Blood, Noise And the Plains: The Florida-Auburn Story. We Need It Every Year

Ray Graves And John Reaves had that Day Of Infamy at Auburn (UF Photo file)

A Heisman-clinching kick, a record nobody wants, a Heisman winner who got stopped cold, a No. 1 team that got its heart ripped out, a stadium loud enough to shake the ground, a downtown corner that’s survived a poisoning and kept right on rolling, and a league that had to step in and tell Auburn to turn the speakers down. THAT’S Florida vs. Auburn!

By Buddy Martin

GatorBaitMedia.com

Jon Sumrall takes his 2-0 Gators into that snake pit called Jordan-Hare Stadium Saturday night for the first time since 2011, matched up against Alex Golesh’s 2-0 Tigers in what amounts to a first date for two brand-new head coaches. 

Neither man has coached an SEC snap in this series. Both are about to get an education in what Florida-Auburn really is. Because this isn’t just some rotating cross-division leftover the league tossed back together — it’s one of the oldest, meanest, loudest rivalries in the South, and it’s been breaking hearts on both sides since William Howard Taft was in the White House.

Grab a sweet tea, settle in, and let me take you through it.

Jon Sumrall stood at the podium Monday and told his team the truth nobody wants to hear in September: “These games count twice.” He wasn’t talking about the scoreboard — he was talking about the SEC standings that start piling up this week at Jordan-Hare. And just to make sure nobody in his own bloodline gets confused about where loyalties lie this Saturday, Sumrall put it plainly: If any family members are pulling for Auburn, “they’re not family to me … I don’t care what their last name is.” 

BTW, his wife Ginny I went to Auburn.

That’s not bulletin-board material. That’s just a coach drawing a line in the sand before kickoff week.

Sumrall wasn’t exactly popping champagne over the 52-3 beatdown of Campbell, either. He wants his depth to play cleaner, admitted the backups got sloppy once the game got out of hand, and copped to the obvious — this roster is still young. He’s got walking-boot watch on Eric Singleton and Emmanuel Oyebadejo, both questionable for Auburn, and he’s not making promises he can’t keep. 

But give the man credit for nerve: with Campbell selling out to stop the rush and daring him to get cute, Sumrall dialed up a fake punt on 4th-and-14 — no fear, he said, just “gonna let it hang out a little bit.” It would’ve worked, too, if one guy had made his block.

Now comes the real test. Alex Golesh’s Auburn offense pushes tempo like FAU did last year, and Sumrall says Byrum Brown has grown up since their Tulane days — more polished, more experienced, seen it all. On the other side, DJ Durkin’s defense isn’t just good, it’s SEC-mean: A line that knocks people backward, a linebacker corps Sumrall calls “as good as anybody’s,” and a safety that’s downright unbelievable in run support. Two weeks of feel-good football are over. Sumrall knows it, and for a first-year coach who still believes the ceiling is high, that’s exactly the kind of Saturday he signed up for.

Before It Was Auburn

Here’s a piece of trivia that trips up even hardcore Gator fans: Auburn wasn’t always “Auburn.” The school across the state line started life in 1856 as East Alabama Male College, got renamed the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Alabama in 1872 when it became the state’s land-grant school, and then became Alabama Polytechnic Institute — good old API — in 1899. It didn’t officially become Auburn University until 1960, even though folks around town had been calling it “Auburn” unofficially since at least the 1930s, which is why the football stadium opened in 1939 as plain old Auburn Stadium years before the school’s actual name caught up to it. So when Florida played its very first game against the Tigers back in 1912, they were technically playing Alabama Polytechnic Institute — the API Aggies didn’t become Auburn University for another 48 years.

Ninety Years of Bad Blood

Florida and Auburn first lined up against each other on October 12, 1912, in Auburn, and the Tigers whipped the Gators 27-13 in the opener of a series that’s now been played 84 times. It was lopsided early — Auburn won six straight to start things off, some of them by two and three touchdowns — but by the time the game became an annual October fixture in 1945, it had turned into one of the SEC’s genuine blood bath feuds, a border war between two land-grant schools separated by not much more than a tank of gas.

For 58 straight years, from 1945 to 2002, these two lined up every fall without fail, and the Gators and Tigers have now played only four times since — 2006, 2007, 2011 and 2019 — with Auburn winning three of those four (ESPN). As of the last meeting in 2019, Auburn holds a 43-39-2 edge in the all-time series, with 36 of those 84 games decided by seven points or less — this has never, ever been a rivalry for the faint of heart.

Break it down by home field, and it’s just as tight as you’d expect from a border war. In their current stadium, the Tigers hold a 21-7-1 mark against Florida at Jordan-Hare, while the Gators have gone 22-9 against Auburn on their own turf at Florida Field. In other words, both these teams have been just about unbeatable at home and plenty vulnerable on the road — which is exactly why Sumrall’s crew walking into that building Saturday night should scare the daylights out of Gator Nation.

