Marshall is playing for an unbeaten season. UAB is playing for its life.

Sorry this is happening to your school. I do find it funny that some folks who seem to constantly ramble on about helping the little guy are totally okay with big state U doing this to a "hyphen campus". I went to a "fake state", so but for the grace of God, go us.

 

President Watts is supposed to make the announcement at 3. I'm sure that he will be nowhere near the mob of angry people in front of his offices, though. He's not shown his face in weeks. He won't start now.

Somebody has to step up and own this, and try to explain all the damage that is being done for political purposes.

Watts is toast, dead man walking. I'm sure he'll get a nice fat parachute from the board though, since he has performed the role he was hired for.

 

Back in the 1980s, my dad did a little work with a local television outfit that broadcast UNC Charlotte basketball games, back in the old days of the Sun Belt. I was 11 or 12 at the time, and helped pull cables during set-up. During the games, I sat below the scorer's table and held a directional microphone to the floor to pick up crowd noise and shoe squeaks. I had no idea who Gene Bartow was at the time, but one night during warm-ups, he came over and asked about the equipment, and spent a few minutes talking with me. Something he didn't have to do, nor did other coaches other than Jeff Mullins ever did. That left a lasting impression on me, and from then on, I kept track of UAB. So, yeah, for more reasons than those listed above, today's pending announcement has me saddened a bit.

 

Might be an idealistic thought, but can't UAB just start over on its own if there are so many people invested in the issue?

Start a massive financial drive, play every game on the road for 2-3 years and collect big "loss" checks, etc etc. There are other issues between here and there, but can the school make FBS football work in spite of Alabama's BoT? Doesn't seem like rocket science to figure out the ABCDEFG to make it work out.

 

I kinda wish 'Bama could go for a decade or so with the requirement that the University of Tennessee board approve anything they wanted to do.

 

We can, and probably will do that and fight the legal battle as well. We're still going to have our entire athletic department broken up. We'll be set back a decade or so at best. Look at SMU, have they recovered even yet?

I won't be entirely convinced it's completely over for a while yet though. Things could still happen to prevent this, but the skids have been greased for a couple of years in preparation for this day.

 

Clean Gene Bartow was one heck of a fine gentleman. There are a lot of people who knew him and fought to preserve his vision still working for the UAB Athletic department, and I'm bleeding for them this afternoon.

 

Did they control Boise's finances?

 

More of a facetious remark than anything.

 

No sweat. I'm just not seeing the humor in very much at the moment.

"#FreeUAB rally half an hour before tonight's basketball game. Wear black."

 

Free UAB? Heck, it has been free to go to football games for YEARS now!

rb

 

Boise State's program is 30 years older than Idaho State's. And for Idaho to try to quash Boise, they would have had to do it in the 1930s. A bit late.