3 reasons why you need to watch the Birmingham Bowl 2021

Do you need a reason to watch Auburn and Houston in the Birmingham Bowl? Well, if you do, here are three of them. 

Auburn (6-6), representing the SEC, is preparing to compete in the Tigers ninth consecutive bowl game and first under new head coach Bryan Harsin.

No. 20 Houston (11-2) and representing the AAC, is hoping to earn their first bowl game victory since winning the Peach Bowl back in 2015.

Let’s take a look at three reasons why you should be tuning in to this bowl game match-up of one of the best teams from the Group of Five and SEC stalwart Auburn.

A win may soothe things after a bad ending to Harsin’s first season at Auburn

Auburn played pretty solid football for the first two-thirds of the season in new head coach Bryan Harsin’s first season.

However, doubt began to creep into the War Eagle collective after Auburn dropped each of the final four games: Texas A&M, Mississippi State, South Carolina, and Alabama.

These weren’t all terrible losses. The Tigers were a Tank Bigsby slide from beating Alabama in the Iron Bowl. Instead of downing himself in-bounds and allowing the clock to roll on at the end of the Iron Bowl, Bigsby ran out of bounds, stopping the clock and preserving precious seconds for Alabama to form their end-of-game comeback.

If Bigsby would have stayed in-bounds, we probably would be talking about a different narrative with Harsin and Auburn.

A win over a ranked Houston team would give the Tigers their third win of the season over a ranked opponent and finish the season with a winning record. The last time Auburn finished the season with a losing record was Gene Chizik’s final season as head coach in 2012.