I am fifty years old now. My parents are both Auburn graduates and they lived and enjoyed the Shug Jordan era especially the years with Pat Sullivan and Terry Beasley. Unfortunately Auburn slipped after the 1974 season and bottomed out in 1980 as Bama and Bear Bryant dominated in the late 1970s. I got into Auburn football at that time and loved it regardless however I can still remember that awful Saturday in 1980 when Auburn lost 42-0 to Tennessee at home. I remember the hopelessness. Auburn finished without an SEC win in 1980 and even though Jordan, Sullivan and Beasley and so many others were great, Auburn had not won a championship since 1957.
Auburn went after one of it's sons in Vince Dooley who had just won a national championship at Georgia but he elected to stay at Georgia. Auburn was in trouble. There were money problems in the athletic department, all of the athletic programs including football were struggling and Auburn's two biggest rivals had won the last three SEC and national football championships. Auburn University was at a crossroads... and then Auburn hired Pat Dye as head football coach and later as athletic director. The rest they say is HISTORY.
Pat Dye and his coaching staff took a football team who did not win a conference game in 1980 to an SEC and national championship in 1983. He coached the greatest athlete in Auburn history and one of the greatest in sports history who won the Heisman Trophy. He got knocked down, more than once, but every time he came back. Auburn and Dye took some tough losses in 1984 and 1985 but he and his coaches rebuilt the program again even better than it was before and won three straight SEC titles. Dye and his staff put together the greatest defense in Auburn history and just missed another national championship. He then sacrificed so much to help Auburn to one of it's greatest achievements and that is bringing the Iron Bowl to Auburn.
Even at the end under tough circumstances he built back the team again and handed over one of Auburn's most special teams to his successor along with a great coaching staff. Most important he raised a large special group of Auburn men who have made this world a better place. He also touched so many people outside his coaches and players including me. I was lucky enough to attend Auburn University from 1987 to 1992, the last five years of Coach Dye's coaching career. I saw the good and the bad, the mountaintop and the valley and I count it as a blessing. Coach Dye took the mantle from those who came before him and inspired a whole generation of Auburn people.
He gave us hope, he beat Alabama, he made Auburn the dominant team of the 1980s and built the foundation for all the success Auburn has had since then. There are so many memories. Auburn had lost to Bama ten years in a row and a reporter asked him how long it would take to beat them. Coach Dye famously replied "60 minutes". Another reporter asked him about Auburn wearing the orange jerseys they had worn under the previous coach. He replied saying no, he wanted "those blue jerseys to put the fear of God" in opponents again. He certainly did that. He gave the Auburn family the belief that the Tigers could compete with anybody.
I remember 1982 and "Bo Over the Top". I remember the amazing 1983 team that went 11-1 and became champions against one of the toughest schedules any team has ever played against. I remember the greatness of Coach Dye and Bo Jackson together. I remember "The Reverse" and going crazy with Coach Dye at Legion Field in 1986. I remember the "Halloween Massacre" over Florida in 1987. I remember Coach Dye and Coach Dooley's last Auburn vs. Georgia game facing each other in 1988. I remember "The First Time" in 1989 as most of the students including me lined up to get into the stadium six to eight hours before the game started.
I remember the tough times in 1984 and 1985. I remember one of the worst losses in Auburn history at LSU in 1988. I remember the heartbreak of 1991 and 1992. I remember the gut wrenching loss to Georgia in Auburn in the final seconds in Coach Dye's last game at Jordan Hare Stadium. I remember the Auburn players coming out of the tunnel with their helmets raised high for Coach Dye in his last game against Bama a couple of weeks later. The next year he was gone and Terry Bowden did a great job but Dye's presence was felt the entire season when the team he had built during the tough times of 1991 and 1992 became maybe Auburn's most amazing team. I remember watching both coaches hugging at midfield after Auburn completed that amazing season. It is still special regardless of what happened after.
I remember Coach Dye's voice in various interviews and appearances over the years since then. I am going to miss him. I will always appreciate him and remember all the people he helped and touched and for what he did for Auburn. Coach Pat Dye was and always will be part of the Auburn family, an Auburn icon and one of my heroes. A few years ago I wrote posts on each year of the Dye era from 1981 and 1989. I wanted to write down those memories before I got too far away from them and now I am so glad I did. Here is "The Decade of the Eighties", the decade of Coach Pat Dye at Auburn, the decade the foundation was laid and a dynasty was built.
Saturdays to Remember... 1986
Saturdays to Remember... 1987
Saturdays to Remember... 1988 (the most read post on this blog)
Saturdays to Remember... 1989
"Sure I would like to be 11-0 but I would not swap this team for any I have coached at Auburn... I have watched you struggle... I watched you wrestle with them angels... but I watched you grow up and become men... I watched you become men." That is what Pat Dye and Auburn football is all about.
WAR EAGLE AND THANK YOU COACH DYE.
