re: Toomers Corner Trees Being Cut Down This Morning

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Harvey deserves to DIE alone, broke, and in pain.

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Overreact much? If you believe this then you sir are worse than him.

mmmmmmmYeah you are more than likely correct Macho Man

shite just got real.

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am i too late for the whole Uga vs UGA thing? totally different meanings. gotta be careful using capitalization

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The school should be U GA or UGa not UGA. I'll use LSU as an example. Each letter in LSU stands for a word which is not so in "UGA."

P.S. I don't give a rat's behind what the dog's name is.

Some sad people in here

What are the plans for the space now?
I haven't heard any discussion on the subject.


A great tradition now lost. Sad.

I always thought it was their abbreviation for athletics.

Univ. of Georgia Athletics

Scarbo' Article (long, Did not read, etc.)

Harvey Updyke is probably celebrating inside today.

Thinking he won.

After all, he did poison the Toomer’s Corner oak trees back in 2010 with a single, hateful goal in mind, and that was to kill them.

It was his sick and twisted attempt at payback for the cold, hard fact that Auburn had just staged the greatest comeback in Iron Bowl history and for the absolute fiction that some Auburn fans might’ve rolled the corner 27 years earlier when Bear Bryant died.

In a direct, cause-and-effect kind of way, Updyke accomplished his goal. When workers took those trees down Tuesday and hauled them away, the combination of machine oil and sawdust, to him, would’ve smelled like ... victory.

He probably wishes he were there. He no doubt wishes he were anywhere but stuck in a cell in the Lee County Detention Center, where he’s serving out the remainder of his sentence.

Even with his advancing age and fading health, he got off easy. Even though he has five years of supervised probation coming after serving the rest of his 180 days in jail, the punishment doesn’t truly fit the crime.

It makes sense that he can’t attend any college sporting events and can’t set foot on Auburn property, but the judge missed a Godfather-style chance to hurt Updyke the way he hurt Auburn.

The judge should’ve ordered him to spend the day in jail, from one hour before kickoff to one hour after the final play, during every Alabama football game for the next five years, without radio or television privileges.

That would’ve hit Updyke where he lives.

Just as he did to Auburn.

Last month, after Updyke agreed to the plea deal, his attorney, Andrew Stanley, said his client “was very remorseful about what he had done.”

Perhaps. It’s hard to judge a man’s heart, even one as hard as Updyke’s has proven it can be. It’s impossible to know for sure whether he’s sorry for what he’s done or sorry he went on the radio and bragged about it, leading to his arrest.

Does he really realize how much pain his poison caused? Does he fully understand that from now into the foreseeable future his name will be a sad synonym for the sports fanatic who goes too far?

Paint a Clemson tiger paw on South Carolina’s football field and scrawl “Go Tigers” in orange paint on one of those tailgating railroad cars outside the stadium in Columbia, as someone did last week, and guess what? You’re not just a vandal. You’re an Updyke.

But all Updykes aren’t created equal, and all temporary rivalry insanity doesn’t rise to the same level.

Orange paint can be removed.

Auburn’s trees had to be cut down and hauled away in pieces.

Just as Updyke intended.

What would he say had he stood there and watched? Roll Damn Tide? That was his signature phrase when he was enjoying his 15 minutes of infamy.

Has he comes to his senses since?
Before long, he’ll leave his cell and this state - hopefully, in both cases, for good - and take his alleged regret with him. The real test of his sincerity won’t come until Auburn beats Alabama in football again.

How will he react then?

How would he have reacted had he been there Saturday when Auburn fans showed how they feel about their unique tradition by burying those doomed oak trees in a blizzard of Charmin? When some of them laughed and others cried and two of them chose that spot to get married?

The way it turned out, one of the ugliest acts in the Iron Bowl rivalry turned into one of the more inspiring scenes in Auburn history.

And Updyke made that happen. He killed Auburn’s trees and made Auburn stronger.

For a man who loves his scoreboards a little too much, he might want to think twice about who’s the real loser here.

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And Updyke made that happen

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