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

One fact I found interesting is that one host said that many schools book the difference between in-state and out of state cost tuition as revenue for their scholarship athletes (UAB is an exception).

As as an example a school in Georgia charges n-state tuition of 8K and out of state tuition of 20K. If they give a scholarship to an athlete from South Carolina they book the difference in tuition rates as revenue to the sport. I don't see anyway that you can convert what is really an expense into a a revenue.

I suppose you can argue a scholarship not really an expense because you can not directly match an expenditure to the transaction. But I can't conceive how you generate a revenue from the transaction. This is creative accounting to literally paper over a loss.

 

I'll have more later, there have been developments.

RE hoops - Conference realignment led C-USA to be raided several years ago and the cream skimmed off. Another wave of realignment was very evident on the horizon. UAB boosters saw the handwriting on the wall and pitched the on-campus stadium. Not only would that have helped recruiting, which leads to wins, it would have increased attendance and in general made football much healthier financially. It was financially sound, had money in hand, all the luxury boxes were presold. Construction costs and interest rates were at historic lows, it was the time to invest. All that the BoT had to do was approve a bond issue. It wasn't even voted down, it was removed from the agenda before the meeting by Paul Bryant, Jr, who was the president pro tem. Bryant's comment at the time was that it was removed "because there was not sufficient support on the board for it to go forward". First, how was that determined? Alabama has an open meetings law, when and how was that decided? Second, if it was true, why not have a vote and simply vote it down?

The single biggest reason to build it, though, was that we knew another wave of conference realignment was coming, and that unless we invested in the program, we would be left behind. This is exactly what happened - all of C-USA moved to the AAC, except UAB (rotten facilities and no sign of improvement) and Southern Miss (Hattiesburg TV market not a strong draw). We were left behind. We lost long time and strong rivalry games and basketball, which has been UAB's strongest sport since athletics started, was very badly affected. Our conference games are so bad that in many cases we win on the road and watch the RPI drop.

We could have been in the AAC, with better television contracts, bowl games, money from NCAA appearances, etc. All would have helped our finances. The AAC isn't the ACC, but it beats the hell out of C-USA... or the Sun Belt, where we're likely to end up.

Don't think for one single moment that the UA BoT did not understand that. They're not stupid men, and more than that they were told repeatedly that this was coming. At every turn, decisions have been made that undermined UAB's athletics. Repeatedly. For twenty years now.

Here's another thing to think about - they killed football, and immediately released the players and coaches. There has been *no* plan or leadership regarding what conference we'll drop to. President Watts repeatedly stated his confidence that UAB would remain in C-USA when the conference bylaws require football. He also did not notify anyone at the conference level. Banowsky and all the presidents of C-USA schools found out when they read it in the paper. Not acting in consultation in an academic setting is a breach of etiquette at best and a deliberate insult at worst.

In theory they've been studying this for over a year. How do you do that and not have worked out some options regarding the rest of your programs?

 

How long do you think he'd have been allowed to build that losing record if he had been at UA instead of UAB, Baron?

I say it again, the UA BoT knows how to build a winning program. Leaving Brown there for twelve years, losing his ass off, shows their intent. We finally got rid of him after a season where he had 35 seniors and won three games. He was replaced by Neil Callaway (Bryant, Jr's friend who needed a job), who got an extension when he was 11-23. Again, does he get that extension at UA? Does he survive to be 11-23 in the first place at UA?

And once again, it has to be said - We had Jimbo Fisher hired, literally getting on the plane to come to Birmingham, when the BoT refused to approve his hire. He was to be paid $600k, $300k of which was booster paid. $300k for Jimbo Fisher wasn't fiscally responsible, but five years of Callaway losing games and attendance going into the dumper was?

I say it one more time, loudly and with feeling - The UA BoT is entrusted with managing UAB with its best interests in mind. Do you for one single second think that they did that with regard to the football program? Or did they actively hamstring it for many years, and then say "You don't sell tickets, it's a waste of money"? Winning games sell tickets. People in Birmingham love college football, but not year after year of painfully bad football.

They made damn sure it would be bad, and when somehow UAB started to win anyway, they cut it's throat. Quick.

 

Note that UAB does not do this but suffers in comparison of numbers with schools who do.

 

Yep. A lot of folks don't realize that.

 

Alabama is a program with a long history and is already well established.. UAB essentially had an expansion team. They wanted a coach who they would know could expect to lose a bunch at first and not have to worry that they would be fired in two years or become upset because bigger programs weren't looking to poach him. In short, they wanted a coach who was committed to building a program, not looking to use it for a jumping off point.

The fact that they managed to get to mediocrity in a hurry actually reflects quite well on Brown. UAB really should have had a bunch of two and three-win seasons when they jumped to D-IA.

 

Tell me (and the rest of us) how it is that dropping football is a violation of that trust.

I happen to agree with you that the UA BoT operates under the principle, "Above all, do Tuscaloosa no harm." But it's a long, long way from there to "The BoT handicapped/dropped football at UAB without taking into consideration UAB's best interests."

 

They tried to kill football ten years ago or so, it was beaten off by Watson Brown and the big boosters. It was done in the middle of recruiting though, and left damage for years.

They inflicted sub-par coaches on us, repeatedly, then complained because we didn't win..

They blocked our OCS when we had all our ducks in a row. They told us what we needed to do to get that approved. We did that this season, and they shut our program down instead.

They orchestrated this shutdown. It has been made to appear that it was coming from the UAB president, so that their fingerprints would not be on this attempt, but it has come from multiple sources that the the BoT was behind it.

That and much more, but I am tired and raw and dispirited, and writing for skeptics and cynics, while I come from a place of fandom and idealism. This has been a terrible and disheartening week. It's a stacked deck, and no one gives a shit 'cause it isn't them losing.


What this is really about is that UAT was afraid that UAB would one day grow to become what our conference mates TCU, Baylor, and UCF have become, programs that were able to compete at a high level. Bama likes things as it is, with a Texas and A&M equivalent, the last thing they wanted to allow was a TCU growing up in their back yard. Ten years ago we were beating those guys, and Miss St., and more. Those programs invested in their programs and have grown in many ways.

We were not allowed to, and are not allowed to invest in ourselves. They smothered the threat in its crib, and are smoking a victory cigar, smug and satisfied.

 

I agree. I applaud UAB for the integrity of thier of thier accounting (seriously).

But according to the podcast and other records I have looked at a school in Conference USA had better be prepared to write a check of at least four million a year to support a football team to cover cash losses.

 

https://sports.vice.com/article/screw-the-math-uab-can-afford-football-so-why-is-it-choosing-otherwise

 

I just skimmed through the numbers, but he has one point that is a problem. He says that UAB wouldn't be profitable if you take the athletic department as an independent business.

Except, athletic departments around the country, especially the profitable ones, make the athletic department separate from the university, so they can claim that paying their coaches millions aren't taking out of funds that would go towards students.

Either they are independent or they're not.

 

I'm not aware of any college or university that allows its athletic department to be independent of the school.

They do allow for foundations that are independent and the foundations are the ones paying the high dollar contracts to the coaches.

If you can cite a single school with an independent athletic department, please do.