01-09-2015, 05:50 PM
I was talking to my state representative to gain his support for the legislation proposed by Jack Williams. My representative said that he was a "money guy" and he would seek more info about the financial reasons UAB football was shut down. I said okay, I will send you links to the info you need. The text of the resulting email has been copied and pasted below. (It was sent to the 18 Birmingham area legislators for whom I could locate email addresses)
It occurs to me that the members of the newly formed committee who are to hire a firm to review the Carr Report numbers need to see this email as well. Could someone PM me their email addresses? I having trouble finding more than one of two. Please feel free to use this text in emails to anyone you think can help our cause, like your state legislators.
Attached are the web links which I agreed I would send you during our telephone conversation yesterday.
The first link is to the Carr Report. This report is supposed to be the culminating document of a fourteen months study of UAB athletics. The study was performed by Carr & Associates. (They are best known as a head hunting firm which helps universities find replacement football coaches – for instance they were employed to help UAB hire their last two football coaches including the current coach – Bill Clark.)
At the beginning of the study, the coaches of the UAB athletic programs were more than happy to provide their input to Bill Carr (owner of Carr & Associates) and his people. They were told by the Athletic Director, Bryan Mackin, that the study would help them make their programs more successful. (I know Bryan very well and I think he was telling his coaches what he believed was the truth, at least as he knew it at the time.) Little did Bryan or the UAB coaches know that the Carr report would be later be used by the UAB administration as an ax to cut UAB’s football program and some of the women’s Title 9 sports.
As you can see by opening the link below that the report itself is a bit flimsy to be the result of a 14 month in depth study, there is very little substance. I have no personal knowledge, I think that it is very likely that at some point Dr. Watts, UAB’s President, had a private conversation with Bill Carr, without the knowledge of the AD, and changed the direction of the study. As you can see the report primarily concerns itself with justifying why UAB cannot continue to afford football. It contains little or no guidance as to how all of the other various UAB athletic programs can be made more successful. Actually it says nothing about the fact that if UAB were to drop football the university would violate Conference USA rules requiring all members to have a football team meaning the university could no longer remain as a member of the conference. The report certainly should have noted that if UAB was forced to move to a lower ranked conference such a move would be detrimental to the success of the remaining UAB athletic programs
CarrSports Report on UAB Athletics
http://www.scribd.com/doc/248979169/Carr...ics#scribd
Of course, this is the report which Dr. Watts has been hiding behind since he announced the termination of the UAB football program. He used the findings of the Carr report to justify his contention that UAB could not afford a football program and that, as he told the football players,“The numbers just didn’t add up”.
When those of us who know a thing or two about finance and cost benefit analysis first read the Carr report, we found serious problems with some of the numbers, but we aren’t college sports financial experts so we were limited in ability completely refute the report. However, Andy Schwarz (an economist specializing in antitrust. damages analysis, and sport economics) did thorough analysis of the report and published his findings on the Vice Sports website. His finding are damning. Keep in mind that Schwarz has no involvement in the situation, so he no reason to take one side or another. The link to his article is below:
Screw the Math: UAB Can Afford Football, so Why Is It Choosing Otherwise? | VICE Sports
https://sports.vice.com/article/screw-th...-otherwise
When reporters subsequently asked UAB administration officials about the Vice Sports article, their story changed. They said that the dismantling of the football program wasn’t really about cost savings after all, but more about investing in programs that could be successful. The insinuation being that UAB football would never be successful despite the fact that Coach Bill Clark had adequately proven that the football program could be successful in just his first year on the job. This new stand by the UAB administration caused Schwarz to publish yet another article on the Vice Sports site knocking down the administrations latest arguments. See the link to his second article below.
UAB's Tangled Web of Numbers Doesn't Add Up | VICE Sports
https://sports.vice.com/article/uabs-tan...snt-add-up
As “numbers guy” I think after reading Andy Schwarz’s two articles you can now understand that funding consideration should never have been used as a reason for the decision to eliminate UAB football. However, it certainly appears that the Carr report was deliberately slanted to make it appear that Dr. Watts was justified in making one of those “tough financial decisions that every good leader has to make”.
Just in - another article Andy Schwarz. It seems that after Schwarz published his first two articles, Carr & Associates was feeling just a bit defensive. (After all, their future business prospects depend on their reputation which has recently taken a beating because of the UAB situation and Schwarz articles.) So Carr put out a statement which essentially said - wait a minute, UAB didn't ask us to evaluate the elimination of UAB football and we didn't have the financial data in UAB possession necessary to properly evaluate that possibility. So they are essentially admitting that their report should not have been used to do away with UAB football. The following is Andy Schwarz's third and most recent article on the Carr statement:
Sportsgeekonomics - UAB: okay, yeah maybe we missed a...
http://sportsgeekonomics.tumblr.com/post...pot-or-two
In the final analysis of the situation I can come to only the following conclusion: One of two things have to be true: 1) Dr. Watts and Carr & Associates are not competent enough to properly evaluate the financial viability of UAB football program, or 2) Dr. Watts eliminated the UAB football program for reasons other than money. Anyone with even a basic understanding of the situation which the UAB athletics program has endured from its founding knows exactly which those two possibilities is the correct one.