Why Jordan-Hare Sounds Like the End of the World

Now, before we get to the moments that made this series famous, you have to understand the building where a good chunk of them happened. Jordan-Hare Stadium — named for coaching legend Ralph “Shug” Jordan and former Auburn player and administrator Cliff Hare — is routinely ranked among the loudest venues in college football, and it’s not an accident. The bowl is enclosed and steep, the upper decks lean in over the field, and nearly 88,000 people get packed into a place built to trap sound rather than let it escape.

Add in the theater of it all and you’ve got a building engineered for pure pandemonium. It’s gotten so loud in there over the years that when Chris Davis returned that missed field goal 109 yards for the “Kick Six” touchdown to beat Alabama in 2013, the crowd reaction actually registered on seismographs around the state of Alabama. That’s not a figure of speech. That’s earthquake science.

Rolling Toomer’s Corner

And when Auburn wins, the party doesn’t stay inside the stadium. It heads downtown to Toomer’s Corner, the intersection of College Street and Magnolia Avenue where campus meets town, named for Shel Toomer, a halfback on Auburn’s very first football team back in 1892 who later opened Toomer’s Drugs on the corner in 1896. The tradition actually started with a telegraph, not toilet paper — back in the 1960s, Toomer’s Drugs had the only telegraph machine in town, so during road games the drugstore employees were the first in Auburn to know the score, and they’d fling the ticker tape from the machine up over the power lines to spread the good news.

Toilet paper entered the picture in 1972, during the legendary “Punt, Bama, Punt” Iron Bowl, when Auburn halfback Terry Henley promised reporters the unbeaten, second-ranked Crimson Tide, “we’re going to beat the No. 2 out of Alabama.” Auburn did just that, running back two blocked punts for touchdowns in the final six minutes to win 17-16, and fans grabbed every roll of toilet paper they could find and buried the two old oak trees at Toomer’s Corner in white. It’s been an Auburn ritual after every big win ever since — until an Alabama fan named Harvey Updyke nearly ended it for good. Furious after Auburn beat the Tide 28-27 in the 2010 Iron Bowl, Updyke poured a lethal dose of the herbicide Spike 80DF around the century-old oaks, then confessed on Paul Finebaum’s radio show under the alias “Al from Dadeville.” He was arrested, pleaded guilty to a felony, served jail time and was ordered to pay $800,000 in restitution. The poisoned trees were finally removed in 2013, replaced in 2015, replaced again in 2017 after a fire, and the rolling tradition — because Auburn people don’t quit — carries on to this day.

The Noise Gets Auburn in Trouble

Which brings us to the time the Plains got a little too creative with the volume knob. Everybody in Gator Nation remembers Auburn getting dinged by the league for pumping artificial crowd noise through the stadium speakers during a Florida game — and the game folks point to is October 14, 2006, when 11th-ranked Auburn knocked off No. 2 Florida 27-17 in front of 87,451 howling fans at Jordan-Hare, scoring the last 19 points of the game off a blocked punt, a late interception and a fumble return for a touchdown as time expired. Days later, the SEC came down on Auburn for noise violations stemming from that very game.

The SEC’s had a running problem with the Plains and artificial noise going back to the 1970s, when Shug Jordan himself complained about Mississippi State’s cowbells costing his own team false starts and fumbles — which is what got noisemakers banned across the league in the first place. Funny how that circles back around.

Whether passing vs Georgia or kicking vs Auburn, Spurrier was an SEC nemesis The Seminole (Gator Annual)

Spurrier’s Kick Heard Round the State

Let’s go back further, to October 29, 1966, and the single most important field goal in Florida history. The Gators and Tigers were deadlocked at 27-27 late at Florida Field, Florida had driven to the Auburn 24, and the drive stalled. Coach Ray Graves sent out backup kicker Wayne (Shade Tree) Barfield for what would’ve been a 40-yard attempt — well beyond what anybody figured Barfield could reliably make. Steve Spurrier, the senior quarterback, walked over to Graves and essentially said, let me do it. Graves let him. Spurrier went and got his special zip-on right shoe and calmly drilled a 40-yard field goal through the uprights for a 30-27 win. The Tiger sideline was shouting warnings to be careful and watch the fake to which, Jordan reportedly told them “ you had better. Hope it’s a fake, because if Spurrier kicks it, he’ll make it!”

Later the Auburn coach needled him afterward by calling him “Steve Superior.” And he was.

Two weeks later, the Heisman Trophy went to Florida for the first time, and nobody who saw that kick was surprised. It remains, to this day, the signature moment of the Head Ball Coach’s playing career.

The Night of Nine

Now for the game nobody in Gainesville likes to bring up. November 1, 1969, Florida travels to Auburn as the No. 7 team in the country, and sophomore-turned-starter John Reaves — the kid who’d go on to become college football’s all-time leading passer — has the worst afternoon a quarterback has ever had against this rivalry, or arguably any game of any rivalry. 

Reaves threw the ball 66 times that day and was picked off nine times, an NCAA record that still stands more than a half-century later.

