#3 Auburn beat #19 Alabama 23-20 at Legion Field on 3 December 1983, in the worst weather the fixture has been played in, and won the conference for the first time since 1957.
The storm
Just over nine inches of rain fell on Birmingham around the game. A tornado warning was issued for Jefferson County with roughly ten minutes left in the fourth quarter, and an F3 tornado killed people near Oxford later the same day. The crowd of 77,310 sat through the lot of it.
Jackson
Bo Jackson, then a sophomore, ran for two long touchdowns — one of 69 yards and one of 71 — on a field that should have made both impossible. It was the game that made him a national name rather than a regional one, and he won the Heisman Trophy two years later.
His rushing line is given two ways in the sources. The figure that appears with record-book framing is 256 yards on 20 carries, an average of 12.8 a carry; a 2009 recap by The War Eagle Reader gives 246 on 16. No primary box score has been located. Either way it stood as the most anyone had rushed for in an Iron Bowl until Derrick Henry ran for 271 in 2015.
The rest of it
Alabama led 14-10 at half-time and were still ahead at 20-16 in the third quarter after a 54-yard Ricky Moore touchdown run. Auburn scored again before the period was out and neither side scored in the fourth.
It was Ray Perkins’s first Iron Bowl as Alabama’s coach, in the season after Bryant. Auburn finished 11-1, beating Michigan 9-7 in the Sugar Bowl.