Auburn’s had beaten Mercer 506-12 all-time but only won by 14 this year

It had been 95 years since the teams last played.

No. 15 Auburn beat FCS Mercer on Saturday, 24-10. This wasn’t notable in any modern way, other than that Mercer at one point had the ball in the fourth quarter.

Auburn and Mercer used to have a somewhat regular meeting, and they’ve now played 12 times. Auburn is 12-0. This is the thing: Their last game was in 1922, as Mercer’s program disappeared after 1941 and didn’t come back until 2013.

Before that, Mercer lost to Auburn teams by the following scores:

Those scores align with the historical record put out by the two teams, though there’s some dissent about whether Auburn’s 1922 win was 50-7 or 50-6. The Tigers’ game notes say 50-7, and they feature an old Opelika Daily News clipping that says it was 50-7. So we’ll go with that and say that Mercer did get all the way to seven points in 1922 — an all-time program record against Auburn.

So it was 506-12 all-time, or an average margin of 42-1.

Now it’s 530-22. Mercer has improved!

A snippet from that Daily News article from the teams’ last meeting:

The Auburn Tigers paid little heed to the blazing summer sun at Drake Field Saturday and smashed the Mercer Baptists, 50 to 7. It was the first big game of the season at Auburn and several thousand spectators witnessed the battle.

The Baptists were without the services of Lancaster, Erwin, Poore and Cecil, who remained in Macon due to an attack of dengue fever. The Tigers played without Lawrence, Moulton and Regan. The former was called home because of illness while the latter two were out because of injuries.

Times have changed just a bit since then.