Auburn defensive backs coach Bill Oliver had his unit primed for exactly what Florida wanted to do, and it showed — his group intercepted nine of Reaves’ 66 attempts, and depending on who’s telling the story, a penalty wiped out a possible tenth. Reaves kept slinging it right through the fourth quarter because Florida had no other way to catch up. That’s either stubborn or brave, depending on your seat in the stands. Either way, it’s one record I promise you nobody in Gainesville is trying to break.

Just one more unfortunate season of Auburn inflicting embarrassment on the Gator offense, as it had done to Spurrier in 1965.

Bill Cody’s pick-six belong— 1965, with Steve Spurrier at quarterback, not Reaves. Cody, the Orlando-born Auburn linebacker, intercepted a Spurrier pass and returned it 29 yards for a touchdown, then also fell on a Spurrier fumble in the end zone, as Auburn scored 28 unanswered points in the second half. 

Bo Knows Florida

There goes that man Bo again (Auburn, Pictorial History of the Loveliest Village by Mickey Logue & Jack Simms)

If you want to talk about one man deciding a game against the Gators single-handedly, you talk about Bo Jackson on October 29, 1983, at Jordan-Hare. Florida’s Wayne Peace was slinging it all over the yard that day, but Auburn’s sophomore tailback simply took over, ripping off touchdown runs of 55 and 80 yards en route to 196 yards on just 16 carries, and Auburn held on for a 28-21 win after Florida clawed back from a 28-7 deficit. That 80-yard scamper came one snap after Florida appeared to score, only to fumble the ball out of the end zone for a touchback — Auburn took it right back the other way, and that was the ballgame.

Florida got its measure of revenge two years later, though. On November 2, 1985, with Jackson in the thick of his Heisman campaign, No. 2 Florida held him to 48 yards on 16 carries after he took a knee-to-thigh shot and had to leave the game, and Kerwin Bell hit Ray McDonald for the go-ahead score in a 14-10 Gator win that put a real dent in Bo’s trophy case. Jackson still won the Heisman a few weeks later, but that Florida defense is the one team that ever really slowed him down.

The Day Terry Bowden Broke Hearts at The Swamp

And finally, the gut-punch that still haunts anybody who was wearing orange and blue on October 15, 1994. Florida walked into that game ranked No. 1 in the country, unbeaten, and a 17-point favorite over Terry Bowden’s sixth-ranked Auburn squad — a team that couldn’t even play in a bowl game or the SEC Championship because it was serving out NCAA probation.

In front of 85,562 fans at Florida Field, Spurrier’s Gators turned the ball over five times, including four Terry Dean interceptions in the first half alone. Danny Wuerffel came off the bench and threw three touchdowns, but with 1:20 to go, Auburn’s Brian Robinson picked him off. Auburn quarterback Patrick Nix marched the Tigers right back down the field and hit Frank Sanders for an eight-yard touchdown with 30 seconds left, and Auburn walked out of Gainesville with a stunning 36-33 win, extending its winning streak to a nation-best 18 games. It remains one of the most stunning upsets ever pulled off inside The Swamp, and it happened a year after Bowden’s Tigers had also knocked off Florida, 38-35, in his very first season on the Plains

Bounced Away by the Bureaucrats

So if this rivalry is so rich, why does it feel like a reunion tour instead of an annual date? Blame the men with the spreadsheets. When the SEC expanded to 12 teams in 1992 and split into East and West divisions, the league was smart enough to protect two cross-division rivalries for every school, which is how Florida-Auburn survived the first round of realignment intact (Wikipedia). It lasted a decade like that. Then some athletic directors started grumbling that the arrangement wasn’t fair — Auburn, for instance, got stuck with both Florida and Georgia as its two protected opponents, which meant playing two league heavyweights every single year, while other schools drew far softer permanent dance partners.

The league’s answer, in 2002, was to cut every school down to just one protected cross-division rival instead of two. Auburn kept Georgia, preserving the “Deep South’s Oldest Rivalry.” Florida kept LSU, betting on a fast-rising program under a young coach named Nick Saban. And with the stroke of a committee’s pen, a 90-year-old, 58-straight-year annual tradition — one that had crowned Heisman winners, ended win streaks and flattened No. 1 teams — got shoved into a rotation, playing only when the schedule-makers felt like it. No fan asked for that. No player asked for that. It was a scheduling decision made in a conference room, and Florida-Auburn has been paying for it ever since — four games in the last 24 years, when it used to be four games every four years.

Where That Leaves Us Now

That’s the thing about this series — it never runs out of chapters, even with the bureaucrats doing their best to starve it of new ones. A Heisman-clinching kick, a record nobody wants, a Heisman winner who got stopped cold, a No. 1 team that got its heart ripped out, a stadium loud enough to shake the ground, a downtown corner that’s survived a poisoning and kept right on rolling, and a league that had to step in and tell Auburn to turn the speakers down. Saturday night, Sumrall and Golesh add a new chapter of their own, in front of a crowd that’s been rattling nerves and windowpanes on the Plains for a hundred years running. 

Buckle up, Gator Nation. This one’s never been for the faint of heart.