Armchair Talking Head

You might have recently seen pictures of Tommy Tuberville in Iraq spending some time with American troops.  Kudos to Tommy for supporting our men and women.  Hell I even appreciate the premature 7th finger he held up in a picture while there.  Anything for the troops right?

But while Tubs is rallying the troops abroad, the troops down on the Plains have fallen on hard times.  And by troops, I mean Bobby Lowder and his Colonial Bank.  The Auburn Trustee, and de facto ruler of all things Auburn Athletics owns the lion’s share of shares in Colonial Bank which has seen its stock plummet over the past year.  Colonial BancGroup reached its 52 week high of 25.50 on July 3rd of ‘07, and by yesterday reached a 52 week low of 5.55.  If you’re keeping score at home, after today’s close at 5.94, Lowder (7.7 Million Shares) has himself lost over 150 Million dollars in stock value, by my amateur estimation.

Lowder was to fund a large portion of the new basketball arena to be built in Auburn.  One now has to wonder if that is in jeopardy.

The bigger question is this.  Does the demise of Bobby Lowder signal the end of an era of meddling in all things Auburn?  Does it signal the end of Lowder’s personal tapping and dethroning of Auburn football coaches?  Does it finally signal the end of the reign of Pat Dye?  Perhaps.

Don’t count them out yet, though.  Lowder and Colonial Bank’s fate is far from sealed, and according to this Birmingham News article Colonial is seeking legal remedies against the short selling that is purported to be a major factor in the downturn of the company’s stock.

All is not well in the Auburn Nation as we know it, and that may be music to Tommy Tuberville’s gigantic ears.  However, the fact that a very real threat to the once iron-clad power structure at Auburn is upon us might be in the School Down the Road’s best interest.

Here we were thinking Lowder and the boys would be tapdancing on Tubs’ grave by December, and it very well could be the other way around…