The schools played twice inside the 1893 calendar year. Nine months after the first meeting in Birmingham, they met again at Riverside Park in Montgomery on 30 November — Thanksgiving Day — and Auburn won a second time, 40-16.
The date the records argue about
Some series tables give this game as 29 November. Alabama’s athletic department and both schools’ season records give 30 November 1893, the Thanksgiving Day on which the game was played. The following year’s meeting also fell on Thanksgiving.
A second defeat, heavier than the first
Auburn scored forty points under a system in which a touchdown was worth four and the kick after it two. Alabama’s sixteen came in a game they lost by twenty-four, a wider margin than February’s ten. George Roy Harvey had taken over as Auburn’s coach during the season. Alabama were now under Eli Abbott, in the first of what became four seasons in charge across two spells, with C. C. Nesmith as captain.
Where it left the series
Auburn had now won the first two meetings and led the series 2-0. They had also scored 72 points across the two games to Alabama’s 38.
Montgomery hosted this game and the next two. Riverside Park was the venue for three of the first five meetings, and the early series moved between Birmingham, Montgomery and Tuscaloosa rather than settling anywhere. Alabama’s first win was twelve months away.