TUSCALOOSA, Alabama - If ever again the words "Never Again" are heard after Saturday in and around the Alabama football complex, somebody might scream.

The biggest screamer of them all, strength and conditioning coach Scott Cochran, might damage his sturdy vocal chords.

The two words have resonated like no other words used to motivate an Alabama football team. They are a two-word pledge to a settle a painful score.

Like a war cry, the words and the score - Auburn 28, Alabama 27 - have been rubbed in players' faces every day since last winter, when signs went up, among other places, in the locker room and the weight room and were distributed to players to be displayed in their living quarters.

Alabama jumped to a 24-0 lead a year ago on its home field, then set school history with an epic collapse.

Perhaps the only way to purge the memory and figuratively burn the signs would be a victory Saturday at Auburn.

The origin of the signs is a little fuzzy.

"I don't know who makes them," senior nose guard Josh Chapman said of the signs, "but I know who said the words. Coach said, 'Never again,'"

That would be coach Nick Saban, but he tells a different, vague story.

"I don't know exactly how it was born or why it was born," Saban said Monday. "I know when. I think it just came from the disappointment of last year's game. Some player said it, somebody said it somewhere along the line. It is what it is. I don't know that it wasn't something spontaneous that somebody said that just kind of stuck."

The signs never have been made available to the news media, but 10 months ago, a photo of one in Alabama's locker room appeared on a blog.

At the top of the sign is a shot of the Bryant-Denny Stadium scoreboard showing Alabama leading 24-0. At the bottom is a shot of the scoreboard showing the final score. In between are photos of Auburn stars Cam Newton and Nick Fairley, and in the middle, the word "NEVER" is printed in orange ink. "AGAIN" appears in blue.

"We put the signs up for motivation, to let us know that these guys are going to play their all every time they play us," Alabama safety Robert Lester said. "We've got to bring our all when we play them."

And who seems the most invested in pushing this message?

"Of course our strength coach," Lester said of Cochran. "He's the biggest motivator.

"Just working out, he's going to remind us every time we work out that this is not what we want to happen. Every time you hear his voice, it's just motivation. It makes you want to go and do whatever it is that you're going to do that day."

Lester still can't believe the Tide lost after building such a big lead.

"I think we got comfortable during the game," he said. "We had a 24-point lead. We didn't really think that they would come back and kind of eased up and let them (back into the game). We can't let that happen this year."

Over and over and over this year, Nico Johnson has heard the two-word covenant. How often?

"All summer," the junior linebacker said.

Enough?

"I'm not sick of hearing them," Johnson said. "We've got a great opportunity to prove that we're not going to let it happen again."

The message has gotten old to Trent Richardson.

"But it always has to stay in your head," the Tide's star running back said. "After a game like that we played last year we played some of the best football we played, and they came all the way back on us and showed that they came out and played their ballgame and won the ballgame. They went on to win the championship. You've got to have that in the back of your head."

It isn't as if signs never before have been used to push the Tide during Saban's five years as head coach. Center William Vlachos, a fifth-year center, remembers a similar tactic after an 2007 loss at home to Louisiana-Monroe.

That loss was stunning and embarrassing, but that opponent wasn't Auburn.

"Anytime you have a disappointment, it tends to motivate you a little bit in terms of what you like to accomplish because of the disappointment that you suffered when you didn't have success," Saban said. "That would be in anything and probably anybody.

"Some of those disappointments sometimes tend to bring people together, sort of in a common goal of what we're trying to accomplish. We had several disappointments a year ago, and I think all those things probably contributed to bringing this team, making this team, the chemistry on this team, what it became and what it is."