Will Auburn be as Strong Without Bobby Lowder on the Board of Trustees?

BY Kevin Scarbinsky
Birmingham News
13 April 2012

BIRMINGHAM, Alabama - They're celebrating at Auburn this week.

Or maybe "celebrating" is too strong.

At the least, some members of the athletics department there are smiling.

Those grins have nothing to do with the statues of the school's three Heisman winners that will be unveiled Saturday before the A-Day Game and everything to do with what some people would call the fossil that's been pressed into the pages of a history book at last.

Bobby Lowder is no longer a member of the Auburn Board of Trustees.

After 29 years, the most power­ful and controversial figure at the university has seen his final term end as the Alabama Senate ap­proved five new trustees, one of them taking over Lowder's seat.

Some members of the Auburn family, on and off campus, inside and outside the athletics depart­ment, have been waiting for the day when the man viewed by many as the university's dictator would have his official seat at the head of the school's power table taken away.

No more Lowder looking over their shoulder, asking hard ques­tions about what they're doing, where they're going and why.

No more worrying about Low­der's opinion when it comes to hiring and other personnel deci­sions.

There's an old saying that seems appropriate here. What is it? Oh, yeah. Be careful what you wish for. You just might get it.

Those who wanted an Auburn athletics department without Low­der's influence finally got their wish. Will that department have the same strong leadership with­out him?

Lowder has taken a lot of heat for the last 29 years, some of it de­served -- hello, Jetgate -- but there's no question that he helped get things done at Auburn, and many of those things helped make Auburn a better place.

This is not the place to talk about his impact on the university at large, which, like it or not, has been huge, and without the need for personal recognition that pow­erful donors and benefactors often demand. You don't know how much money Lowder and his fam­ily have pumped into his alma mater because he's never trum­peted that fact or asked others to trumpet it for him.

You also haven't seen Lowder hanging out on the sideline or rub­bing elbows with the coaches in the locker room. The most power­ful man in the room might rarely enter the building, but the build­ing might not exist if not for him.

You could question his meth­ods, not his motives, but ask your­self this: Would Auburn athletics in general and the football pro­gram in particular have been as successful for the last three dec­ades had Lowder not been involved?

Is that a trick question? Of course not.

If not for Lowder, who wasn't yet a trustee but was the president of the national alumni association during the search, Auburn wouldn't have hired Pat Dye as head football coach in 1981. If not for Dye, Auburn wouldn't have leveled the lopsided balance of power with Alabama so quickly after Bear Bryant's death.

Lowder won't talk about it publicly -- he almost never does interviews -- but he's told friends that there's one stat that puts a special smile on his face.

In the 29 years before he joined the board of trustees, Auburn was 10-19 against Alabama in football. During his 29 years on the board, the Tigers went 16-13 against the Tide.

That balance of power has swung the other way lately. During this academic year, Alabama has dominated Auburn in the major sports. There was a three-game sweep in baseball last weekend. There was a two-game sweep in basketball. And there was that 42-14 beatdown in football as Alabama bookended Auburn's BCS title with its second in three years.

We know that Auburn can compete with Alabama with Lowder throwing his weight behind the program. Can the Tigers do the same with the 69-year-old Lowder on the sideline for good?

We're about to find out.