With spring practice in full swing on the plains and A-Day quickly approaching, it’s hard to not think about all of the memories, all of the incredible games, and all of the great times I’ve had on the Plains. The memory of the 2004 undefeated Auburn football season is my favorite, and this is my story.
In the fall of 2004 I was attending college at Auburn University Montgomery. I had three roommates, two Alabama fans (though one converted from Bama to the Barn sometime during the 2003 season after attending his first Auburn game), and two Auburn fans. Bradford, the other Auburn fan in our room, and myself had this idea to try to get season tickets for the upcoming season. We tried everything we could, even calling the main Auburn campus to inquire about season tickets for AUM students. Though several years later, AUM students were allowed to purchase a limited number of season tickets (I like to take credit for this), though we were unsuccessful at the time.
With nowhere else to turn, Bradford asked his Dad if he would help us out, seeing as we were poor college kids. One night I came home from my part-time job as a front desk clerk at a local hotel and found Bradford sitting on the couch waiting for me with the good news. “Dude, are you ready to get pumped up?” Bradford said. “Dad is going to get us two season tickets, and you can just pay it back whenever you can.” I don’t think I slept that night from the overwhelming excitement. I had been to two other Auburn football games prior to the 2004 season, but nothing came close to what we would experience over the next few months.
With the season only a week or so away, my roommate Andrew (the Bama fan), Bradford, and I decided to make posters with Auburn and Alabama’s schedule on them and write the scores of the games each week to egg each other on. We got pretty violent at times, even fighting mad, but that sort of comes with the territory when you’re a football fan in the state of Alabama.