Alabama football’s most committed fan has passed away

Alabama football lost its most loyal and despised fan of all time Thursday.

Noted tree poisoner and Alabama football super fan Harvey Updyke passed away on Thursday.

There is a fine line between “it just means more” and taking it too far. Updyke not only crossed the line the week after the 2010 Iron Bowl, but desecrated it and murdered two trees because he couldn’t handle a loss to Cam Newton’s Auburn Tigers. Yes, Updyke was the man responsible for poisoning the two oak trees on Toomer’s Corner in Auburn, Alabama back in 2010.

According to Mike Rodak of AL.com, “Harvey Updyke, the Alabama fan who infamously poisoned Auburn’s iconic trees on Toomer’s Corner in 2010, died Thursday.” Updyke’s son Bear Updyke, who is named after legendary Alabama head football coach Paul “Bear” Bryant, informed AL.com of his father’s passing.

Harvey Updyke was great at poisoning trees and not paying legal restitution.

The reason sports fans know about Updyke is from the time he called into The Paul Finebaum Show in 2011 and told Finebaum what he did. “Let me tell you what I did,” Updyke told Finebaum. “The weekend after the Iron Bowl, I went to Auburn because I lived 30 miles away, and I poisoned the two Toomer’s trees. I put Spike 80DF in ‘em. They’re not dead yet, but they definitely will die.”

This was the signature moment of the popular sports talk radio show on WJOX down in Birmingham, Alabama. This occurred right around the time Finebaum’s radio show had national syndication on Sirius XM. Three years later, Finebaum would be the first person ESPN hired when they launched The SEC Network. Finebaum has become the voice of college football sports talk.

Updyke pled guilty for poisoning those two trees in 2013 and spent over 70 days in jail. He was ordered to pay $800,000 in restitution and court-ordered penalties. Before he died, Updyke paid a pitiful price of $6,900 as of October 2019. He said he was done paying, as he couldn’t get to 1/100th of the amount.

He had the audacity to call into The Paul Finebaum Show a few months ago under a psuedonym. Finebaum sniffed him right out and called him out for being a tree poisoner. While Alabama and Auburn hate each other on the football field, these fanbases are neighbors, friends and co-workers in the Yellowhammer State. Way to ruin something great Auburn had, Harvey.

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