JONAS GRAY

E
The 2013 Iron Bowl was
highly anticipated in
Alabama. But for some,
the Kick-Six proved
more tragic than magic
BY THOMAS LAKE
YOU GET 29,000 mornings, if your
life is the average length, and some of
those mornings follow sleepless nights,
and sometimes your head feels like
broken glass, and sometimes you rise in a stumbling
frenzy because every minute you spend getting
ready is one more minute you’re late for work.
But once in a while you have another kind of
morning—charged with anticipation, alive with
possibility—and you get out of bed thinking maybe
today will be incredible. In Alabama they get this
feeling on Iron Bowl Day. This state has more college
football fans per capita than any other state,
and these fans wait all year for the day the Auburn
Tigers play the Alabama Crimson Tide.
“If your team wins,” says David Housel, former
Auburn athletic director, “you’re a better person on
Monday than you were on Friday. You’re certainly
better than the person whose team lost. That’s
how people feel, and that’s why it’s so big, and
sometimes so poisonous.”
On Nov. 30, 2013, the day of the 78th Iron Bowl,
Alabama is ranked No. 1 in the country. Auburn is
No. 4. The two teams have never been this good on
the day of the game, which means very few mornings
in Alabama history have been so charged with
anticipation.
The first rays of the sun cross the Chattahoochee
River at 6:20 a.m. When the sun rises at 6:28 in
Montgomery, Crimson Tide placekicker Cade Foster
is asleep in a hotel where the team is sequestered.
Last night he turned in at a reasonable hour and lay
in the dark, thinking about field goals. Eyes locked
on the target. Three steps back, exhale. Two steps
over, exhale. Nod to the holder and go. No reason to
worry. This season he’s missed only once: 11 games,
11 wins, 11 through the uprights.
The sun rises over Mobile Bay. A minute later it
rises in Birmingham, where two women sleep in
a house with a red velvet cake in the kitchen cupboard.
Neketa Shepherd baked it for her older sister,
Michelle, and Michelle has hidden it in the cupboard
so she can eat the whole thing in her own sweet time.
At 6:35 the sun rises in Tuscaloosa. At Cade Foster’s
one-bedroom apartment his father, Dan, puts
RED STORM
Alabama entered
the clash with Auburn
undefeated and
looking to play for its
third straight BCS title.
Photograph by
Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images
on the coffee while his
mother, Kelly, sleeps on
the pullout couch. They
drove nine hours from
Southlake, Texas, to spend
Thanksgiving with Cade
before the game. Above
the television is a papiermâché
elephant head, a
NOVEMBER 24, 2014 / SPORTS ILLUSTRATED / 41