Alabama beat Auburn 28-17 at Legion Field on 28 November 1981, and the win was Bear Bryant’s 315th as a head coach — one more than Amos Alonzo Stagg, and the most anyone had won in major-college football to that point.
The game he needed it in
Alabama had drawn level with Stagg a week earlier and came to Birmingham needing one more. It did not come easily. Auburn led entering the fourth quarter, and Alabama scored fourteen unanswered points to win it. Linnie Patrick ran in a late touchdown from fifteen yards; Jesse Bendross caught two, one of them a 26-yard shovel pass from Ken Coley. A record crowd of 78,170 was in the stadium.
Bryant had spent the build-up refusing to discuss the record. He had been at Alabama since 1958, and this was his twenty-fourth season.
The ninth in a row
It was also Alabama’s ninth consecutive win over Auburn, running back to 1973. No side has put together a longer run in the 90 games the two schools have played; the closest since is Auburn’s six between 2002 and 2007.
What came next
Alabama finished the regular season 9-1-1, then lost 14-12 to Texas in the Cotton Bowl for a 9-2-1 final record. Auburn finished 5-6 in Pat Dye’s first season, which reads worse than it was: within two years Dye had them ranked third in the country.
Bryant coached one more season. His last Iron Bowl, twelve months after this one, went the other way.