This was Harold Drew’s last game as Alabama’s head coach, and it was a comprehensive one to go out on.
Bobby Freeman’s game
Freeman ran in from a yard out in the first quarter, and Auburn led 7-0 at half-time. He added a 41-yard touchdown run in the third and a three-yard score in the fourth, with Joe Childress also running one in from a yard in the final quarter. Three touchdowns for Freeman, a shutout for the Auburn defence, 28-0.
The end of the Drew era
Alabama finished 4-5-2. Drew had been in charge for eight seasons, had won a conference title the year before and taken the team to three bowls, but 1954 was a losing season and the Auburn result ended it. He was replaced by J.B. “Ears” Whitworth, whose three years would produce a combined record of 4-24-2 and whose departure in turn brought Bear Bryant to Tuscaloosa. The 1954 defeat is the hinge: everything Alabama became in the 1960s runs through the three bad years that started here.
Auburn’s Gator Bowl win
Auburn finished the regular season 7-3 and 13th in the final Associated Press poll, then beat Baylor 33-13 in the Gator Bowl on 31 December for an 8-3 final record. It was their first win over Alabama since 1949, and the second season in a row that Jordan had improved on the last. The five-year run that followed had begun.