Auburn Daily

Auburn's Jordan-Hare Stadium Cracks ESPN Top 25 Stadium Poll

ESPN created a list of the Top 25 Stadiums and Auburn's Jordan-Hare is conspicuously low.

Harrison Smajovits

Jordan-Hare Stadium, home of the Auburn Tigers barely cracks ESPN's Top 20
Jordan-Hare Stadium, home of the Auburn Tigers barely cracks ESPN's Top 20 / Jake Crandall / USA TODAY NETWORK
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The home of Auburn Tigers football received some recognition this week. ESPN put out a Top 25 for college football stadiums and Jordan-Hare Stadium was ranked 17th. 

Fourteen ESPN staff writers created a ranking in the style of how you would rank teams in the AP or Coaches Poll -  with slight differences. While it was a top 25, writers only gave their top 20. 

First place received 20 points, second place gets 19 and so on. There was no criteria given for choosing stadiums. Jordan-Hare received 69 points out of a maximum of 280.

ESPN praised that it houses one of the top SEC rivalry games every year, the Iron Bowl. Other top SEC rivalries, such as the Florida-Georgia Game (or Georgia-Florida depending on who you ask) are played on neutral sites. 

Jordan-Hare gets a lot of major games, and as a result, those who go get a chance to see some history in real time. 

"There are many iconic stadiums across the SEC, but there are only two where one of the best rivalries in college football is played: the Iron Bowl," wrote Harry Lyles Jr. on ESPN. "And Jordan-Hare is a big place -- at 88,000 fans, it's the 11th-largest on-campus stadium. If you happen to see an Auburn victory at Jordan-Hare, walking over to Toomer's Corner to roll the oak trees with toilet paper is one of many traditions that are unique to college football.

"If you show up to Jordan-Hare on the right Saturday, history has shown you might see something iconic."

Along with his quote, there was a hyperlink, unsurprisingly, to a highlight of the Kick Six. 

How Other SEC Schools Stack Up

Even if you don’t include of Texas and Oklahoma because they haven't played an SEC football season yet, the SEC was strongly represented from a numbers stand point with eight stadiums - 10 if you include the new members. 

If you include new schools, they just edge out the Big Ten by a count of 10 schools to nine. If don’t include the new schools, the it’s a count of eight to five. 

The top spot on the list goes to a different Tigers school in the SEC, Missouri’s Faurot Field. Just kidding, it’s LSU’s Tiger Stadium (Death Valley). 

However, once you get past the top spot, you don’t get another SEC school until Alabama at ninth. It raises some questions when not even a second SEC stadium isn’t ranked between second and eighth.

Iconic SEC stadiums praised for their size and spectacle are ranked lower than stadiums such as Wisconsin’s Camp Randall and Washington’s Husky Stadium. 

Jordan-Hare’s case was very Iron Bowl specific. Let’s not forget their game against Georgia, the “Deep South’s Oldest Rivalry” is played there every other year. Having multiple top rivalry games played there should give the venue some extra points. 

ESPN said this list is “certainly a list to debate.” They got that right. 

It's not a stretch to think that anyone voting Jordan-Hare outside the top 10 has never witnessed the War Eagle taking flight before a game.

There are no wrong answers in an opinion poll. Let’s just make that clear. However, when at a stadium such as Jordan-Hare poses the risk of ending a road team’s championship aspirations year after year. It begs the question of how it dropped to 17th. 

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Harrison Smajovits

HARRISON SMAJOVITS

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