Announcement at 4 pm re UAB Football reinstatement.

Well, either way, Houston is going to run the score up on them during their first year back.

 

There are far too many I-A teams (or whatever they call it now). There are many UABs out there that should be playing I-AA but want to pretend they're more important/competitive that they really are.

 

Or they want to stay I-A so they can schedule two or three "money" games against national powers (for a greater fee than they could get at I-AA), and help fund the rest of the athletic department. I'm looking at you, University of Idaho.

 

No, they weren't going to be able to stay in Conference USA without football. The C-USA presidents were all set to give them the boot when UAB changed its mind and decided to bring back football. That, in large part, is what's driving this.

 

The analogy would be better if the young family took out a huge mortgage on a big fancy house, was scraping by just barely making payments, then the president of the bank holding the mortgage torches the house and burns it to the ground.

 

How Birmingham's business elite helped bring back UAB football - Birmingham Business Journal

UAB AD Mark Ingram says 2017 football return 'more ideal' than 2016 | AL.com

 

Remarkable to me that anything UAB has reached a seventh page.

 

Who gets credit for UAB football return? The ornery and obnoxious 'vocal few' | AL.com

This bit here -

"From the moment Ray Watts killed football, UAB fans and boosters, students and faculty and dreamers of the impossible Blazer dream swelled up out of the ground and insisted that Birmingham did not have to accept this injustice.

They took to Twitter and Facebook and conquered social media in Birmingham's own athletic version of Arab Spring. They tweeted and posted relentlessly, day and night for months, reminding the public and the media that the story was not dead, that interest had not waned, that there was more to be told.

They were angry and ornery, annoying, obnoxious and artfully tenacious. When the story of UAB football's death began to die down, they built timelines and spreadsheets and wrote op-eds. When the media was slow to act they wrote and called and begged for another listen."

That would be, among many others, me. You must have missed the 28 page thread when it happened. I was kinda pissed off and hoping someone in the sports writing world might get interested. I am not a journalist, mostly just ghost the site and chip in a bit here and there. Generally I respect the whole "no cheering in the pressbox" thing, but this was too close to home.

Marshall is playing for an unbeaten season. UAB is playing for its life. | SportsJournalists.com

 

Arab spring? That's a bit over the top. Guess it fits right in with this whole shitshow, though.

 

Never let it be said that Bammers don't put football in proper perspective.

 

"What? Over? Did you say 'over'?"

 

More than a bit. That entire article was comically way over the top. But, hey, we've found the issue that will move Bamans to rise up and fight for social justice: the closure of a failing mid-major football program.

And good to see neutral corner patting himself on the back for saving UAB football by starting a thread on a low-trafficked message board. Dude's a hero.