Brace yourself. It's gonna get long.
The documentary could have focused on so many other things to portray this as the most intense rivalry in college football.
More details on the history of the two schools.
It was a one hour documentary. It was marketed as the story of the craziness that has been the last two years in this rivalry and Alabama's 2009 National Championship/Heisman/Close Iron Bowl comeback victory vs. Auburn's 2010 National Championship/Heisman/Close Iron Bowl comeback victory. It was about the present Saban/Chizik era. It was about the Toomer's poisoning and the tornadoes that struck Tuscaloosa. It was about the brief second where we chilled out on the vitriol because of that. It was about how it didn't last long. I thought it handled all of that well. Is it the be all/end all documentary on all things Iron Bowl? You would need a 6 hour miniseries to even begin to do it the justice you're expecting. The only purpose of mentioning the history of the rivalry before Saban/Chizik arrived is to set the backdrop for how deep-seated the rivalry is. Not to explore it in great detail. Perhaps another documentary will.
More details on how the game was suspended for 40 years and the importance of it coming back.
Covered. Again, there's only 1 hour to tell the story of the last two years. What do you want them to do here besides what they did. Explain why it happened, and explain that it was miserable and explain why it came back.
The economic implications of the two football teams and the game for the state.
I think it was suggested that it's a big deal. They may not have gone into an hour's worth of detail with interviewing local business owners and economists, but that wasn't what this film was about. And that film would be boring, if you ask me.
Punt Bama Punt.
Covered.
The 9 game win streak in the 70s and how the Bear dominated.
Covered.
Bo Over the Top and how it changed the momentum of the rivalry.
Covered.
The 1989 Iron Bowl and how the game had been played in Birmingham for so many years with Auburn promising that things would be different if the game would be moved to Auburn every other year.
This might have been interesting, I agree. But again, with time limitations, and for the purposes of setting up the actual story of
this documentary, it had to be condensed to "Bear dominated, but Bo over the top ended 9 years of Auburn agony, and it's never been the same since." Works for me. The way they approached it actually plays to Auburn's favor a bit.
The streak and how Alabama answered it with a 36-0 beat down in Tuscaloosa.
Reread my previous answer.
The 2009/2010 seasons (which they did include).
Which was the intended focus of this film.
They could have also discussed how the state can produce two of the top football programs in the country despite having one of the smaller populations and being considered extremely poor. You want to discuss the lunacy of football fans? Take a few shots of the black belt and post our education statistics then talk about how much money and effort goes into keeping the football programs top notch.
Again, give them more than an hour to tell the 2009/2010 story, and perhaps they could explore this.
Instead, we got the typical Finebaum caller bullshit:
Like it or not, it's part of the story. Especially in the Harvey Updyke story, which is an integral part of the last two years' drama. The more he was on screen, the worse for Bama, and the better for Auburn. It's not like they were promoting his book or something. Bama fans were represented as crazy. There was no equivalent to him, or even the random calls they played, from the Auburn side.
Gene Jelks was paid by an AU booster. (Unsubstantiated)
Agree, that could have been left out. But I think he looked stupid saying "Some Auburn guy paid me to come out, I don't remember who it was." Sounds like he's trying to save face, which is supported by his renewed interest in redemption that he also sought by returning to Tuscaloosa for tornado relief. The bottom line is, they mentioned Bama paying Gene Jelks and didn't mention a damn thing about Eric Ramsey. The only allegations about Auburn cheating, was a brief synopsis of Cam-gate, which the film ended with stating the NCAA cleared Auburn and Cam of all wrongdoing and Cam saying "Of course I'm not gonna have to give my Heisman back."
Fans of both schools think and do irrational things to hurt each other. (Harvey Updyke's the only one I know of)
Didn't get that out of it. They didn't show any other examples. They showed crazy assed Updyke, and others saying vitriolic hateful things about Auburn. They made it look, to me, like the whole fanbase was a bunch of assholes. But what does the Auburn coaches, players, and fans do when tragedy hits Tuscaloosa? They take the high road and lend a helping hand. To me, it portrayed Auburn fans as having the human decency that Alabama fans lack. It didn't mention the superficial Tuscaloosa for Toomer's shit.
Both schools cheat or try to catch the other cheating. (Logan Young did try to purchase a player. Cam Newton allegations were all made up by rival fans and perpetuated by Danny Sheridan and Paul Finebaum and Pete Thamel.)
Didn't get your first sentence out of it. Definitely got the parenthetical out of it.
Auburn fans rolled Toomer's when the Bear died. (Never happened. No proof of anything like that happening except the bogus claims by a few fringe Alabama fans.)
Agree with this. Wish they would have refuted it. But ultimately, it wasn't an interviewee that said that, it was one of the batshit Finebaum callers, which I think rational people will dismiss as such.
Charles Barkley fulfilling what ALabama fans want Auburn fans to think - that we have an inferiority complex. (Maybe in the 1970s, but in my time as an Auburn fan, I haven't seen it.)
Use Barkley to insinuate that Auburn may have used race as a reason to not hire Turner Gill. (Auburn may have never had a black head coach in football, but Turner Gill sucked and that story was dead a long time ago.)
Agree with this. But blame Sir Charles. We know the man has no filter. It's part of his gift and his curse. In his defense, he was saying this in the segment that was talking about Bear Bryant's reign, when it probably was the case. Again, I wish he didn't say it. I also wish they would have given him space to retract his statements on Turner Gill by pointing out Chizik's success and Gill's failure since the hire was made. But I doubt he offered that to the cameras and they just didn't air it.
I guess I felt like with the topics they chose to talk about in the documentary, it should have been more biased against Alabama.
Instead, they used bullshit allegations to help convince the uninformed fan living in another state that everyone here is backwoods and redneck. (Successful if my Facebook, Tigerdroppings, and Twitter have anything to say about it)
There's your trouble. Of course we do. We're homers. We're bitter. This documentary wasn't called "Roll Tide Cheating Redneck Sons Of Bitches/War Fucking Eagle, Noble Gentlemen", although I would have preferred that title. It wasn't produced by the Auburn athletic department. It's not made for Auburn fans by Auburn fans. It was an attempt to tell an even-handed story about how crazy the last two years of this rivalry has gotten. To me, if I'm looking at it objectively, I think it painted Bama fans much worse than Auburn fans. They have Updyke, they cheated and paid Jelks, and they were ungrateful when Auburn fans and coaches lent a helping hand after the hurricane. The only dark spot that was probably planned originally to play against Auburn was the Cam stuff, but since he was cleared it was more about the allegations from bammers, and the classlessness of playing "Take the Money and Run", etc.
As I was typing this, I had a group of people come up to my desk and said "Wow. I had no idea it was that bad. I mean, I've heard, but wow. That was really interesting." They came to me for follow-up information. They didn't know about the Iron Bowl being suspended. I filled them in on some of the details. Some of them didn't even know about Updyke. Their impression of him was not good, to say the least. "His excuse was he has too much Bama in him? What a crazy redneck." That was the purpose of this documentary. To inform people who have no idea about this stuff. To try to at least scratch the surface in explaining how crazy the rivalry truly is.
As an Auburn fan, of course there were a few things I would have changed, but then it wouldn't have been as even and unbiased as it was.
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