The unofficial online home for fans of the UAB Blazers. Part of Collegiate Sports Nation (CSN).

(11-30-2014 02:11 PM)fbbbfan Wrote:  I would like to understand the long term goal. I buy season tickets and make scholarship donations. If we shut down football, what else happens. Do we reduce 85 scholarships from the women's programs? Do we remove marching bands, cheerleaders and Golden Girls? If football is not important , why do both Alabama and Auburn record huge enrollment increases after playing for National Championships. Should we use the same money to further sorority and fraternity activity on campus? Most could not tell you the national ranking of their law school, business school or nursing school but do know that their football team is in the top 25 or their basketball team made the NCAA tournament? If the logic follows that the football program is not profitable therefore shut it down, is it also logical to close the UAT nursing school, or any UAT medical classes? If someone has a direction for UAB Athletics please let me know. What do you think we should accomplish. Why do Jax St. , Troy, USA , Charlotte, ODU and others star or consider D1 programs?

That's what always gets me about the situation.

With every day that passes, I start to buy in more and more that Dr. Watts never had any intentions to make UAB better at all. Birmingham is one of the biggest college football markets in the whole country. Most of us are older than UAB football. It has been marginalized and wronged for most of its existence. We're not even trying to become the next coming for Boise State or TCU. All we ever wanted was for people with ulterior motives to leave the program alone.

I can understand the Board of Trustees not wanting another program getting big. It's incredibly petty, but I knew early on that these men would put the interest of Alabama football ahead of many things. That's fine (it's really not), but I never expected that people here at the school would actively work against us.

It'd be one thing if he was taking a tough stand to make the school better, but that's not what I'm seeing. I didn't even know about the honors school thing until I came to this board, and even lay people understand the significance athletics has to an institution. I honestly was a bit hesitant to think that Dr. Watts was a confederate, but there is no way he is this incompetent or out of touch. I truly believe now that he's effectively trying to hurt the school under the guise of being fiscally responsible, and, after he has done enough damage, he will either fill a slot on the board or get a nice parachute for following the directives laid out for him by the Board of Trustees.