In honor of the 10-year anniversary of Kick Six, we decided to post this column introducing Iron Bowl week exactly one second after Auburn’s stunning 31-10 loss against New Mexico State went final.

As Alabama head coach Nick Saban will readily tell anyone, every second counts in the greatest rivalry in American sports.

If this is the last Iron Bowl of Saban’s career, and he decides to retire into the sunset of ESPN College GameDay after this season, then it’s fitting that the GOAT goes out against Auburn in Jordan-Hare Stadium. Saban lords over most of college football, but his dominion cannot claim the hallowed earth of Pat Dye Field and never will. When the Iron Bowl is played at Jordan-Hare, we already know that mysterious things happen even to the best and that Hall of Fame coaching credentials matter little and less.

Sen. Tommy Tuberville, for example, has a better career winning percentage in the Iron Bowl (.700, 7-3) than the man rightly considered to be the greatest coach in college football history, Grand Admiral Pooh Bah Saban (.687, 11-5).

Kick Six was magical, yes, but truly unexplainable is the most recent Iron Bowl to be played in Auburn.

Thanks to the power of Jordan-Hare, the Tigers team led by former Auburn coach Bryan Harsin almost toppled the best college football coach to ever be. Saban even had a future No.1 draft pick playing at quarterback and it barely mattered. Auburn should have won the game in 2021. No one questions that reality. Why did Tank Bigsby go out of bounds? We’ll never know, but maybe the ghosts that hover above Jordan-Hare knew that’s the way it had to be.

Can new Auburn coach Hugh Freeze knock off Saban in his first Iron Bowl? Have you not been paying attention? The game very well could come down to Freeze not screwing it up. Heavy are the forces of hope and destiny inside Jordan-Hare Stadium.

The Iron Bowl was first played at Jordan-Hare in 1989. Since that first game in Auburn, Alabama only leads the series 19-15. That means it took none other than Nick Saban to even things up for Alabama. Alabama leads the all-time Iron Bowl series 49-37-1, but Auburn is 10-6 at home against Alabama since 1993.

Since 1993, or Terry Bowden’s first season on the Plains, first-year Auburn coaches are 2-3 in their first Iron Bowls at Jordan-Hare Stadium. It should be 3-2, though, if not for Bigsby’s Blunder. Based on the math, science and the occult, I give Freeze a 66.6 percent chance to beat Saban in his first try as coach of the Tigers.

Here at the 10-year mark of Kick Six, I offer a humble poem in iambic pentameter:

For Rod … “A dream in fireburst and blue”

I do believe in football miracles.

Of angels wings, and golden soaring things,

Of rushing dreams, and nights of Auburn screams.

The sound of Bramblett calling proud and true,

Voices crying out in fireburst and blue.

The amazing thing about the Iron Bowl is that Kick Six is arguably the greatest single play in college football history, but it’s just one highlight through the years of a rivalry game that delivers vivid, chill-inducing drama more often than not.

Bigsby’s Blunder in 2021 was a classic, but it was nothing compared to Double Pick Six in 2019. That’s the year that Auburn quarterback Bo Nix won the Iron Bowl as a freshman and Auburn defenders Smoke Monday and Zakoby McClain returned two interceptions by Alabama quarterback Mac Jones for touchdowns.

Amazingly, those highlights overshadowed a four-touchdown night by Alabama’s Jaylen Waddle, which included a 98-yard kickoff return in the second quarter immediately following Monday’s interception for a score. And the game’s biggest memory of all? It was actually something else.

The image of Auburn running back Shaun Shivers knocking off the helmet of Alabama safety Xavier McKinney at the goal line of the game-winning touchdown will forever be one of the greatest photos in the history of college football.

The Iron Bowl is here again, and my heart dances with the possibility of sudden legends and lightning strikes of lore.

Joseph Goodman is the lead sports columnist for the Alabama Media Group, and author of “We Want Bama”, a book about togetherness, wild times and rum.