What are the Iron Bowl stakes for Kalen DeBoer and Hugh Freeze?

Among the selling points of Hugh Freeze’s hire as Auburn’s football coach was the fact that he’d beaten the boogeyman in Tuscaloosa twice while at Ole Miss. All the rest, the NCAA scandal, the escort phone calls, the alleged digital harassment of a sexual assault victim, could be ignored, so long as Freeze could push the Tigers past Nick Saban’s Alabama.

Freeze had one chance at Saban, losing the 2023 Iron Bowl in devastating fashion when the Crimson Tide scored on 4th-and-31 at Jordan-Hare. Then, in January, the boogeyman retired.

Now, Freeze’s Auburn team still has something to play for. It’s been a disappointing year for the Tigers, but they can salvage bowl eligibility in his second season with an upset in Tuscaloosa.

Saban isn’t on the other sideline, but Freeze was still aware of how huge the game could be for his legacy on the Plains.

“There’s no bigger game on the schedule,” he said Monday. “To sit in this seat and lose one like we did last year, it still doesn’t sit right. And I know that the Auburn faithful have had to endure that, and we want to change that feeling in this building, for our fanbase and this state. That’s a tall task.”

It’s been a rough year for Freeze and Auburn. All the negative hallmarks of his tenure at Ole Miss, minus the scandal, have shown their face.

The Tigers didn’t go get a transfer portal quarterback during the offseason, instead opting to roll with Peyton Thorne. That choice proved to be a flaming disaster, with Thorne’s worst turnover machine tendencies scuttling winnable games for AU.

Auburn lost to Cal at Jordan-Hare. It dropped a game it had every chance in at Missouri and only managed one score against Freeze’s old enemy Diego Pavia and Vanderbilt.

At least the recruiting has been good. The ability to acquire better talent than the notoriously incompetent Bryan Harsin was always Freeze’s saving grace, despite their similar records at Auburn (9-12 for Harsin, 11-13 for Freeze). .

But after a bit of late season improvement, Auburn is coming on a high note. Thorne has looked a bit better lately, and AU took down Texas A&M in four overtimes Saturday.

A win would be perhaps the largest of Freeze’s career. Saban is off to the world of television, and for the first time in years, there’s a glimmer of hope that Auburn could become the top program in the state.

“Their roster is deeper, but it was deeper last year, too, and we had a shot to win it,” Freeze said. “We’ve got to find a way to keep ourselves in it and give us a chance to win, and try to change that, hopefully start to make that a regular expectation.”

The stakes have never been larger for Freeze. He’s always been able to get his teams up for the big games, often to the detriment of matchups they should win easily, and the Iron Bowl is the biggest game of all.

Win, and he’s safe for a while. Victories over Alabama helped Gus Malzahn stay employed on the Plains, even when his teams weren’t championship contenders.

Lose, against a coach not named Nick Saban, and the optimism goes out the window. If Freeze can’t take down DeBoer’s Crimson Tide, he’ll enter his third season with big questions to answer.

‘The pivotal moment’

Kalen DeBoer has heard all about the Iron Bowl. At least in his first season, he won’t have to deal with Jordan-Hare voodoo.

“Ever since I’ve been here, I think I hear about it every day,” DeBoer said. “So understand what it means. The excitement. We have to learn from last week and be better because of it and turn the page and get ready to practice tomorrow and do everything we can to be successful on Saturday, find a way to win.”

DeBoer wouldn’t have taken Saban’s old job if he was afraid of discomfort. But the past week couldn’t have been fun.

Alabama had a trip to the SEC championship game all but booked, and should have been able to sleepwalk through an Oklahoma team that was 1-5 in SEC play. 60 minutes of stagnant offense and non-existant run defense later, Sooner fans were rushing the field twice and the Crimson Tide was in trouble.

UA has lost three games. Anywhere else, that’s at least acceptable, if uninspiring. In Tuscaloosa, it’s an abject failure, the first three-defeat campaign since 2010.

Add an Iron Bowl loss to a far less talented Auburn team, and DeBoer would enter his second season under more pressure from his fan base than any coach in the country. An 8-4 Gator Bowl year is an indignity Alabama won’t stand for often.

Not to mention the importance of just winning the game itself.

“The Iron Bowl is the pivotal moment of college football,” UA defensive lineman Tim Keenan said Tuesday. “Especially down here in Alabama. This is bigger than what they call gang violence.”

Mike Shula was defined by his inability to beat Auburn. DeBoer would do well to make sure he starts out on the right foot in the biggest game of the season.

So a loss would be bad. But Alabama doesn’t enter without hope.

The CFP selection committee punished the Crimson Tide for the Oklahoma loss. But UA just dropped to 13th.

Alabama will need help for sure. But recent history has shown that the committee will bend over backward to get the Tide into the field if things are close, and a convincing win over its rival might be just the excuse it needs, as long as a few things break correctly.

And even UA misses the 12-team field, foiling Auburn’s season will at least make Alabama’s own tough year go down a bit smoother.