Lowe, a captain on Bear Bryant’s last team in 1982, went on to an all-star, nine-year career with the Canadian Football League’s Saskatchewan Roughriders. After the CFL, he came home to Phenix City for his second act — a career in banking and serving for a decade as president of the Phenix City school board. On the side, he was a volunteer coach at his alma mater, Central High School, while his brother, Woodrow, also a former Tide and NFL player, was head football coach.

He's now Phenix City’s mayor, the first African-American elected to that position, and budgets concern him more than blitzes. Lowe is clearly still a winner — and he can still spot them, too. When this football season began, the local Rotary Club held its annual football kickoff. Members with ties to the four major “bi-state” programs — Georgia, Auburn, Georgia Tech and Alabama — were asked to give their predictions for the coming season.

When it was Mayor Lowe's turn, he hit the Georgia-Alabama matchup right on the head. Kinda.

“What I predicted — and I did it based solely on defenses, [the capability] Georgia had with all the seniors coming back and the defense Alabama normally has — is they would wind up playing for the SEC championship,” said Lowe, whose City Hall office looks across the Chattahoochee into Columbus. “I missed it, but they’ll be playing for something much, much bigger than that.”

For that reason, during last week’s Rose Bowl, Lowe did something normally unthinkable on his side of the river.

“I pulled for Georgia,” Lowe said. “It’s huge. I was hoping, because of the proximity of being in bordering states and me being in this area with Columbus right across the river, I was hoping it would wind up with these two teams. I was just hoping [Alabama] would get in the top four.”

Lowe said his thinking stemmed from uncertainty over whether the CFP committee would give Alabama that spot.

“You know, most of the people hate Alabama because they've always been at the top. It was like that when I was there playing,” he said. “You know, being there year after year, and having the track record. In my opinion, they got it right. And I think they validated that they are one of the best teams in the country.”