I joked about this the other day, but apparently Pat Dye really is sick and tired of Auburn playing Alabama.
“I’d rather see Auburn in the East than us to play Alabama every year,” Dye said Tuesday during a taping for his weekly radio show on ESPN 106.7-FM in Auburn, according to Auburn Network producer Zac Blackerby.
Many Auburn fans would probably not like that scenario, but Dye has his reasons for shedding the Iron Bowl from the calendar every year.
“We don’t need to let Alabama dictate what we do at Auburn,” he said. “We can play them on a rotation, just like everybody else.”
I can’t even begin to imagine the shit that would rain down on Auburn fans from ‘Bama folks if the Tigers bailed on the rivalry.
I don’t know if Nick Saban is the greatest coach in SEC history, but I’m pretty sure he’s affected the thinking of more conference coaches and administrators than any other coach in SEC history.
Get The Picture 
Politics would get involved so fast it would make Linda Blair’s head spin. Too much at stake economically…that game is worth millions to the state economy every year. Even in Georgia, there have been threats of legislation to require UGA/NATS annual game. And the Iron Bowl is a lot bigger deal than that. Dye is just trying to loosen the load for AU to have a better shot at getting to ATL occasionally.
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Tomorrow, Dye will be asked again and he’ll reply, “Did I say that? At what point during the evening?”
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Wow. Looks like ol’ Pat’s becoming a bit of a coward in his old age. If you want to be the man, you’ve got to beat the man. He was able to get things turned around in the rivalry when Bear Bryant was eating Auburn’s lunch. Why doesn’t he think someone at Auburn can take on big, bad Nick Saban? The fact that he’s saying this out loud in public really damages his reputation in my mind.
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No joke; what a total wuss. We didn’t say we wanted to drop Florida when Spurrier started coaching there.
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The Dye men….cowards….wuss’….please guys! All three of them were tough as a lighter knot and no one on this blog would care to tangle with them. As Online Athens shared with us in October of ’03, “Dye brothers integral part of Bulldogs’ success”.
Let’s allow Pat to have his opinion and thank him for his time between the hedges!
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Nick Saban made LSU replace Les Miles with Ed Orgeron, UGA replace Mark Richt with Kirby Smart, and Urban Meyer and Steve Spurrier get out of Dodge of their own volition. The four best coaches in the conference, all gone out of foolish desperation.
He has single-handedly brought low the SEC.
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Saban really had nothing to do with Spurrier’s decision that golf was a hell of a lot more fun than coaching football at his age. The OBS quit because he knew he was done from a recruiting standpoint and didn’t want his legacy at USCe tarnished.
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This makes no sense to me. They can’t be Georgia either…so why would they want to join the east.
Someone needs to let Coach Dye know that Auburn is man enough for the Big XII.
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This might be the most chicken shit thing I’ve ever heard.
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It would be a lot like the Dawgs dropping Ga. Tech.
It just Is Not going to happen.
Still, Tech Two Years & then Clemson two Years Is not a bad deal.
Again It Is not going to happen.
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No, it might not happen but there is a lot more logic to us dropping a non-conference, instate rival (GT) than Auburn ever dropping a conference, instate rival like Alabama. Plus, they recruit head to head for many athletes, we rarely do so with GT. There is just no comparing the two rivalries, of which GT is no where near our biggest rival. But then neither is likely to go away, even if Auburn moved to the East, they would likely retain Alabama as an annual rivalry. The only thing Dye would ever get is an easier path to the SECCG.
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I don’t know, Senator. Bear Bryant made Georgia Tech take their ball and go home. Saban hasn’t made anybody bail on the conference as a whole yet.
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Dodd believed Tech was at a competitive disadvantage because he would sign 28 to 30 players a year and keep them all while other SEC schools would sign 60 a year and run off players who weren’t good enough, Curry said.
Dodd devised a proposal to address the issue. “According to legend,” Curry said, “he went to the SEC meetings and somebody promised him a vote, reneged and changed their vote. When that failed, he walked out of the room and out of the SEC. He felt like he got double-crossed.”
Three years before Tech left the SEC, Dodd and Alabama coach Paul “Bear” Bryant began a long feud after Georgia Tech’s Chick Graning sustained a broken jaw from a hit by Alabama’s Darwin Holt. The coaches stopped talking for years and the series was discontinued after 1964.
Curry said Bryant agreed in 1975 to resume his friendship with Dodd and sought to personally sponsor Tech’s re-entry to the SEC. But Dodd knew some other SEC schools wouldn’t let Tech back in, according to Curry.
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GT’s school colors are yellow for a reason…..
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http://www.secsportsfan.com/origins-of-sec-school-colors.html
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Dodd screwed up royally with this decision. In addition to the scholarship rationale, he also saw GT as a potential ND level independent and felt he would get to keep all the bowl money. What he didn’t see was GT falling off the football map so quickly and becoming irrelevant once they weren’t in the SEC. The ACC will never replace what he walked away from….and they have his name on program, makes me laugh every time I hear it. Honoring the guy who cut their throat, who woulda thunk?
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That version of why Tech left th SEC is white and gold rationalization. It’s the “we were too honorable to have to reduce scholarship numbers and kick kids off” nonsense. I researched, several years ago, what the newspapers and magazines were reporting back in 1962 and 1963 about Tech and the SEC. The scholarship limit vote in December 1963 was the event that resulted in Tech leaving, but Tech was planning to be an independent for at least a year beforehand. There was a reference in a Sports Illustrated article early in the 1963 season about Tech becoming independent in 1964. The scholarship vote was cover for a decision already made; Tech was leaving no matter which way the vote went.
Tech thought it would make more money not having to share Bowl money with the conference. It thought it was Notre Dame in stature.
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What time of day, or night, was it when ole’ Pat said that? It is always Happy Hour for him.
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Dye may have his reasons (and they maybe next to his lost wallet) but I can say the Auburn side of my family does not agree with him on stopping the Iron Bowl. They may like moving to the East as Florida and Tenn. would rejoin the schedule and LSU (which was not a traditional rival pre-expansion) would be dropped.
Having been to the WLOCP, and all of rivals at home UGA and the big ones away as well. The Iron Bowl is very unique. If you have the chance I would recommend going. It would be a shame if the tradition was lost.
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Is Jere a republican? I doubt it.
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I don’t know how this comment got on this thread. Sorry
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Sure, move Auburn to the SEC East…and then make Bama their permanent cross-divisional opponent! Muahahaha!
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This may be apocryphal, but Auburn lore has it that when Dye was introduced as coach, a reporter immediately asked him how long it would take Auburn to beat Alabama.
“60 minutes” was Dye’s response.
I guess his response to the same question now would be six years.
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“Once a Dawg, always a Dawg.”
Pat Dye is the exception that proves the rule. He’s dead to me, so anything he says is of no consequence.
Boom is looking to eventually take his place. 😏
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Boom is below Dye, and Tark, to me.
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I remember a bumper sticker in Athens back in the day that said, “Pat Dye is living proof that Jan Kemp was right.”
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Looks like Dye wants to switch Auburn orange to Auburn yellow……..
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Pat Dye and Auburn not man enough to beat Bama?
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You have to remember this thinking started way before Saban.
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I recall Tubs backing out of a series with FSU when he took over, so you’ve got a point.
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