Auburn Football: The 2004 undefeated season, my story

Georgia, Kirk Herbstreit and the Iron Bowl

Auburn beat Kentucky and Ole Miss over the next two weeks easily by a combined score of 77-24 to set up the deep south’s oldest rivalry.

The morning of the Georgia game I was awoken by the Auburn fight song playing in Bradford’s room. I guess that was his way of waking me up. It was his favorite song, and he liked to dance to it, a lot. I walked outside to find him dancing, of course, and he asked me that question he had asked me every game day for the past two years, “Hey KP, it’s game day, are you pumped up?” I was.

We got dressed, jumped in his Altima, and headed toward Auburn. If my memory serves me right, we broke a flag on the interstate on the way there and had to pull over, an irrelevant tidbit, but I don’t fly my car flags on the interstate anymore because of that.

We arrived in Auburn and made our way to the stadium. On the way in, my excitement was boiling over. I mean, this was Auburn-Georgia. Auburn sat at 9-0 and we had the Orange Bowl in our sights, and Bama next weekend.

As we were walking along the concourse I thought out loud as we were passing the sea of UGA fans, “I hate red.” Apparently I thought out loud a little too loud and an elderly lady in front of me wearing her red and black looked back at me with a disgusted look and said, “And I hate ORANGE!” I honestly didn’t mean any disrespect, but she was a nasty little fireball!

Georgia had me concerned. They were ranked eighth in the AP poll and were a good football team with a lot of talent. David Greene was a solid quarterback and they were loaded with playmakers.

Cadillac Williams and Ronnie Brown put up 260 total yards that night, with Williams adding a touchdown pass to Anthony Mix. It was a thing of beauty when Cadillac took the handoff to the right side and lofted a floater over the defense. Auburn went up 14-0.

The Auburn defense was as dominate as they had ever been in that UGA game. One of my proudest moments came in the third quarter when Junior Rosegreen planted Reggie Brown on a pass across the middle to knock Brown out of the game. Brown was lying on the turf at Jordan-Hare Stadium when Auburn fans started chanting his name, “REGG-IE, REGG-IE, REGG-IE.” For a few minutes, we put aside our differences and that show of sportsmanship and class made me darn proud to be a part of the Auburn family.

With less than a minute left, with Auburn leading 24-6, fans began to hurl oranges onto the field. We knew the Iron Bowl was next week, and the SEC championship game the week after, but watching those oranges being tossed onto the field, we had that feeling that if Auburn won out, they’d get a shot at USC.

I’d like to take this chance to apologize to Kirk Herbstreit. See, Herby was part of the halftime presentation. He was presenting an award of some sort and he walked in front of us to take his place on the field. I wasn’t very nice to Herbstreit and I let him know how badly Ohio State sucked. So Kirk, I’m sorry.

Bradford nor myself went to Tuscaloosa for the Iron Bowl that year. I honestly don’t even remember where I watched it, but I remember the game, and I remember that Alabama took a 6-0 lead into halftime.

Alabama was a bad football team during that time. Bama fans choose to forget the streak of six in a row, and fail to acknowledge that success and failure comes full circle, and this run that Alabama is on now won’t last forever. I believe 2004 was the third in a row.

Auburn came out after halftime and took the lead for good. There was a little drama late in the game, but Courtney Taylor sealed the win with the onside kick recovery. Jason Campbell ran out the clock from there and we all turned our attention to Tennessee.