IRON BOWL 2013!

or as I refer to it as The Best Game I've Ever Witnessed.

Everyone in Alabama knows how epic the Iron Bowl is. This year the stakes were so high, it was the supernova of Iron Bowls. The past two years, Auburn has pretty much been embarrassed. This year, it was pointed out that we barely got past Texas A&M and the only reason we beat Georgia was because of a miracle play. No skill, just luck. We had no chance, and everyone thought so too, including all the sports writers/commentators/people on fb.. This year, Auburn was ranked #4 and Alabama was ranked #1, the closest it's been ever. 

The Iron Bowl has been played the weekend after Thanksgiving for several years now. Now that I think about it, it was moved to that weekend in the beginning of my college career, which means it's almost been 10 years. TEN! The first couple of years I was in college it was the weekend before. Anywho.. 

In a lot of families down here in AL, Thanksgiving definitely gets overshadowed. There is a big RV lot that usually opens up on Wednesday before game weekends in AU, and for the Iron Bowl, they opened the lot a week before. There was a line miles long of RVs waiting to get into the lot the Saturday before the game. I wondered how many people had Thanksgiving in their RV haha! 

I went down to Auburn on Wednesday night, then rode with Murray to Selma to be with his fam for Thanksgiving. We drove by the RV fields on the way out, and I got some pics. 

These shots really don't show how FULL it was. I haven't seen it that packed in a long time. 

After we ate lunch in Selma, we drove over to my lake house at Lake Martin to spend time with my fam. We missed the big family gathering, but we got to hang out with my parentals. 

Of course, all anyone could talk about was the Iron Bowl. Once we returned to Auburn, it was pandemonium! Thousands of people were in town. My friends Brooke and Whitney came to town, and we had big plans to head downtown on Friday night to meet the eagle! 

Auburn Art had a special event where they had the eagle and her handler in the store! It was all I could talk about that evening. "I JUST WANT TO MEET THE EAGLE!!" like we were going to be friends or something. Murray could care less about seeing our eagle, being a bama fan and all, so he went with his friends while Brooke and Whitney came with me to fulfill my dreams! haha

The Auburn Art crew was there, and I got to get a picture of my eagle string art with the actual eagle! 

Here's a pic with Scott Brannan, who also was a winner in the Auburn Art artist search contest. His paintings are awesome, you should check them out! 

Brooke got in a pic with the eagle as well! She is one of the people in my folder of "biggest AU fans ever", so I'm glad she was here for this epic weekend.

That Friday night was a Downtown AUtumn Nights event, so there was a band downtown. Brooke, Whitney, and I went and met up with my ma and aunt for a minute before meeting up with our friends. We had a semi-early night since we all knew we needed to be in top condition for GAMEDAY! 

What I haven't discussed yet was that earlier in the month, I decided to bring Murray to the Iron Bowl. It was a REALLY hard decision with him being a bama fan and all. Mom gets several tickets, and we sold some, leaving one seat open on one row and two together on the other. Mom and I are both uber superstitious, so we decided I would sit with her, and Murray would sit alone. 

I may or may not have rubbed it in to Murray how Sweet Baby Cam was on the tickets :D 

We decided early in the day that after the game, we wouldn't talk about the game. Kinda like Fight Club. We all tailgated for a bit before Murray and I headed to the stadium. We took some pictures by the ESPN Gameday bus.

I wish you could see the ultra-lucky orange pants that I'm wearing! They matched the bus!

Mur with the bus

And a selfie! I think this was a "yaaay we're not gonna be mad at each other after the game" face. 

Our plan was to not even walk out of the stadium together. We were just going to meet at Tacorita and not discuss the outcome. 

The crazy line to get in about 1.5 hours before the game. I'm sure it got a lot worse, but I made Murray head in there early with me. 

This was a True Blue game, which meant everyone was suppose to wear blue. They usually only pass out shakers in the student section, but this game they gave them to EVERYONE! They gave out all orange ones so they would really stand out off everyone's blue.  

The student section was already PACKED. One of the things I don't miss is having to get to the game 3 hours before kickoff to get a decent seat.. 

Eagle flight pic!

I told you on the UGA game post that I usually get a feeling about games. Yet again, I had a feeling we were going to win, but I knew it would be close. Sitting with my ma, we could go back and forth on our superstitions and if we did everything right. We decided everything we could do had been done. We had to put away the orange shakers and use our lucky orange and blue ones since we seemed to do worse if we were holding the new ones. 

At one point, the game was Bama 21, Auburn 7. Murray was sitting on the left side of the section and up a few rows. Mom and I were on the far right side. He shoulder-tapped all the way down to mom and said "hey Ms. Susan!!!" whilst waving and smiling because they were winning. 

I had to take the sunset pic I got at every game, because tradition and all.  

By the half, it was 14-21. I was so nervous. We tied them in the third quarter. It was at this point that mom shoulder tapped up to Murray and waved "heeyyyy Murray!" hahaha! They scored again in the fourth, and we had one more chance to score.

