ON THIS DATE: Auburn is 4-1 in games played on Sept. 11, which includes wins against Wake Forest '82, Samford '93, Idaho '99 and Mississippi State '04. The loss was a 31-19 punch to the face at Arizona '76.
That Wake Forest game was pretty significant in that a highly rated tailback made his debut in an Auburn uniform. No, I'm not talking about Alan Evans from Enterprise High School. I'm talking about Vincent Edward "Bo" Jackson from McAdory High School, who gained 123 yards on 10 carries and scored a pair of touchdowns in the Tigers' 28-10 victory.
Until that moment, Jackson was known best as the New York Yankees' second-round pick in the 1982 MLB Draft. (He was the 50th overall pick; No. 51 was future Hall of Fame shortstop Barry Larkin while Barry Bonds went earlier in the second round.) Jackson turned down that opportunity and a $250,000 signing bonus, which was fantastic money at the time, to take a shot at football. This was novel thinking at the time. Jackson was the talk of fall camp, though, and those who followed the program at the time realized even before the Wake Forest game that Auburn felt like it already had a star in Jackson.
He finished his freshman season with 829 yards, though a 1-yard leap inside Legion Field is what most folks remember about that season. And for good reason. It was perhaps the most significant play in Auburn history until the Kick Six and signified imminent change in the Auburn-Ala dynamic.
It's also worth noting that the 2004 game in Starkville was the moment when we all realized that team's ceiling. The 2003 season was a disaster, Jetgate happened, a happy-go-lucky guy named Al Borges was hired away from Indiana, of all places, to make sense of the Tigers' offensive quagmire. In that game, Auburn unveiled its new package of pre-snap shifts that became a staple of that season. The Bulldogs were powerless to stop the visitors' advances; Auburn led 43-0 in the fourth quarter before removing all starters. Ronnie Brown finished with 147 yards; Carnell Williams had 122. The two-back system could work, would work, did work.
AS AN ASIDE: Auburn searched for its new coordinator in early February 2004. This was back in the days when I camped out at the airport to get scoop on which guy Auburn was bringing in. Tuberville already had interviewed Shane Montgomery from Miami (Ohio) and Rob Spence from Toledo. The third guy was a mystery candidate.
Josh Moon and I compiled a list of guys who were "hot names" in coordinators circles. When the plane arrived and Mystery Candidate hopped in the pickup with Hugh Nall, I called Josh and told him our mystery candidate was Rick Majerus. Josh started looking for coordinators that fit the bill. He called me back a few minutes later and said the only guy like that looked like Majerus was Al Borges from Indiana. I hustled back to the complex to look at pictures of Borges. Smart phones still were a few years away and it was a rainy night at AUO; I didn't get a great look. Once I had Borges' mug in my head, so to speak, I hustled out to the Catfish Cabin where Nall and Borges were dining. When they left, I got a great look at Borges in the light. That was our guy. And that's how the Montgomery Advertiser gleaned its story about Al Borges interviewing for the Tigers' OC job.
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