Charles Barkley

NBA legend and former Auburn player Charles Barkley cheers on the Tigers against Missouri Saturday, Jan. 10, 2015, at Auburn Arena in Auburn, Ala. (Julie Bennett/ jbennett@al.com)

Auburn legend Charles Barkley is not a fan of his alma mater potentially landing in his hometown's bowl game.

The Birmingham Bowl is expected to pit the Tigers against an American Athletic Conference school, an SEC source told AL.com earlier this week.

Barkley, a Leeds native, is not much of a supporter of the sponsor-less bowl owned by ESPN in Birmingham, but he may still attend the game if Auburn plays in the game as expected on Dec. 30 at Legion Field.

"Just to make it feel like a real bowl, I'm going to stay at a hotel," Barkley said on WJOX-FM's The RoundTable. "I'm not gonna stay at my house, that would be too humiliating. I'm gonna get me a hotel in Birmingham to help the economy because if you can drive to your bowl game from your house, it's not a good thing."

Barkley congratulated Alabama on its Iron Bowl victory on the show, too, and said Alabama running back Derrick Henry should win the Heisman Trophy. "If the guy doesn't win the Heisman Trophy, they should not give it out any more," he said.

The NBA Hall of Famer was also not a fan of Gus Malzahn's game plan in the Iron Bowl, which the Tigers lost 29-13. Henry had a touchdown run in the final 30 seconds, which Barkley hinted hurt him on a bet.

"I did not like the Iron Bowl because I don't think Auburn was aggressive enough," Barkley said. "They had nothing to lose. I didn't think we were going to win the game. When I look back at the game, we only threw probably one pass over 25 yards and they got lucky tipped twice. I think when you're the decided underdog, especially in a rivalry game, you've got to pull out all the stops. I thought they were much too conservative. At no point during that game did I think Auburn was going to win. I'm going to be realistic. I'm not going to get on radio and TV and lie. At no point during that game, even when we got the lucky tip, we were playing so conservative, it was very frustrating for me to watch that game."