3 Iron Bowls in 1 season? Multiple Alabama-Auburn football games now possible

One Iron Bowl week per year is stressful enough for Alabama and Auburn football fans. Under college football’s new scheduling systems, there might be even more.

Auburn athletics director John Cohen, speaking at the Associated Press Sports Editors South region meeting in Homewood on Monday, pointed out that the teams could now meet more than once.

“Statistically, it would be an anomaly for sure,” Cohen said. “But Alabama and Auburn under the new system could conceivably play each other three times in a row.”

Cohen’s not technically wrong. The cross-state rivals face each other each year to end the regular season, but in the past, the SEC’s divisional structure made it such that they’d never battle in the conference championship game.

The SEC West and East are no more. If the Crimson Tide and Tigers emerged from the regular season as the top two teams in the league’s standings, they could meet again in Atlanta.

With the College Football Playoff expanding to 12 teams, both schools could make it, regardless of the result in SEC title game. If the seeding fell the right way, Alabama and Auburn could play a CFP game as well.

It’d take a lot of things going exactly right (or wrong, depending on perspective), but under the new systems, weirdness is always possible.

“I think that’s incredible,” Cohen said. ” “I think the limitless opportunities moving forward with the playoff system, how our league is going to work, no longer does it matter if an eastern division or the western division is the dominant side. It won’t matter. Everybody over a four-year period is going to play everybody. I love that.”