Auburn’s 31-10 loss to New Mexico State on Saturday afternoon at Jordan-Hare Stadium was a lot of things — shocking … embarrassing … historic?

It’s possible that, all things considered, we have just witnessed the worst loss in the long history of Auburn football. The Tigers entered the game on a three-game winning streak, looking to continue their positive momentum headed into the Iron Bowl.

That all came crashing down vs. New Mexico State, an essentially faceless opponent with very little name recognition outside of the most-hardcore college football observers. While the Aggies have a good record this year, they have almost no positive football history to speak of … until now.

So was New Mexico State 31, Auburn 10, the worst loss in Auburn history? Here are five other candidates:

Alabama 17, Auburn 15 (1984)

Pat Dye’s Tigers needed only a win over the worst Crimson Tide team in three decades to secure a share of the SEC championship and a second straight Sugar Bowl berth. Instead, an Alabama team that came into the game 4-6 with losses to Georgia Tech and Vanderbilt stunned 8-3 Auburn at Legion Field. The game is most-famous for the “Wrong Way Bo” play, in which Auburn star Bo Jackson misheard the play call and left no lead blocker for Brent Fullwood on a key fourth-down play in the fourth quarter. An unblocked Rory Turner drove Fullwood out of bounds and short of the first down and preserved Alabama’s 2-point lead. The Tigers later got in position for a game-winning field goal, but Robert McGinty’s 42-yard attempt missed badly. LSU got the trip to New Orleans and the New Year’s Day spotlight instead of Auburn, which wound up playing Arkansas in the Liberty Bowl in Memphis two days after Christmas.

Southern Miss 10, Auburn 9 (1991)

Yes, Auburn had lost 13-12 to Southern Miss the previous year, but this was not Brett Favre’s Golden Eagles that put a hurting on Dye’s Tigers the second time around. Favre was a rookie with the NFL’s Atlanta Falcons in 1991, and that year’s Southern Miss team won at Auburn despite just 204 yards of total offense. No. 16 Auburn turned the ball over three times, including an interception on the first play of the game and later on a fumble when a Southern Miss punt hit one of Auburn’s upbacks in the leg. Auburn pulled within a point on Stan White’s 5-yard touchdown pass to Fred Baxter with 1:33 to play, then went for the win with a 2-point conversion. Brian Wood batted down the pass to clinch the win for Southern Miss. These were bad times for Auburn, as the loss came a little more than a week after news broke regarding the Eric Ramsey “pay for play” scandal, which would ultimately end Dye’s tenure at the end of the 1992 season. On the field, Auburn went on to finish 5-6 in 1991, its first losing record since Dye’s 1981 rookie year.

South Florida 26, Auburn 23 (2007)

This one looks a little worse in retrospect given the depths to which the Bulls have fallen in recent years, but in 2007 they were actually a viable member of the Big East (which was considered a “power” conference at the time). Still, it was a rare home loss to a non-SEC team for Auburn, which simply didn’t lost those kinds of games very often during that era. Tommy Tuberville’s Tigers had finished 11-2 in 2006, then won their 2007 season-opener over Kansas State before falling into USF’s trap. Again, it was turnovers — five of them — that did in the Tigers. The Bulls jumped out to a 14-3 lead in the first quarter, but Auburn took a 20-17 lead on Wes Byrum’s 46-yard field goal late in the fourth quarter. South Florida managed to tie the game with its own field goal with 55 seconds left, sending the game to overtime. Byrum connected from 39 yards out on Auburn’s first overtime possession, but USF won the game moments later on Matt Grothe’s 16-yard touchdown pass to Jesse Hester. USF rose as high as No. 2 in the national polls before a 3-game losing streak in October, but both teams finished the season 9-4.

Alabama 36, Auburn 0 (2008)

The Crimson Tide was obviously a quality team that year, entering the Iron Bowl undefeated and ranked No. 1 nationally under second-year coach Nick Saban. Tommy Tuberville’s Tigers were 5-6 and hoping to spring a massive upset just to get into a bowl game. Still, this game is on this list for what it symbolized — a sea change in the Iron Bowl rivalry Auburn had so dominated for much of the previous decade-plus, including six straight wins under Tuberville from 2002-07. Alabama had also never beaten Auburn in Tuscaloosa to that point, losing two early-20th-century games vs. the Tigers and then Iron Bowls in 2000, 2002, 2004 and 2006 once the game moved back onto campus after so many years in Birmingham. The loss was Auburn’s worst in the Iron Bowl by scoring margin since 1962, a 38-0 shutout by Paul “Bear” Bryant’s burgeoning dynasty. Alabama dominated throughout in the 2008 game, and punctuated the win with a long touchdown pass by backup quarterback Greg McElroy late in the fourth quarter. The game wound up being Tuberville’s last at Auburn, as he resigned shortly thereafter to cap a stunning, sudden decline after so many years of having the upper hand (or thumb, as it were) vs. the Tigers’ arch-rival.

Texas A&M 41, Auburn 38 (2014)

A 3-point home loss to a quality conference opponent doesn’t seem so bad on the surface, but you have to consider the context. Once-beaten Auburn — the defending SEC champion — was ranked No. 3 in the country during that first season of the College Football Playoff, and had scored an emotional 35-31 victory at Ole Miss the previous week. Meanwhile, Texas A&M came in on a 3-game SEC losing streak, including a 59-0 whitewashing at Alabama two weeks prior. The Aggies had also recently made a quarterback change from Kenny “Trill” Hill to Kyle Allen, a true freshman. Allen threw four touchdown passes for Texas A&M, but this game is widely remember for a pair of fumbles by the Tigers in the final three minutes. First came a mishandled exchange between quarterback Nick Marshall and running back Cameron Artis-Payne on second-and-goal from the Aggies’ 2-yard line, which A&M recovered to preserve its 3-point lead. Auburn got the ball back in Texas A&M territory following a punt with 1:30 or so left, but center Reese Dismukes snapped the ball before Marshall was ready at the 28-yard line, and the ball bounced off Marshall’s leg before the Aggies recovered again and were able to run out the clock. Auburn lost four of its final five games that year to finish 8-5, including a loss to Wisconsin in the Outback Bowl.

Did we miss any obvious candidates? Email us and let us know.

Creg Stephenson has worked for AL.com since 2010 and has covered college football for a variety of publications since 1994. Contact him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter at @CregStephenson.