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

LOL. My kid went there but didn't graduate, and my wife has been on staff for twentysome years. I got a lot of time in.

It ain't easy bleeding green. You wouldn't believe the painful, soulgrindingly bad football I've witnessed, let alone the Mike Davis basketball.


I remember SMU getting the ball on their own 20 with :28 left and no time outs and scoring to win the game.

 

.

 

There was no need to overwrite that story the way Solomon did.

 

How long it would it take for the stadium to pay for itself, including all building costs, without taxpayers subsidizing it?

 

So farm from what I've seen, there hadn't been similar schools. The schools that UAB have been compared to are much larger, in larger population bases.

 

You couldn't look for schools that had a recent growth curve and find what they did to make it happen, and how they accomplished it, then offer the best of those as suggestions? Again, this purports to be a document analyzing an entire athletic program and making strategic recommendations. In twelve pages, including the table of contents and the footnotes.

Both UCF and USF come to mind, schools that have grown their programs quite successfully. What did they do that might work for UAB?

I'm supposed to believe that this is a year's worth of analysis?

 

And UAB football is the glue that kept all that together?

Sorry. I call BS.

Birmingham is, barely, any kind of town. That's largely due to colossal bureaucratic mismanagement (including a sewer debacle ...) and the massive flight to suburbia. UAB football's presence -- or lack thereof -- didn't cause steel mills to dry up or the banking business to change.

Ask anyone in the region, and they'll tell you that UAB is known first, foremost and -- really -- only for being a standout hospital and medical learning facility. Athletics? A couple thousand kids on campus and a couple thousand more in town does not make a healthy fanbase. In all reality, UAB *should* be a D-II school in athletics. Gene Bartow (God rest his soul) shot for the stars without a plan or the long-term capital to make it happen.

rb

 

I know it hurts to lose the program, but it's over, and there is no fight to be had anymore. I hope as many of the players as possible find a new place.

And that Deadspin video of the meeting the president is quite heart-wrenching.

 

http://www.al.com/sports/index.ssf/2014/12/carrsports_report_on_uab_athle.html#comments

More to come.

 

It ain't over, not yet, PBJ be damned.

 

Orlando, while its city only has a population is only 40,000 more than Birmingham (census records), has a metropolitan area of nearly double what Birmingham's is. Tampa has 140,000 more in population, and a metropolitan area population nearly four times Birmingham's.

Those football teams did not grow the population. They benefit and grow from already having the population base.

 

I said this eight pages or so ago. Why not FCS?