Please feel free to share this email with whomever you see fit.
It occurs to me that the members of the newly formed committee who are to hire a firm to review the Carr Report numbers need to see this email as well. Could someone PM me their email addresses? I having trouble finding more than one of two. Please feel free to use this text in emails to anyone you think can help our cause, like your state legislators.
Attached are the web links which I agreed I would send you during our telephone conversation yesterday.
The first link is to the Carr Report. This report is supposed to be the culminating document of a fourteen months study of UAB athletics. The study was performed by Carr & Associates. (They are best known as a head hunting firm which helps universities find replacement football coaches – for instance they were employed to help UAB hire their last two football coaches including the current coach – Bill Clark.)
At the beginning of the study, the coaches of the UAB athletic programs were more than happy to provide their input to Bill Carr (owner of Carr & Associates) and his people. They were told by the Athletic Director, Bryan Mackin, that the study would help them make their programs more successful. (I know Bryan very well and I think he was telling his coaches what he believed was the truth, at least as he knew it at the time.) Little did Bryan or the UAB coaches know that the Carr report would be later be used by the UAB administration as an ax to cut UAB’s football program and some of the women’s Title 9 sports.
As you can see by opening the link below that the report itself is a bit flimsy to be the result of a 14 month in depth study, there is very little substance. I have no personal knowledge, I think that it is very likely that at some point Dr. Watts, UAB’s President, had a private conversation with Bill Carr, without the knowledge of the AD, and changed the direction of the study. As you can see the report primarily concerns itself with justifying why UAB cannot continue to afford football. It contains little or no guidance as to how all of the other various UAB athletic programs can be made more successful. Actually it says nothing about the fact that if UAB were to drop football the university would violate Conference USA rules requiring all members to have a football team meaning the university could no longer remain as a member of the conference. The report certainly should have noted that if UAB was forced to move to a lower ranked conference such a move would be detrimental to the success of the remaining UAB athletic programs
CarrSports Report on UAB Athletics
http://www.scribd.com/doc/248979169/Carr...ics#scribd
Of course, this is the report which Dr. Watts has been hiding behind since he announced the termination of the UAB football program. He used the findings of the Carr report to justify his contention that UAB could not afford a football program and that, as he told the football players,“The numbers just didn’t add up”.
When those of us who know a thing or two about finance and cost benefit analysis first read the Carr report, we found serious problems with some of the numbers, but we aren’t college sports financial experts so we were limited in ability completely refute the report. However, Andy Schwarz (an economist specializing in antitrust. damages analysis, and sport economics) did thorough analysis of the report and published his findings on the Vice Sports website. His finding are damning. Keep in mind that Schwarz has no involvement in the situation, so he no reason to take one side or another. The link to his article is below:
Screw the Math: UAB Can Afford Football, so Why Is It Choosing Otherwise? | VICE Sports
https://sports.vice.com/article/screw-th...-otherwise
When reporters subsequently asked UAB administration officials about the Vice Sports article, their story changed. They said that the dismantling of the football program wasn’t really about cost savings after all, but more about investing in programs that could be successful. The insinuation being that UAB football would never be successful despite the fact that Coach Bill Clark had adequately proven that the football program could be successful in just his first year on the job. This new stand by the UAB administration caused Schwarz to publish yet another article on the Vice Sports site knocking down the administrations latest arguments. See the link to his second article below.
UAB's Tangled Web of Numbers Doesn't Add Up | VICE Sports
https://sports.vice.com/article/uabs-tan...snt-add-up
As “numbers guy” I think after reading Andy Schwarz’s two articles you can now understand that funding consideration should never have been used as a reason for the decision to eliminate UAB football. However, it certainly appears that the Carr report was deliberately slanted to make it appear that Dr. Watts was justified in making one of those “tough financial decisions that every good leader has to make”.
Just in - another article Andy Schwarz. It seems that after Schwarz published his first two articles, Carr & Associates was feeling just a bit defensive. (After all, their future business prospects depend on their reputation which has recently taken a beating because of the UAB situation and Schwarz articles.) So Carr put out a statement which essentially said - wait a minute, UAB didn't ask us to evaluate the elimination of UAB football and we didn't have the financial data in UAB possession necessary to properly evaluate that possibility. So they are essentially admitting that their report should not have been used to do away with UAB football. The following is Andy Schwarz's third and most recent article on the Carr statement:
Sportsgeekonomics - UAB: okay, yeah maybe we missed a...
http://sportsgeekonomics.tumblr.com/post...pot-or-two
In the final analysis of the situation I can come to only the following conclusion: One of two things have to be true: 1) Dr. Watts and Carr & Associates are not competent enough to properly evaluate the financial viability of UAB football program, or 2) Dr. Watts eliminated the UAB football program for reasons other than money. Anyone with even a basic understanding of the situation which the UAB athletics program has endured from its founding knows exactly which those two possibilities is the correct one.
Please feel free to share this email with whomever you see fit.
