stars. Now that's not going to happen. So regardless of whether you think power player empowerment is a good idea or a bad idea, it's it's here. And Saban saw the writing on the wall and saw the fact that his brand of program building was an anachronism. But while he was there, while he was at Alabama, unstoppable, absolutely unstoppable. And he made every element of that program work in a in harmony in a way that we have rarely seen throughout any sport, much less college football. And for that reason, he's one of the most successful coaches of all time.

Michele McAloon:

Jay, do you think in this current environment there's a future Nick Saban out there? Or could there be a future Nick Saban? And I'm not talking Nick Saban, I'm talking about how he used the process and how his recruiting. And is there is that possible or are those days gone by?

Jay Busbee:

It's going to be tough because the players are very, very different. The closest that we have right now is probably George's Kirby Smart, who trained under Nick Saban. I was a coach under Nick Saban for a long time. But the the way that Saban put together a program, the way that he kept his players in line, the way that he kept his program all pointed in the same direction, it would take a remarkable figure. I'm not saying that they're not out there, but it would take a remarkably a combination of charisma and inspiration and victory, you know, the ability to win these games, because that's significant as well. It doesn't matter how good your your uh program building is if it doesn't result in wins. And so, yeah, it takes a remarkable person. I'm sure there is somebody out there. I mean, you know, never say never. I'm sure that in the next 30 years we will see someone who puts together a winning run like this. But the money is so huge. And when you start to succeed, you the you attract the money. So, you know, for instance, Ohio State is a defending national champion. Now they could very well win again this year. There's gonna be a lot of money dangled in the in the players and in the coaches' faces to pull them away and pull them apart. And we'll have to see whether they are able to sustain that more than just a few years as opposed to the 15 that Sandlin was able to.

Michele McAloon:

Okay. I'm not I don't have a big head for football. I'm gonna tell you right up front. That's okay. Uh do you think this changes the tenor of of college football? And I'm not even saying that that's a bad thing or a good thing because I don't know enough to have an opinion to be honest.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Michele McAloon:

So where do you kind of fall in on this development in light of Auburn and Alabama?

Jay Busbee:

Yeah I I think that I am for players getting paid for what they do to generate the to to be the backbound bone of this multi multi-billion dollar enterprise. You know I think that it's it's kind of absurd that you had this artificially depressed labor market where the players were not allowed to make any money and the coach people making $10 million a year. There is a bit of a reorganization or reworking that rebalances on the board to make things a little bit more fair to the players. However, that said battle of money versus tradition money wins every single time. And what is so important to college football is the tradition and I I document them all through this book. And I mean for instance the Iron Bowl it is a it's a deeply traditional game but it has lost a significant amount of its importance because of the fact that there's so much football that happens after the Iron Bowl now. It used to be that you know the iron bowl was a winner take on and you were either in in or out and if you lost you know that's it you lost your national championship chance. Now you have multiple bites at the Apple multiple opportunities to to uh win a national championship and Alabama has done that back in 2017. They did it they lost the Iron Ball and they won the national championship. So you know there's money is trampling over tradition and I think that that's really that's a shame to see football college football get more and more professionalized and lose more and more of the strange uniqueness that made it so special.

Michele McAloon:

It really is it's kind of the farm teams for the NFL now in a lot of ways yeah it really is okay so what happens when coach becomes governor what happens what's well you start to see what he's prepared for.

Jay Busbee:

Yeah talk about Tommy Tupperville who won uh six straight over Alabama and basically rode that all the way to the governor or rode that to a Senate seat a few years later and and and most likely to a governor seat in Alabama here in a few years from now you start to see let me put this as delicately as I can the limits of a coach's powers and abilities and range of knowledge. I mean just because you can coach a football team to win you know six games in a row over your rival does not mean that you have a solid grasp of economic policy and the efficacies of government operations. So part of a larger conversation about celebrities in government and celebrities the governing but yeah it is certainly a fast track to a higher office. If you win big it's a fast way to to get yourself on the ballot and and more more than likely elected. Wow it's just absolutely absolutely incredible okay let's talk about the programs today uh I mean the Auburn's adrift Alabama wow I mean this is nationally ranked Alabama and they're 10th what's going in in this what's up Alabama has lost a little bit of that swagger there is you know there's not this fear of Alabama that there was before there was always this fear with the Knicks say the led teams that eventually they were going to crush you they were going to grind you down one way or the other there's not that fear right now that fear has been usurped by other teams Ohio State and and Georgia and other teams Alabama is just another very good team right now. There will always be a decent team but that decent is not good enough for the fans of Alabama. They don't want decent they don't want number 10 they want they want to get rid of that zero and they want to be one and that's it. Anything short of uh battling for a national championship each year is is an absolute failure. And and you know that's you can see how that's working out just across the state because Auburn has flailed and flailed and flailed and had difficulties all the way around. They just let their their current head coach go. They're under an interim head coach now. Alabama is has won nine games the last two years. No one is ready to say the coach is is here to stay. I mean it's just a fascinating situation where the expectations are so phenomenally high that it's difficult for anybody to meet them and much less someone who does not have the built-in advantages of a Nick Saban.

Michele McAloon:

I was surprised to see how small the coaching pool is though that's interesting.

Jay Busbee:

I mean it's not a huge pool of people is it yeah I mean being a college football coach it's a hallowed profession you are a god in your small town but by the same token it requires a tremendous range of skills just from strategic to psychological to be able to manage not just your players but the recruits to manage the the expectations of boosters and alumni to manage all of the complex elements of being the public face of a multi-million dollar billion dollar corporation there the way that you are with Alabama and Auburn both. So it requires a very special kind of individual to be able to A survive in that environment and B thrive in it and and very few can do the first and almost none can do the second. So yeah it is not surprising it's kind of a self-selecting small pool. Any predictions for the game coming up on uh the 28th uh Iron Bowl the Harbor in Alabama I think that Alabama will win but I think it will not be easy at all and I don't think that that that anybody in Alabama will will rest easily on either side of the ball until the game is over because I think these games always tend to be nerve wracking and I think that this year will be no exception.

Michele McAloon:

Where are they playing? Are they playing in Tuscaloosa or are they playing in uh they're at Auburn this year.

Jay Busbee:

So yeah so it it breaks very much in in Auburn's favor.

Michele McAloon:

Oh that should be good. Well Jay Busby I really appreciate you taking time out of your writing schedule because you are an active writer and you're on deadline so I really appreciate you taking time. Once again folks this is Iron in the Blood how the Alabama vs Auburn game shaped the soul of the south by Jay Busby and you can be found at jaybusby.com right and also at JamesBusby and of course go to Yahoo Sports guys and read read Jay Busby. I really thank you very much and I've got to say at War Eagle and Roll Tide, all right? War Eagle Roll Tide.

Jay Busbee:

It has been my absolute pleasure thank you so much.