TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — It wasn’t pretty, but then nothing about this Alabama season has been. In the 89th installment of the Iron Bowl, Alabama outpaced Auburn for a 28-14 victory that kept the critics of the wobbly Kalen DeBoer regime at bay and kept the faint flames of a College Football Playoff berth alive.
To boil down a rivalry game to a question of how it will impact the College Football Playoff, as announcers did during Friday night’s Georgia-Georgia Tech game, is to utterly miss the point of a rivalry game. Alabama and Auburn have been battling for more than a century, and no newly created playoff structure is going to dent the fury, rage and loathing that animate this perfect rivalry.