Celebrity World Blog

What a difference a year makes. Last year, of course, Alabama was the team carrying national-title aspirations, if only they could get through the Iron Bowl and then win the showdown with the SEC East champion in Atlanta. Auburn had muddled through a season that was by no means terrible, but also wasn't particularly good. It's not that the Tigers didn't have a chance to win the game -- but they weren't going to. Right?

Until the last two minutes of the game, it looked very much like the Tigers might win the game. With 1:24 left, Greg McElroy hit Roy Upchurch for the game-winning touchdown, the winning score in the Tide's come-from-behind 26-21 win.

The parallels should be pretty obvious at this point. Auburn is the national-title contender this year, Alabama's record is better than Auburn's in 2009 but still somewhat disappointing and Auburn will be the visiting team for this year's edition of the Iron Bowl. The only difference is that there seem to be a lot of people expecting Auburn to get upset this weekend, or at least to come dangerously close to it before the game is over.

Star-divide

And I understand some of the reasoning for that. After all, Auburn is going up against a defense that is still one of the best in the SEC. The two games the Tide lost were against teams that rely pretty heavily on their defense and running games to win, and while the Tigers have the latter, they most assuredly do not have much in the former.

Except that defensive line, or at least what will be left of it for the first half of the game. The rushing defense for Auburn is actually quite good, and they get their fair share of sacks, pressuring the quarterback even more than that statistic might suggest. Which is another thing that South Carolina and LSU did right when they faced the Tide -- the Gamecocks sacked McElroy seven times in Columbia and the Bayou Bengals tackled him for a loss three times in Baton Rouge.

And despite the quality of the Alabama defense, I still think they're going to run into the same problem that every one of Auburn's opponents has this year: How do you stop a quarterback who runs like a Brinks truck and passes relatively efficiently? Nick Saban might be the one person in the country who can come up with an answer. But I'm not sure that even he can slow Cam Newton down enough for the win.
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