Paul Davis: Lowder story in Fortune worth reading
Columnist
Published: September 21, 2009
Fortune magazine, a Time Warner publication, sent one of its senior writers, Brian O’Keefe who is based in New York, flying south recently to put together a major story on the rise and fall of one of Auburn’s newest residents, Bobby Lowder.
The magazine had been considering for months doing a piece on one of the South’s major banks, Colonial, which was born and has always been operated under the oversight of Lowder. It seems the magazine just never got around to doing that story on the $23 billion dollar bank until it no longer existed. Colonial, based in Montgomery, was seized by regulators several weeks ago, but even before that Lowder had resigned as the bank’s chief executive officer.
O’Keefe found many people to talk with about Lowder, his bank and his role in running Auburn University for the past quarter-century. Lowder’s track record is not very good.
He almost lost Auburn University before he lost his bank. Regulators came to Auburn University several years ago. Not bank regulators, academic regulators. Those regulators harshly noted that Lowder was running the university single-handedly, micromanaging the university in a manner unacceptable for an academic institution operating under the rules of the Southern Association of colleges and Schools.
SACS promptly placed Auburn on probation and threatened to withdraw its accreditation. That, essentially, meant Auburn would no longer exist as a major institution, would lose access to federal funds and student loans and have a nose bloodied in such a manner that it would have taken decades to overcome. None of his peers ever challenged Lowder, the poor, little rich guy. But state and federal bank regulators did and they prevailed. SACS did and it, too, prevailed.
Every time I have mentioned publicly that a major publication or a TV network was planning a Lowder exposé, the project was shut down.
I remember the last one quite vividly. Matt Hayes of The Sporting News came to Auburn and wrote a masterful piece on the buying and selling of football players. He named names, told how the setup worked. He sent me a copy to fact check. Not long after, that one of those 60-name New York law firms sent me a letter telling me that I was to immediately destroy the story.
I didn’t take the letter seriously. I did not solicit a copy of Hayes’ story, and I felt no obligation to return anything to them. Nevertheless, the magazine got the message and the story was never published. My copy made for some excellent reading.
O’Keefe’s day in Birmingham was successful, then one day in Auburn, another successful one. (Yes, I spent a couple of hours with him.) After Auburn he spent a day in Montgomery where he also had some good interviews. I don’t expect to see an advance copy of this story but I hope we will all see the story in the October edition of Fortune magazine.
Surely Lowder can’t shut down that publication. Can he?
Paul Davis writes a column for the Opelika-Auburn News. You may contact him at
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Reader Reactions
Bobby Lowder has done more harm to Auburn University than most people will ever know. Through his arrogance, greed, and hunger for power, he nearly destroyed the university like he eventually destroyed his own bank. He’s cost many people a lot of money, and has ruined lives along the way. He deserves whatever he gets from this point forward. I fully expect that he’ll be spending some quality time with Richard Scrushy in the near future. He’s been an embarrassment to Auburn University for many years now, and the day he’s finally gone from the Board of Trustees will truly be a day to roll Toomer’s Corner!!!
As cls67 mentions, autigers1970, your criticisms of Davis would carry more weight without your ad hominem attacks. Davis is probably the most respected journalist currently working in Auburn. That doesn’t mean his work can’t be or shouldn’t be criticized, but it does mean that, for most readers, when you call him a clown you’re undermining your own arguments.
Also, I take issue with your interpretation of Davis’s intentions in mentioning “a story that’s a good ten years old.“ The rhetorical structure of Davis’s piece requires both a “before” example (in this case The Sporting News) and an “after” example (in this case the Esquire piece). I’m not sure how Davis could argue his thesis that, while Lowder once had enough clout to squelch negative reporting, he now does not, without providing both types of examples. The mention of the Sporting News situation is not gratuitous—“taking a jab”—then, but necessary for the point he wants to make.
