EDITOR’S NOTE: Every day until Aug. 29, Creg Stephenson is counting down significant numbers in Alabama football history, both in the lead-up to the 2025 football season and in commemoration of the Crimson Tide’s first national championship 100 years ago. The number could be attached to a year, a uniform number or even a football-specific statistic. We hope you enjoy.

Saturday, Oct. 7, 1944, was a bit of a busy day in the world of sports during the final autumn of World War II.

The St. Louis Cardinals beat the St. Louis Browns 5-1 in Game 4 of baseball’s World Series, evening the best-of-7 at 2-2. The Cardinals would win the next two games over their cross-city rival to take home the championship.

In college football, Notre Dame blanked Tulane 26-0, while Tennessee beat Ole Miss 20-7 and Navy throttled Penn State 55-14. Auburn recorded a 7-0 victory over a team from Fort Benning, Ga.

Alabama also won that day, routing Birmingham’s Howard College 63-7 at Legion Field. The victory was the Crimson Tide’s first of the season, after it had tied LSU 27-27 in Baton Rouge the previous week.

The 1944 game against Howard — which became Samford in 1965 — was significant really for one reason. It’s the last Alabama has played an in-state opponent other than Auburn in football.

Lowell Tew and Lacey West scored two touchdowns each for Alabama, which led 14-0 at halftime and 42-0 after three. Fewer than 5,000 fans were in attendance that day at Legion Field, a larger crowd kept away by rain showers just before game time.

It was Alabama’s first game in Birmingham since 1942, with the 1943 team having been disbanded due to manpower shortages brought on by the war. Coach Frank Thomas’ 1944 team was loaded with freshmen (who were too young for military service), led by Tew and halfback Harry Gilmer and came to be known as the “War Babies.”

“Alabama’s first show before the Birmingham football public, after a year’s layoff, probably gave their supporters much satisfaction,” Charlie Brown wrote in the following day’s Birmingham Age Herald. “Many people were a little bit skeptical of their power because of the known inexperience of the great majority of the squad. They need not doubt this year’s team any longer for it looked like prewar strength, both offensively and defensively.”

Alabama finished the abbreviated — and travel-restricted — 1944 season at 5-2-2, losing 29-26 to Duke in the Sugar Bowl. The 1945 team finished 10-0 and won the SEC title, then beat USC 34-14 in the Rose Bowl.

The Crimson Tide began playing Auburn in 1948 after a 41-year layoff, but hasn’t since scheduled another in-state opponent. Even with Jacksonville State, South Alabama, Troy and UAB having ascended to the FBS level in the last two decades, Alabama still has felt no need to play any of them.

Former Alabama coach Nick Saban said as recently as 2022 he’d be in favor of playing in-state schools, as he did during his time at LSU. But there has never seemed to be any momentum to make it happen, with athletics director Greg Byrne saying at least twice publicly Alabama is “comfortable” with its current scheduling model (though it’s possible that might change after the Crimson Tide was left out of the College Football Playoff in 2024).

The win over Howard ran the Crimson Tide’s record to 20-0-1 all-time against the Birmingham school, with a 7-7 tie in 1935 the only blemish. Alabama also played now-defunct Birmingham Southern routinely early in the 20th century (going 10-0), but never after 1925.

Alabama is 50-3-1 vs. in-state opponents other than Auburn, with all three losses to the Birmingham Athletic Club during the 1890s. The Crimson Tide is 3-0 vs. Spring Hill, last meeting the Badgers (now an NAIA program that doesn’t field a football team) in 1940.

Other in-state opponents Alabama has faced: Marion Military Institute (last in 1922), Alabama Southern (1916), Birmingham High School (1902), Wetumpka (1908), Taylor School (1900) and Montgomery Athletic Club (1899). All of those outfits are either defunct or no longer play football.

It certainly can be argued that Alabama playing Samford (or other in-state non-SEC schools) nowadays would be even less competitive than it was in 1944. But then, so have the Crimson Tide’s non-conference games the last three years against out-of-state opponents Western Kentucky (63-0), Mercer (52-7), Middle Tennessee (56-7), Chattanooga (66-10), Utah State (55-0) and Austin Peay (34-0).

Auburn has played — or has scheduled — every Division I school in the state in football in the last several years, except Troy. The Tigers faced Samford in 2023 and 2019, Alabama A&M in 2024, Alabama State in 2021, Jacksonville State in 2015 and UAB in 1996, and is set to host South Alabama this season, Jax State again in 2026 and North Alabama in 2028.

Alabama, on the other hand, is content to keep Auburn as its lone in-state opponent. The Crimson Tide owns a 51-37-1 record all-time against the Tigers, including victories in each of the last five years.

Coming Friday: Our countdown to kickoff continues with No. 43, a year with no Alabama football team.