Question for SEC football historians

I seem to recall that SEC schools were only required to play six conference games up until the late 80s, maybe even until the league expanded.

 

Birmingham was the football capitol of the South because Coach Bryant played all the big games there. It was a bigger stadium with a better atmosphere and more convenient to national media than the campus stadium. I had the pleasure of showing the Tennessee SID around Tuscaloosa in 1999 for UT's first football game in there.

The "Iron Bowl" between Alabama and Auburn was so named not only because it was played in Birmingham, which had a strong iron industry, but also because it was a uniquely awesome de facto neutral site game for so many years. The tickets were split 50/50 between the schools and you could tell exactly where the seating sections for the teams started and stopped.

 

This. A thousand times this.

For all the talk about how tough the SEC is, the league has always played a chickenshit schedule. Something that the Pac-8/10 likes to point out but almost always gets shouted down.

 

Because it's absurd.

 

Alabama had a contract with the city of Birmingham to play three home games a year at Legion Field until the late 1990s. Because Legion Field was so much bigger than Bryant-Denny Stadium, Alabama chose to play most of its big "home" games in Birmingham. They played all home games against Tennessee there until 1999, when Bryant-Denny Stadium in Tuscaloosa expanded from 70,000 to 83,000. (It expanded again to 92,000 in 2006 and again to 101,000 last year). The last Alabama home game at Legion Field was the 2003 season-opener.

The Auburn-Alabama game was a neutral site game in Birmingham until 1988, just as the Florida-Georgia game in Jacksonville and the Oklahoma-Texas game in Dallas are now. But Alabama's administration finally agreed to let Auburn play the game at Auburn in 1989. But because of the contract with the city of Birmingham, they could not play Auburn in Tuscaloosa until 2000. Thus, the 1992, 94, 96 and 98 Auburn games in Birmingham were home games for Alabama (the 1991 game in Birmingham was designated a home game for Auburn to fulfill Auburn's contract with the city of Birmingham).

A number of SEC schools used to play off-campus home games as well. Because their on-campus stadiums were relatively small, Mississippi State and Ole Miss played a lot of home games in Jackson for years, up until the early 1990s. Arkansas still plays a game or two a year in Little Rock.

 

Arkansas has played LSU in Little Rock for most of its time in the SEC due to the fact the game is played on Thanksgiving weekend and Fayetteville is virtually deserted during the break.

During their SWC years they played three to four games at War Memorial for the same reason Bama played in Birmingham. War Memorial was bigger than Razorback Stadium.

The Hogs have also played "road" games in Little Rock from time to time. Louisiana-Monroe had a home-and-home series with them a few years back and the ULM home games were played at War Memorial in order to help them boost their home attendance average.

 

It almost seems as if big rivalry games on neutral fields is, or was, a way of life in the SEC. Way back when, from 1920 to 1958, Georgia and Auburn played their annual game in Columbus, Ga. It was a huge event in that town, drawing visitors for extended stays from across the state

 

What makes it a true "neutral site" game is not necessarily where it's played, but the ticket split. The old Iron Bowl was a 50/50 split, just like the Cocktail Party and Red River Shootout continue to be.

The opening-week "Classic" games like the Chik-fil-A game in Atlanta and whatever they call the game at Cowboys Stadium operate the same way. Alabama and Florida State played a 50/50 ticket split game in Jacksonville a few years back.

Are Florida-Georgia, Texas-Oklahoma and Army-Navy the only annual "neutral site" (50/50 ticket split) rivalry games left in Division I-A football?

 

Is the Egg Bowl played still played in Jackson?

 

No, not since 1990. I think Jackie Sherrill helped put the kibosh on that.

 

Why is it called the Egg Bowl? Always wondered that.

 

Trophy is a golden egg.