… [Auburn trustee Bobby Lowder]  mixes [his now-failed bank's] business with Auburn business. When the alumni association launched its first branded credit card in the mid-1980s, [Lowder's bank, Colonial] was awarded the contract. Over the years Lowder has installed a few of his fellow trustees on the Colonial board, and others have had business relationships with his bank. “People always talk about the millions he’s given to Auburn,” says Paul Davis, a local newspaperman who’s been writing columns critical of Lowder for two decades. “I always say, What about the millions he’s made off of Auburn?”

And, critics say, Lowder used his sway to settle scores. For years, Lowder’s most vocal opponent on the board of trustees was a lawyer named John Denson. Denson had a particular interest in Auburn’s Ph.D. program in economics, which had a free-market bent and attracted graduate students from around the world. When the board conducted a university-wide review of academic programs in 1999 the Ph.D. program was eliminated despite its robust health.

During the same review, the journalism department, which which Lowder had publicly blamed for pushing the school newspaper to write negative stories about him, was folded into the communications school.

… Lowder once allegedly threatened to have [a fellow trustee] killed. In a 2006 lawsuit involving Auburn trustees that was to have appeared before [John] Denson, Auburn’s former athletic director submitted an affidavit saying that Denson had told him that Lowder had once said to him, “John, I can have you killed with no problem at all.” Denson recused himself from hearing the case and says now he can’t comment because it is a judicial matter.

… [A fired football coach]  gave an interview to local reporter Davis alleging that Lowder had organized a program in which wealthy alumni contributed cash to a slush fund to pay players to sign with Auburn.

Several people with knowledge of the system and Lowder’s role in it told Fortune that [the coach] was telling the truth and that they had seen a book with a list of the slush-fund donors.

…  In December 2003 …  the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools put the university on probation and specifically named Lowder in a report citing micromanaging by trustees….

Background on Auburn here.