Auburn beat Alabama 29-5 at West End Park in Birmingham on 12 November 1904, in the first season of the longest coaching tenure of the era.
Mike Donahue
Donahue took charge at Auburn in 1904 and, apart from a year away in 1907, stayed until 1922 — eighteen seasons in all, at a time when most coaches in this rivalry lasted one. Auburn’s detailed coaching history and the National Football Foundation both give the tenure as 1904-06 and 1908-22. His first meeting with Alabama produced a comfortable win.
The game was billed locally as a contest for the state championship. Harvey Sartain scored Alabama’s only touchdown. Auburn repeatedly ran a play the accounts of the day called the “delayed buck”. R. S. Reynolds captained Auburn; W. B. Blount was in his final season coaching Alabama.
The numbers behind 29-5
From 1904 a field goal was worth four points rather than five, with a touchdown at five and the kick after it at one. Twenty-nine points resolves cleanly as five touchdowns with four of the kicks made. Alabama’s five is a touchdown with the kick missed.
One-all across the last four
Alabama had won in 1903; Auburn answered here; Alabama then won in 1905 and 1906 before the 1907 draw. Across the final five meetings before the break the series ran Alabama two, Auburn two, one tie — a considerably more even period than the 1890s and early 1900s had been, and the state was arguing about the fixture on roughly equal terms when it stopped.
The series stood at Auburn seven, Alabama two after nine games.