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

http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-25/alabama-football-dominance-powered-by-greyhound-fortune.html

"Bryant joined the Alabama board of trustees in 2000. Dorms were shabby, and buildings were run-down, Bryant recalls. The once-triumphant football team won three and lost eight that year. Bryant and Moore got to work. The key to reviving the university was football, Bryant says. The public — and wealthy donors — would get behind a program that included making the Crimson Tide a winner again. “It’s hard to explain if you’re not from here, but if football isn’t doing well, the whole state is in a funk,” Bryant says. "

Oh, the irony, it burns.

 

Florida

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/04/college-vs-college-sports-why-you-should-ignore-the-outrage-at-the-university-of-florida/256252/

"Florida's sports teams are, for all intents and purposes, an independent business. Legally, it's athletic department is a separate non-profit entity."

Also:

"At virtually all institutions, the athletic department is a completely separate financial entity from the university itself."

http://garnetreport.com/the-financing-of-college-athletics-why-it-matters/#sthash.cOUnZGGw.dpbs

 

"All intents and purposes" isn't the same thing as what you said. I'm firmly in the camp of blow it all up but what you are saying, that the athletic departments are independent isn't accurate and muddies the waters.

At public universities the coaches answer to the AD, who isn't a CEO but a manager who answers to the university president, who then answers to the board of trustees, who are appointed by the state's governor.

They can and do get all kinds of creative in the accounting but the athletic department is not an independent unit of the university.

It simply can't be.

 

The statement says that legally, they are separate. The school may be overseeing it, but they're being kept separate.

Same as the uproar when Vanderbilt shut down their athletic department and returned it to the purview of the university. They stopped keeping the entities separate.

 

Vice, the go-to source for college football sports analysis, says UAB can't afford NOT to have football. Does this, ahem, add up?

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

 

How many D-1 athletic programs run at a profit? 25?

It's a trade off, money for advertising and exposure. I have spoken to many students and alumni who said that the first time they ever heard of UAB was the basketball team beating Kentucky in the NCAA, or seeing Roddy White in the Hawai'i Bowl. Sure, people on the medical and research side know of the school's reputation, but that does not build undergrad.

Ragu, you're a financial guy. Look at the Carr Report, all 16 pages of it. This purports to be an analysis of UAB Athletics, but seems to be limited to football. In the first paragraph of the introduction, the elimination of football is put squarely on the table. Frankly, a report that justifies killing football seems to be what was ordered and what the study wrote to. I would add this this is purportedly an analysis of UAB Athletics that took eleven months to produce. I submit that many UAB Business school profs would scoff at this as an undergrad paper, let alone a professional consulting firm's finished report.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/248979169/CarrSports-Report-on-UAB-Athletics

In the financials, they used the 2013 season's attendance numbers. These are the worst numbers in program history, and by the time the 2014 season was over attendance was up something on the order of 150%. There was no provision for what might happen if attendance improved, or what might be done to cut costs, other than eliminating football. The $49m figure for costs going forward in the Athletic program as a whole was derived by going to the coaches of each sport and asking "What would you need to be able to compete with all of your conference opponents?'. The coaches then gave their dream list of all facilities and equipment that they would like to have one day. Not needed improvements, or their priorities over the next two years, their Christmas dream list, budget be damned. Carr then took that fantasy number from each coach, added them together, and came up with $49m as the needed budget. This was patently unfair, and these coaches have gotten along by doing more with less for years. They never expected to get what they asked for, it was their dream budget.

Nowhere was there any form of advice for how the budget situation could be improved, cuts made, funds raised. It was a hatchet job, intended to justify killing the football program, and that is exactly what it has been used for.

At this point UAB President Watts is holed up in the Administration Building, with guards on all doors and no one admitted without employee ID or an appointment. The students, alumni, and public are not allowed inside. He takes a helicopter to work. He is accompanied by up to five bodyguards everywhere he goes. Today he was to meet with the National Alumni Society board at Alumni House. That meeting was cancelled and they were required to go to Admin instead. He's doing everything possible to avoid that stupid Freedom of Speech thing.

Graduation is next Saturday, two ceremonies. Either he will chicken out and not be there, or when he is introduced most of the seniors will stand and turn their backs on him. If the dignity of the ceremony holds, that will be the worst that happens. If not, a "Fire Ray Watts" chant, often heard in the street in front of his penthouse office for the last week, will go up. Graduating seniors handed their diplomas will refuse to shake his hand or hand him a miniature football.

You have no idea how pissed off this campus is. Faculty Senate meets tomorrow, and a vote of no confidence is on the agenda. It has been moved to a much bigger space than usual to accommodate the expected crowd. An airplane pulling a banner saying "#Free UAB - Fire Ray Watts" will be flying overhead. The money for that was raised in an hour and a half on Facebook today.

I don't know if this guy survives to the New Year. Of course, he was the Board of Trustees's fall guy, hired to do exactly this, so that the request to close football would come from UAB and they would not have their fingerprints on it. They all looked very sad and said "We closed the program at the request of the UAB President in the name of fiscal responsibility" while holding their knives behind their backs.

He avoided all discussion. There was zero discussion, input, or transparency before he took this step. He's been hiding for three weeks plus now. If you saw the Gameday feature, you saw one of our big boosters saying that he would have given millions, but no one asked. The UAB Football foundation had committed to pay 8 million for a new indoor practice facility. Watts has put on record on the UAB web site that no one offered any money. Apparently he is slicing the truth to mean "No one put a certified check in my hand", because these donors pledged the money if the school would commit to a contract extension to Coach Clark and scheduling OOC games beyond 2016.

He has called some of our biggest boosters, people with their names on buildings, liars to their face, in public.

He's got a $22m donation for the new business school on suspension because of how he's treated that donor.

It's a huge clusterfuck, a PR nightmare, and he's the best player on the opposing team.

 

Unless you're putting the profits back into the athletic department instead of the rest of the school.

 

You want to know why I love these guys, especially this year's team? Read this.

http://freeuab.weebly.com/


Zac Woodfin, S&C coach, was a MLB at UAB and set all our tackling records until they fell a couple of years ago when Marvin Burdette led the NCAA in tackles. He was a player for Bill Clark at Prattville High and came back to us from the Packers staff when Clark was hired to coach UAB.

Tim Alexander, the paralyzed young man he carried, was to come to UAB as a player but was in a car accident. He joined the team the season before this one, and is considered a teammate by the rest of the team. He goes everywhere with them, cheers them on, spots in the weight room as he can. He's a huge inspiration to everyone who meets him.

Fine young men, screwed over by a bitter old sonofabitch with a twenty year old grudge. It is not just.

 

Since protesting seems to be so popular these days, UAB players and supporters should go to the Birmingham Bowl, rush the field during the game at a specified time and stage a sit in. And force the cops to haul each and every one of them off the field.

 

Yeah, but who cares about the Birmingham Bowl?

Have one of the boosters pay for some buses to take them to New Orleans and have them storm the Sugar Bowl. Players should wear full uniforms and helmets with visors, so that cops won't be able to use their batons.

 

By Jan. 1, a bunch of those players are going to be getting ready to enroll at their next school.