Alabama shut Auburn out 30-0 at the Birmingham Fairgrounds on 18 November 1905, the tenth meeting of the series and the biggest winning margin Alabama had managed against them.
Burks
Auxford Burks captained Alabama and scored in the win. He would score again — all of Alabama’s points — in the following year’s meeting, which makes him the central figure of the two consecutive shutouts that closed out this phase of the rivalry.
Jack Leavenworth coached Alabama in his only season at the school. Mike Donahue was in his second year at Auburn, with Pete Lacey as captain. Auburn were having a poor season and finished 2-4.
The first shutout since 1894
Alabama had been kept scoreless three times by Auburn between 1900 and 1902 and had not shut them out since Alabama’s first win in the series eleven years earlier. Thirty points was also the most Alabama had scored against Auburn at any point, and it stood as their highest in the fixture until the series resumed in 1948 and produced 55 in an afternoon.
The shift in the balance
Alabama had now won two of the last three. The pattern of the previous decade — Auburn winning comfortably, Alabama scoring little or nothing — had reversed inside three seasons. Alabama shut Auburn out again in 1906 and held them to a draw in 1907.
Auburn’s cumulative advantage across the ten games played so far remained substantial, but the recent evidence pointed the other way. The break, when it came two years later, interrupted a period in which Alabama were the better of the two rather than one in which either school could claim settled superiority.