We made a touchdown right before time ran out, but they still had time with the ball and had a chance to score again. That's when the miracle happened.  A player ran it out of bounds, and it seemed like there was no more time on the clock. We were about to go into overtime, but Saban challenged the call, and one second was added back to the clock. They decided to put in a red shirt freshman kicker since their other guy had missed several throughout the game. A 57 yd kick..

"There's no athletes on the field for Alabama, they got all fat guys." 

And if you don't have time to watch that, you've at least got to watch the call from Rod Bramblett, the amazing Auburn announcer: 

It was all a blur! Everyone was so nervous that the kick was going to be good and that they would score. It was pretty silent until everyone realized that it didn't go through the uprights. I'll try to type out the emotion: 

AHHHHWOOOOOOYEAHHH gah I'm so glad they didn't make iiitttttOHHHHMYGOD HE'S ABOUT TO SCORE!!!! 

I remember thinking:  Did he go out of bounds? Are there flags? NO?!?! WE WON!?!? 

Mom and I did a squeeze-and-jump hug for about 5 minutes. Just like the Georgia game, all I could do was scream with excitement! We high-fived and hugged everyone around us. 

There were fireworks immediately after the game was over! 

pew pew pewww! 

The students stormed the field! I was so jealous. 

It was basically a party in the stadium. No one was leaving their seats unless they were getting on the field. 

"Ceeeeellllebrattteee good times, come on!" was blaring over the loud speakers. 

They kept the party going with all kinds of music for a long time! 

SO EXCITED! 

This is my EEEEEEE! face below. I couldn't believe it! 

The field was completely full.

Of course I got a celebratory pic with the Woods! 

I remember them playing "We Can't Stop" by Miley Cyrus, and Kate and I laughed that they would play that, but sang along anyways. 

It was also this point that Murray called and asked where I was, because he was already at Tacorita. It had been close to an hour since the game had ended. Oops! 

My response: uhhh welllll, ummm I'm heading that way..

And his: You're still in the stadium, aren't you? 

guilty. 

2013 Western Division Champs! 

The winner of this game went on to the SEC Championship Game in Atlanta. If bama had won, it would've sealed the deal for them going for a 3rd National Championship. Since Auburn won, we got to go to Atlanta, but the bowl game we would go to afterwards was unsure since we had one loss. 

This is a little unclear below, but this is the Sportscenter desk in the corner of the end zone with all the commentators for the post game recap. 

EEEE! 

I pretty much skipped to Tacorita. I do recall stupidly wearing heels (bc my orange pants are too long for anything else) and not caring about my feet hurting.

Toomer's Corner was NUTS! 

More packed than the Georgia game (duh). It took me about 30 minutes to walk a block and a half. 

You couldn't slap the smile off my face at this point!

These trees are a bit further back on the corner, but they remind me of the old poisoned ones.  

I'll say it again: I can't wait for these dang wires to be gone and have the new corner trees up!

Auburn Art debuted my house-divided string art in the window after the game! 

Blurry view from Tacorita.

And from the middle of College St on the bar side. The toilet paper looks like it's about to pull those wires down!

I finally made it to Tacorita and found Murray. He was sitting at the bar, and luckily found not one, but THREE other guys who were bama fans and all dated Auburn girls. I'm glad they found each other :). Murray told me his end-of-the-iron-bowl story: 

He thought it was about to go into overtime, so he started walking down the stairs to run to the concessions beforehand. They called back the one second, so he stood in the section opening to watch the last play. He said he didn't even watch Chris Davis go all the way to the end zone before he headed out of the stadium. Tehehe

I kept my bargain up of not talking about the game, but good ol' ESPN didn't. There are about 5 big screen TV's in Tacorita, and they all had football on them. Every single station replayed that final play over and over, and every time the ENTIRE restaurant would cheer as if it had just happened! GLORIOUS for me, not so much for Murray. 

Of course we met up with everyone at Bodega (now the Bank Vault). Our friend Miles got his plaid shirt screen printed at Stamp down the street! How awesome! Wish I had had a shirt to let them do the same for me. 

I also had to show this amazing vintage shirt he had on under the plaid. There are no words to convey my jealousy.

Brooke, Whitney, me and Murray tried to get a group shot, and this was the least blurry. I don't think I was making a duck face, rather just mid-sentence letting everyone know it was lined up in the mirror. 

The next day, mom took some of us to lunch. NATURALLY I wanted to walk down to Toomer's Corner. I'm so glad I did. 

It was magical. Like a winter wonderland! 

I made the statement that since the Toomer's Trees weren't there anymore, we just were gonna have to roll all the other trees on the block.

They usually clean up the toilet paper on Sunday afternoons, but they left it up all day for people to come see it. I loved it! 

I of course got another shot of it heading out of town. 

Just like the UGA week, I went home and watched replays and fan reactions on youtube for about 5 hours. It was all anyone could talk about! It was even on national news, like Abc News with Diane Sawyer, Good Morning America, etc etc. I was loving it! 

I was/am so proud of my team!