In May 1976, Auburn's old lettermen gathered at the Jovon Inn to honor Shug Jordan. Bill Lumpkin of the Birmingham Post-Herald was there. Not a play was run, he wrote. A hundred were replayed.
This article is part of a recurring series in which we go back in time to look at key moments, people, games and topics that shaped Auburn Tigers history. Have a suggestion for a Time Capsule story? Let us know in the comments.
On Saturday night, May 9, 1976, Auburn's old lettermen filled a banquet hall at the Jovon Inn and stayed for three hours. Nobody left early. Nobody wanted to.
They had come from New York, from Washington, from all over the South to honor Ralph "Shug" Jordan, who had retired after the 1975 season and a 25-year run as head football coach. The day had started with breakfast alongside former captains, moved to an alumni luncheon where the university presented Shug and his wife Evelyn a $26,000 check and a bronze bust, continued through halftime of the A-Day Game and ended here — a room full of men who had played for Jordan, swapping stories about what it was like.
Bill Lumpkin, the legendary Birmingham Post-Herald sports editor, covered the event for his Monday column. What he captured was a room that didn't want the night to end.
The room
Members of Jordan's 1951 team — his very first squad — were there. Charley Waller, one of his original assistants, came back. So did Buck Bradberry, Gene Lorendo, Shot Senn, Dick McGowen and Joe Connally. Homer Hobbs was the only assistant from that first staff who couldn't make it.
Bradberry, who had moved to Auburn's alumni office, went back to the 1953 tie at Mississippi State. "We were playing over there," he said. "I still remember the field. It had furrows in it. And they called us a cow college? We were behind 21-0. George Atkins blocked a punt and Bobby Freeman and Jim Pyburn brought us back."
Then Bradberry got to the 1955 Georgia Tech game. The Yellow Jackets had not lost to Auburn since 1940. "I remember coach Jordan saying before we left Auburn that if there were any players who didn't believe we could beat Tech that he didn't want to see them at the station," Bradberry said. "Everybody was there." Auburn won 14-12 on a Jerry Elliott touchdown catch.
Gusty Yearout, a former captain who had become the color man on Auburn's football radio broadcasts, got the biggest laugh of the night with a story about Jimmy Jones enrolling from Georgia Military Academy. Academic counselor Shot Senn asked Jones what he'd brought from GMA. "Two pillow cases, two sheets ..." Jones replied.
Buddy Davidson, who started as a team manager before becoming sports information director, reeled off a stat line that still holds up: Jordan was the only SEC coach to have a T-formation quarterback lead the nation in rushing (Jimmy Sidle), the only one with both an Outland Trophy winner (Zeke Smith) and a Heisman Trophy winner (Pat Sullivan) and the only one whose player won the Jacobs Blocking Trophy twice (Tucker Frederickson).
When Sullivan walked in, the room went straight to the Auburn-Alabama comebacks and the 49 points the Tigers hung on the Crimson Tide.
Terry Henley, the workhorse running back from the 1972 "Amazins" team, looked at the bust the alumni had presented and cracked: "I guess we'll have to move that Heisman Trophy out now. We've got a 'rock.'"
What Jordan said
Jordan talked about some of the good years and a few of the bad ones.
"We came in second seven times," he said. "But that beats coming in last."
Then he looked out at the room — at the doctors, the lawyers, the farmers, all of them former players — and said what the whole day had really been about.
"It's quite obvious you have gotten something out of football at Auburn," Jordan said. "That makes it worthwhile for me ... I'm thankful for that."
Fifty years later
Jordan arrived at Auburn in 1951 after four combat invasions in World War II — North Africa, Sicily, Normandy and Okinawa. Over 25 seasons he won the 1957 AP national championship, put Sullivan's Heisman in the trophy case and watched the stadium grow from 21,500 seats to more than 61,000. In 1973, Cliff Hare Stadium was renamed Jordan-Hare Stadium. He was the first active coach in America with a stadium bearing his name.
He was diagnosed with acute leukemia in April 1980 and died that July at his home in Auburn. He was 69. The College Football Hall of Fame inducted him posthumously in 1982.
Fifty years after that night at the Jovon Inn, Auburn is at another crossroads. Alex Golesh takes over a program that returned just three starters from 2025. The questions are the same ones Doug Barfield faced in 1976: Can a new coach rebuild fast enough? Can he honor what came before while building something of his own?
Lumpkin, who spent 35 years as Post-Herald sports editor and was inducted into the Alabama Sports Writers Association Hall of Fame, died in 2021 at 92. Jordan has been gone since 1980. Most of the men in that banquet hall are gone now too.
What Jordan built isn't. The standard he set at Auburn — the one every coach since has been measured against — is still the standard. That's what the room was really about, 50 years ago this week. What the man gave the place, and what the place gave back.
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