re: What makes the Iron Bowl so contentious?

I have a hard time taking a rivalry game seriously when it wasn't played for 40 years

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I'm a full blown atheist

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I reserve my right to generalize people I don't like for arbitrary reasons

Maybe it's worse than when I was there but I didn't know that many people who were all that religious.

Alabama fans have the great good fortune to cheer for arguably the greatest program in college football history. Many of their fans think this success somehow rubs off on or reflects back on them personally. This, no doubt, makes them insufferable to deal with, especially when some of them actually are astoundingly unsuccessful people.

Auburn fans had a choice between the greatest program in college football history and the state's also-ran, and chose the also-ran. They are convinced this was not a simple choice between which team they prefer, but an actual ethical decision in which there was a real right and wrong. The fact that they chose Auburn makes them think they are morally superior to Alabama fans, who clearly just jumped on the bandwagon and don't love their team the way Auburn fans love Auburn.

Alabama fans stew over every loss their team suffers. This makes them very easy to troll for years after the game is over.

Auburn fans only care about their team if they win and it allows them to troll Bama fans. Otherwise "it's just a game." This makes them impossible to troll.

I hate Auburn.

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If we did Auburn would have 20+ more wins.

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LOL..just no....Thomas and Wade would have beat that Aubie arse as bad as Bryant and Saban

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Tuscaloosa is one of the worst towns in the state of Alabama.

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What do you base this opinion on?

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Bama is the school for the Alabama elite
Auburn is the school for the states common man

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As a Georgia fan who has kids beginning to think about college, I can tell you this is pure fantasy. I've spent a lot of time researching both schools.

Average ACT score of incoming freshman:

Fall 2015:
Auburn- 27.4
Bama- 26.6

Fall 2014:
Auburn- 27.1
Bama- 26.7

Fall 2013:
Auburn- 27.1
Bama- 26.2

Fall 2012:
Auburn- 27.1
Bama- 25.9

Fall 2011:
Auburn- 26.9
Bama- 25.6

I live in the Over-the-Mountain area of Birmingham. In the most recent year in which both schools have released statistics (Fall 2014), by far more kids from the elite high schools of the OTM area chose to attend Auburn over Alabama.

From the high schools of Mountain Brook, Vestavia Hills, Homewood, Spain Park, Hoover, Oak Mountain, and Briarwood (private), there were 517 kids who attended Auburn and 439 kids who attended Alabama.

Alabama has not released the figures for the Fall 2015 semester, but Auburn increased their enrollment from those upper echelon high schools to 561 up from 517 the year before.

Auburn also took more kids in the fall of 2013 from those high schools (476 compared to 419 who went to Alabama).

I have a sister that lives in the Huntsville area, and its the same story from up that way. From 2011 to 2014, there have been 369 kids from Bob Jones High School attend Auburn to just 300 who chose to attend Alabama.


Auburn gets more kids from the better private schools of Montgomery (Trinity, St. James, Montgomery Academy, LAMP).

Auburn gets more kids from the better schools from Mobile and the Baldwin County area (Fairhope, Spanish Fort, etc.)

It really is quite remarkable. When I set out to do my research, I did not expect to find it so lop-sided. But Bama seems to get more kids from the rural areas of the state, while Auburn seems to attract more kids from the best high schools in the more suburban areas of the state.

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But Bama seems to get more kids from the rural areas of the state, while Auburn seems to attract more kids from the best high schools in the more suburban areas of the state.

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You should probably expand your research to the kids from out of state that are coming to Alabama and see what you find.

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I did not expect to find it so lop-sided.

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The numbers you posted don't really look that lopsided to me, but I think they're both pretty equal academically overall. Obviously Auburn has better programs in certain areas, and Bama has better programs in certain areas. All in all, they're both pretty average public 4 year universities.

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you've also got the stark contrasts of the two schools in general in terms of what they are known for educationally. Due to those contrasts, each school attracts different personality types (AU - engineering, agriculture, vet, etc...Bama - business, law, communication, etc). By logic, those different personality types clash over many things, but the most ferocious of them is the Iron Bowl.

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Again, it appears most of the Bama fans do not know the facts.

For the freshman entering in the Fall of 2014, 17.7% of Bama's kids were in the college of business compared to 18.0% of Auburn's kids. That's pretty much the same.

While 28.1% of Auburn's kids were either in Engineering and/or Architecture, just 20% of Alabama's kids were. Partly because Alabama does not have a school of Architecture.

Only 5.2% of Auburn's incoming freshmen entered into the school of Agriculture.

So while Bama fans like to think that Auburn is an Ag school more than anything, its just not the case. For every 1 kid that comes to Auburn for Agriculture, roughly 9 other kids come for Business, Engineering, or Architecture.

All total, Agriculture ranks 8th in size for all of the colleges at Auburn in terms of entering freshman students (behind Engineering, Business, Liberal Arts, Sciences & Math, Education, Architecture, and Human Sciences).