On Pat Dye, a college football icon who changed Auburn and the SEC forever

Pat Dye was a bold man.

People in Auburn first found that out in 1981, during his first news conference as the Tigers’ head football coach. A reporter asked Dye how long it would take for struggling Auburn to beat Alabama, the Bear Bryant-led behemoth that had won eight straight Iron Bowls.

Dye famously fired back with a simple “60 minutes.”

In what was only Dye’s second set of 60 minutes at Legion Field, Auburn’s long losing streak ended. The 1982 Iron Bowl ushered in a new era of college football not only in Auburn or the state of Alabama — but the entire SEC.

And Dye was the bold visionary behind it all.

Dye died Monday in Auburn at the age of 80. He had been hospitalized for kidney issues in recent weeks and had contracted COVID-19 but was asymptomatic.

The College Football Hall of Fame coach leaves behind a legacy as arguably the greatest coach in Auburn’s history. But, unlike fellow program architect Shug Jordan, Dye wasn’t the prototypical “Auburn man.” He didn’t go to school on the Plains.

He went to rival Georgia, where he was a tough-as-nails two-way starter who won the SEC’s Lineman of the Year award as a senior in 1960. He even started his coaching career as one of Bryant’s assistant coaches at Alabama.

It might have been bold for a former Georgia star and Alabama assistant coach to take the Auburn job. But Dye did just that, becoming the Tigers’ head football coach and athletic director following a highly successful six-year tenure at East Carolina and a winning record in his lone year at Wyoming.

“I played at Georgia, I coached at Alabama,” Dye said during his interview process at Auburn, according to longtime athletics administrator David Housel. “I know how to beat both of them.”

The Tigers needed that boldness. Jordan’s legendary tenure ended with a 3-6-2 campaign. His successor, Doug Barfield, went an even .500 and had more losing seasons than winning ones. Meanwhile, Alabama had won eight SEC titles and three national titles in the last 10 years under Bryant, whose worst record during that dominant stretch was 9-3.

But Dye was willing to stare down the Crimson Tide and not blink.

In a 1991 Sports Illustrated story, writer Tom Junod detailed the 1981 Iron Bowl pregame meeting at Legion Field between Dye and Bryant:

“Coach Bryant, before you start hugging me, you ought to know that my boys are fixing to get after y’all’s ass,” Dye said.
“You ain’t trying to scare me now, are you, Pat?” asked the Bear.
“No sir, because I know you don’t get scared. I’m just telling you what we’re fixing to do.”

Early on, Dye was aiming for Iron Bowl victories that went beyond the scoreboard.

“When I saw Coach Bryant when I first got to Auburn, the first thing he said to me, very first thing, he said, ‘Well, I guess you’re going to want to take that game to Auburn,’” Dye told Creg Stephenson of AL.com last year. “I said, ‘We’re going to take it to Auburn.’ He said, ‘Well, we’ve got a contract through (19)88. … I said, ‘Well, we’ll play ’89 in Auburn.’”

From 1904 to 1988, every single Iron Bowl was played in Birmingham. According to those Auburn fans, players and coaches who experienced the games inside Legion Field, the atmosphere wasn’t exactly what one would expect from a “neutral-site” game.

Dye was ultimately successful in bringing the Iron Bowl to Jordan-Hare Stadium in 1989, a game that has been described — quite literally — as a religious experience for Auburn fans.

By the time the game finally happened, Dye had turned Auburn into a power that could stand toe-to-toe with Alabama as a rival.

The streak-snapping 1982 Iron Bowl win went down in history for a dive over the top by a freshman running back whose given name was Vincent Jackson. Dye recruited Jackson to play at a rebuilding Auburn instead of a powerhouse Alabama, and Jackson’s path into becoming the world-famous athletic marvel known only as “Bo” started on the Plains.

Auburn would win back-to-back Iron Bowls on famous touchdown runs from Jackson before a pair of close losses in 1984 and 1985. Then the Tigers reeled off four straight victories — only the fourth streak of its kind in the program’s rivalry history — that culminated in “The First Time Ever” in 1989.

During that stretch, Auburn won four SEC titles, including three in a row from 1987 to 1989. Jordan had only won one during his 25-year tenure. The Tigers went to nine straight bowl games and finished with a top-10 ranking in the final AP poll in five of those seasons.

Under Dye, Auburn showed consistent staying power as a nationally relevant force in college football for the first time. Dye coached 17 different players who became first-team All-Americans during their time at Auburn, with eight picking up consensus honors and five becoming unanimous selections.

And Dye did it all with that same fearless attitude that got him off to a fast start at Auburn. In the 1988 Sugar Bowl, Dye elected to send his special teams out for a game-tying field goal instead of a possible game-winning touchdown. The kick was good, and Syracuse’s dream of a perfect season ended with a 16-16 tie against the Tigers.

It wasn’t a popular decision among his own players. Dye later said he did it because he was upset with the officiating and that he didn’t believe Auburn’s offense would get a fair shot at a winning score. So, instead, Dye stuck to his guns and left with a tie.

The ending upset Syracuse fans so much that they sent thousands of neckties to Auburn. Dye wrote “Auburn 16, Syracuse 16” on the ties, autographed them, and sold them to raise tens of thousands of dollars for scholarships.

Stories like that one — and the mystery of the time a woman found a pair of Dye’s pants in a lake, some 20 years after he lost them — only increased Dye’s legend at Auburn.

And even though his tenure as head coach and athletic director ended with him resigning in the midst of an NCAA investigation into rules violations, he still remained closely connected to the program for decades after his career abruptly ended.

Auburn named the field at Jordan-Hare Stadium after him in 2005. He remained a fixture on the sidelines at practices and games for years — throughout the Terry Bowden, Tommy Tuberville and Gene Chizik eras and well into the Gus Malzahn era. He hosted a weekly radio show and wrote columns for years. He was never afraid to speak his mind about the program.

I see that former Auburn coach Pat Dye died today. I only really had one interaction with him during my time on the Plains, before the spring game in 2010 after Cam Newton had arrived.
— Andy Bitter (@AndyBitterVT) June 1, 2020

Dye just looked at us with an "are you serious?" expression, gave a smirk and, in a Southern drawl, went, "Sheeeeeeeit."
— Andy Bitter (@AndyBitterVT) June 1, 2020

One of the lasting images of Dye at Auburn will be from the Tigers’ most recent game on the field that bears his name. Minutes before kickoff against Alabama in the 2019 Iron Bowl, Auburn played a hype video. At the climax of the video, Dye looks into the camera and says one of his most famous quotes — ”Auburn fans love Auburn.”

Dye wasn’t born and raised as a Tiger. He was a Bulldog, and his coaching training came with the Crimson Tide. Yet he became one of Auburn’s most beloved adopted sons, and he grew into a father figure for so many inside the family.

Even though he was an outsider, Dye gave Auburn football the vision to become much bigger than what it was. He helped make the Tigers famous across the country, bringing countless fans into the fold with his high-octane rushing attacks and utterly dominant defenses. The championship expectations that Auburn fans still have to this day are remnants of what he built.

And, perhaps most famously, Dye became the face of a program that wouldn’t back down to the big rival across the state — and constantly find ways to needle it along the way.

That famous quote from Dye during the Iron Bowl hype video? That was only the back half of it.

“Alabama fans love Alabama football,” Dye once said. “Auburn fans love Auburn.”

That was Pat Dye.

(Top photo: Collegiate Images via Getty Images)