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

Yeah, states' rights and all.

 

How much of Tennessee is Vanderbilt fans? With recent exceptions, they are perennial cellar dwellers, their attendance isn't very good. How much of Nashville is Vandy fans?

How many people in Houston are Rice fans?

How about just letting the program run without trying to drown it in the bathtub and see if it succeeds?

Or even more revolutionary, how about if the Trustees who are entrusted with acting for the benefit of UAB actually did so instead of trying to actively sabotage the program? I think that it is obvious that the Alabama BoT knows how to build a football program. I see no evidence that they have even attempted to at UAB.

UAB's best player would be lucky to be a walk on practice player in Tuscaloosa. Is UAB seriously going to take a recruit that Nick Saban really wants? So what's the reason, other than a feud thirty years ago between Gene Bartow and Bear Bryant that is being carried on by his son?

PBJ retires soon, I believe in September of 2015. Maybe then this will begin to ease, but it seems institutional.

 

Not at all (and perhaps most) schools, it is not. Don't mean to sound harsh, but I believe most folks have long perceived UAB to be the urban commuter type school in the UA system. "Tailgating at the quad and then walking to the game" has never been regarded as a "near essential" part of the experience at those schools.

And, from the cold perspective of one with no dog in the fight, I must say the loss of an FBS program or two does not strike me as something worthy of concern beyond the state's borders. Seems to me there's been an excess of new FBS members in recent years (do schools like Old Dominion, UTSA, MTSU and Western Ky really belong in the big boy division?), perhaps a little culling of the herd ain't such a bad thing.

 

I'm not sure that's exactly the root cause. It's a very red state.

 

Stoney, I guess we get to the reason that I declared in the OP that it was my ox getting gored here. I am not neutral in this one, I've seen too many dirty dealings over the years, know too much about what's happened. Said so up front.

UAB is trying to outgrow the "urban commuter school" tag and become a real live university. Dr. Witt, who is the system chancellor, emphasized the growth of undergrad at 'Bama, and increased it a great deal while he was there. He has mandated that UAB double its undergrad numbers.

How do you do that without looking at the quality of activities and athletic programs that attract and influence those undergrads to attend your school?

Downtown school or not, many of these are kids from Alabama who expect football to be a part of their college experience.

Carol Garrison was UAB's President for ten years and made great strides in improving undergrad. There have been additional dorms built, a first class Rec Center added, a huge campus green was added. Unfortunately, when the On Campus Stadium was proposed a couple of years back she openly advocated for it instead of doing the BoT's bidding and helping quash it.

She "retired" just as classes started at the start of this school year. Note that she did not take another, better job, or "retire to spend more time with her family", or outright retire at all... she still works at UAB. She was forced out, and given her stony silence since I think she signed a nondisclosure with teeth like a great white.

You ever hear of a university president retiring just as the school year started? Me either.

 

Maybe this will get my point across. Coach Clark was promised improved facilities when he signed his contract. He did get the locker rooms reworked, and they are nice, comparable to others in our league. Those locker rooms are in a small concrete blockhouse by the practice field.

If they closed the football program tomorrow, that concrete block building and a couple of goalposts would be the only sign left on campus that UAB Football ever existed.

Gee, how could your football program fail with support like that? You shoulda won more and put more asses in seats, we'd have helped out.


A newly formed UAB Football Foundation has offered to foot the bill for a $7m indoor practice facility and was told that there was a study of the Athletic Department under way and that any donations would be premature until it was completed. UAB accepted a $1.5m donation a couple of days later for improvements to the soccer field. Soccer is under that same Athletic Department study, but there didn't seem to be any problem with taking that money.

 

Not to get political, but that would be the point. Alabama wouldn't want Obama (i.e., the federal government) interfering in what they would see as a state matter.

 

Obama should announce he wants UAB football shut down immediately and he will introduce legislation utterly forbidding the use of $500 million of tax money on a brand-new state-of-the-art 60,000-seat stadium.

Groundbreaking tomorrow at 7 a.m.

 

Pretty close. He could back a semi loaded with pallets of hundred dollar bills up to the capital steps and they'd find a reason to reject them.

 

What am I missing here? Vanderbilt and Rice are private universities. UAB is a public university. How are these comparable in the context of your argument?

 

I was coming back from

Maybe a better comparison would be the University of Houston. Big school in a big city which does not have a large athletic fan base, dealing with UT and aTm fans all around them. The UH fans are there and loyal to their school, but the program suffers by comparison to the bigger ones. The big difference is that UAB was founded in 1969, not 1927, and is still growing... but it's the biggest employer in Alabama, with a $5 billion economic impact.

 

Houston has its own university system, though.

UAB is more like UNC-Charlotte, which has football ... FCS football.