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    • Casagrande: Iron Bowls’ egg bowl brings a purity to the rivalry
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    Casagrande: Iron Bowls’ egg bowl brings a purity to the rivalry

    Vaseline Posted on

    This is an opinion column.

    This Iron Bowl week feels different because it is.

    Not less, just different.

    For what feels like a generation, there have been extra stakes here virtually every Thanksgiving week. Whether it was an SEC West title decider or a knockout round for one side’s chance to play in Atlanta or beyond, the Iron Bowl almost always had a multiplier.

    Some extra juice.

    Maybe you can take some hope from Alabama’s now diminished chances of making the first 12-team College Football Playoff, but it’s quite a gamble.

    Oklahoma blew that last week. That result was even more stunning than the outcome itself for the final score of 24-3, but it set the tone for something old that is now something new.

    An egg bowl made from an iron bowl.

    You know what I mean, and no disrespect to our neighbors to the west, but so are they.

    Rarely does a Thanksgiving or holiday-adjacent meeting between Mississippi and Mississippi State have any real conference or national impact. The Bulldogs have only appeared in the SEC Championship once and that was in 1998. Their rivals never have and that streak continues in this new era.

    That just makes the eggshell more important for old-fashioned reasons.

    You could say that the hatred on the field and in the stands every year in Starkville or Oxford exceeds anything we see in Tuscaloosa or Auburn.

    They don’t play with next week in mind.

    There is a singular focus on destroying their neighbors without regard to anything else.

    That will essentially be the case this Saturday at Bryant-Denny Stadium as the focus narrows from the national level to a more local one. Not that some of those high-stakes games didn’t pay off. Just look back to last year or 2013. Those are Iron Bowls that will live on forever, but in part because it had an impact on national title runs that started, ended or were extended.

    This week already brought some old-fashioned rivalry talk.

    Down in Auburn, freshman linebacker Demarcus Riddick was throwing shade at Jalen Milroe, Ryan Williams and the Crimson Tide in general.

    “I’m not going to lose to Bama as long as I’m here,” Riddick said after saying he was faster than Alabama’s quarterback and that the Tide’s freshman receiver was nothing special for him.

    In response, Milroe said he had never heard of Riddick.

    “Let him talk,” he told reporters in Tuscaloosa on Tuesday. “It’s part of it.”

    Indeed.

    “Teams have talked before,” Alabama defensive lineman Tim Keenan said. “They had this and that to say. Auburn is a good team and we are preparing for them as best we can.”

    Some spice has been added due to the recruiting landscape. Hugh Freeze clearly made the state’s prospects a priority with one look at the Tigers board for the class of 2025. Bringing in homegrown talent that has grown up in this frenzy, as opposed to shopping nationally, will only increase the scrap on the field.

    Freeze brings an aggressive tone to the top of the Auburn pyramid, perhaps more of the sharp-edged approach compared to Alabama’s first-year coach in Kalen DeBoer.

    Iron Bowl No. 1 for Freeze was heartbreaking as his team limped into Jordan-Hare Stadium and pulled off the ultimate upset in a heroic moment. This year the momentum has changed in the most abrupt way.

    While Alabama was the top-ranked team early last month when Auburn was in a tailspin, the wind shifted Saturday. Alabama’s dismal performance at Oklahoma, combined with the Tigers’ field-storming win over Texas A&M, sends confidence moving in opposite directions.

    Now all paths cross at 2:30 PM CT Saturday at Bryant-Denny Stadium.

    Alabama still harbors some hope for a playoff wonder, while Auburn is backing out of bowl eligibility.

    But the game that means everything feels a little more important this time.

    And for different reasons.

    The purest kind.

    Michael Casagrande is a reporter for the Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @ByCasagrande or on Facebook.

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