Alabama beat Auburn 18-6 at Riverside Park in Montgomery on 23 October 1903, ending three consecutive Auburn wins and recording only their second victory in eight meetings.
Three touchdowns to one
Alabama opened with a nineteen-play, 79-yard drive finished by J. V. Boyles. Truman Smith broke runs of 45 and 25 yards. W. G. Boyd scored for Auburn.
The arithmetic fits: with a touchdown worth five points and the kick after it one, eighteen points is three converted touchdowns and six is one. It is a rare case in this era where the surviving account of the scoring and the final score agree exactly.
W. B. Blount was in the second of his two seasons as Alabama’s coach. William Penn Bates coached Auburn in his only season there; James P. Paterson was the Auburn captain.
Nine years between wins
Alabama’s previous victory over Auburn was the 18-0 shutout in November 1894. Nine calendar years separate the two, though only four meetings: the series did not run at all between 1895 and 1900. Measured in games rather than years, the longest Alabama have gone without beating Auburn is the six straight defeats between 2002 and 2007.
The last season of the five-point field goal
A field goal was worth five points in 1903, the same as a touchdown. From 1904 it dropped to four, and in 1909 to three, where it has stayed. The touchdown went to six in 1912. Scores from this series before 1912 therefore cannot be read with modern arithmetic, and reconstructing who scored how from a final score alone does not work.
Auburn answered in Birmingham the following November, and the last four games before the break split two apiece.