I do hope that AU’s athletic department is moving in the direction that you say it is regarding graduation rates, discipline, and so forth. How great would it be to have a program whose actions on the field, off the field, and behind the scenes that we could be completely proud of? I’d suggest that *this* is Davis’s motivation for his critical view of the way AU athletics are conducted (his “burr under the saddle”). After all, don’t we often feel frustrated when something or someone we love appears to be squandering its/his/her potential?
Finally, athletic programs at universities may indeed provide some kind of benefit for the university itself, the surrounding community, etc, but the notion that athletic programs in general “pour a TON of money in the academic side of Auburn University” and enable the existence of Title IX sports is much more dubious than commonly believed. There’s plenty of research to support this conclusion (see the report at this link: http://docs.google.com/gview?a=v&q=cache:bgcEDaOpGjwJ:www2.cs.uidaho.edu/~oman/Athletics_and_Fundraising.pdf+do+athletics+raise+profile+of+college+institution&hl=en&gl=us and this link for links to further research: http://www.k-grayengineeringeducation.com/budget/?page_id=16). Again, I’m not saying athletic programs necessarily are bad or have no value, but to argue that the “academic side” of AU owes something to its athletic program is very likely untrue.
“Clown with an axe isn’t civil discourse is it? Kettle calling the pot black and all of that stuff.
I’ve not read any of these attacks against the athletic department that wasn’t deserved by Davis, a 30 year+ ticket holder.
I do know of two head coaches who don’t coach here any longer because they defied upper management and would not pay players and Davis wrote about it. One coach who is still around got caught paying players and Davis wrote about that as well.
I don’t see that as a clown with an ax.
Actually, I have criticized Lowder’s actions plenty of times. But I also know that he decided to bring up a story that’s a good ten years old about Auburn football in the midst of his Lowder diatribe. He never misses an opportunity to take a jab at the athletic department, even in the face of evidence that the last coaching staff and this one have been working hard to do things the right way from the start, have good graduation rates, have mostly avoided the discipline troubles such as arrests that plague other programs and end up not only paying for its own existence but pour a TON of money in the academic side of Auburn University as well as fund athletic and scholarship opportunities for sports that do not get the limelight or generate revenue, including many that fall under Title IX
What I’m asking people like Paul Davis for is not a blind eye, but balance. It’s a quality sorely lacking from his repertoire.
A university is an educational institution, not a sports franchise.
And a *public* university is intended to serve the *public*, not one wealthy person’s whims, passions, or anything else.
Lowder didn’t understand either of the above issues. He has been rightfully called out for his abuse of the power garnered through his enormous wealth for some time. Finally, as Davis points out, Lowder no longer has the financial resources to give him such unchecked authority. Regardless of how one might feel about Auburn University *as an institution*, we all should be relieved that a person such as Lowder can no longer act in such an undemocratic manner.
For those who are more concerned about AU as a football team than as an institution—and see criticism of Lowder as an attack on his efforts “on behalf” of the school and its team—aren’t you at least relieved to see such dictatorial behavior squashed? We do live in the land of the free, right?
And it should go without saying, I’d hope, that a free press is integral to a healthy democracy. We should be thanking Paul Davis for his committed journalist practice—how would we know what Lowder was up to all these years if not for people like Davis?
I guess if all you care about is how many touchdowns the Tigers ring up on the scoreboard, it’s easy to fault those who criticize Lowder. I’d like to think, though, that there are more important principles and issues for all of us to be concerned about than Auburn’s performance on the field.
If not, then maybe Football has become the one true religion of Alabama. What else but holy zeal could explain people’s acceptance of our democratic way of life so undermined?
Post my nonsense? I don’t see them giving me a print column like they do someone with an obvious burr under their saddle toward all things Auburn. This loser tries to undermine AU every opportunity he gets. I swear he’s getting kickbacks from the REC for this crap.
Only reason his BS gets printed is because his son works for the POS OA News
Hey, you have to admit almost everything Lowder has touched has crashed and burned.
Allowed you to post your nonsense didn’t they?
Why does the OA News insist on publishing this clown with an ax to grind?
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