Buddy Davidson, who attended 700 consecutive Auburn football games, dies
Buddy Davidson, a 50-year Auburn athletics employee and lifelong superfan who attended 700 consecutive football games, died Tuesday, the school announced. He was 82.
Davidson started as a student manager for the football team in the 1950s, and after graduating AU with a degree in journalism, he became a sports information director then assistant athletics director in 1981. In a school release, former Auburn women’s golf coach Kim Evans said Davidson was legendary football coach Pat Dye’s “right-hand guy.”
Davidson was nicknamed “Mr. Auburn.”
His 700 consecutive football games attended spanned from the 1957 national championship season through 2017. It’s the longest known streak of Auburn games attended by an individual. During those six decades, Auburn won two national titles, eight SEC championships and had three Heisman Trophy winners.
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Davidson was the only constant. He suffered a stroke in 2014 that impaired his speech and mobility but continued going to every game, including the road ones. He is survived by his wife, Fran; his son, Rick; and his grandsons Walker, Luker and Patrick, all of whom helped him make it to games after the stroke.
He always had a fondness for that 1957 season, his first as a manager.
"I remember most every play in almost every one of those games better than I do some of them that happened two years ago," Davidson told Auburn’s Jeff Shearer in September of 2014, two weeks before the stroke. "We only gave up 28 points that whole year."
This article originally appeared on Montgomery Advertiser: Buddy Davidson: Attended 700 consecutive Auburn football games, dies
