RE: Merged thread. UAB football future
Injustice in Birmingham
By: Joseph Sam Schillaci, Jr. CIC
Sometimes in life there are things that are just wrong. No gray areas, just wrong. Case in point: The University of Alabama Board of Trustees stealth program to destroy not just UAB football, but UAB athletics in total. The story goes back to the 1970s when Gene Bartow and Dr. Richard Hill created UAB Basketball out of thin air. The powers that be at UCLA could never accept the coach that followed John Wooden and after a couple of highly successful seasons did not end with National Championships, Coach Bartow left UCLA to build his own legacy at The University of Alabama at Birmingham. In short, Gene Bartow’s UAB Basketball Blazers were the feel good success story of college basketball in the 1980’s. Without facilities or big donors, Coach Bartow built a winner from scratch. That is what truly great men do. They build memories and legacies brick by brick from the ground up. Anybody can be born with a silver spoon in their mouth and be book smart enough to turn one fortune into twenty fortunes but it is the rare man that can build something worth remembering from scratch. Just as soon as it was evident that UAB had a better basketball program than the old established program at Alabama, the trouble began. Small minded jealous men who did not want to share the stage with legitimate competition set about a mission to destroy everything that Gene Bartow had built. He had brought recognition and respect nationwide to what they considered an extension center. The trouble began when certain elements that supported Alabama basketball decided they would pay players or do whatever they had to in order to keep Gene Bartow and UAB from experiencing any more success. Gene Bartow was nobody’s fool and he realized that he was losing out on many top recruits because he was a principled man who refused to break the rules to win. He didn’t get the nickname “Clean Gene” for nothing. He earned it throughout his respected career. The injustice and cheating got to this good man so bad that he even wrote a letter to the NCAA where he outlined the tradition and history of cheating in the SEC, much of which is documented and proven. The point that Coach Bartow was trying to make was that most of the coaches who had gotten their programs in the most trouble with the NCAA were former assistant coaches of Paul Bear Bryant. Charlie Pell, Pat Dye, Jackie Sherrill etc. Bartow’s claim was that they had learned this behavior while at Alabama and that this was exactly what was happening today with the powers that be in Tuscaloosa regarding the basketball recruiting environment of the day.
Many supporters of Alabama and Coach Bryant were outraged that anyone would dare state the obvious. They stopped coming to UAB basketball games and did everything in their power to influence others to not invest their passion supporting UAB. In hindsight I know Coach Bartow said he should have never written that letter and it did real damage to his program at UAB. You don’t walk into heaven and take a shot at God and that is exactly what Bartow did, he walked into the heart of Dixie and took a shot at their idol Coach Paul Bear Bryant and his beloved Alabama Crimson Tide. When people worship false idols, it is never a good idea to walk in and tip them over.
Coach Bartow fought the good fight in spite of these circumstances and continued to put winning basketball teams on the court year in and year out. All the while overseeing his beloved creation, the UAB athletic department. He established a total athletic program that provided education and opportunities for less fortunate players from high schools all over Alabama to play and compete and a high level in their chosen sport. Great athletes like Brian Thomas, Vonetta Flowers, Graeme McDowell, Izell Reese, Roddy White and many others benefited from Coach Bartow’s courageous stand and vision.
" We would do Birmingham a great disservice if we dream too-little dreams." -Dr. Volker-1st UAB President.
In 1990 Coach Bartow decided that the time was right to start a football team at UAB. The first year team would compete on the club level and quickly move to Division III and eventually Division 1-A in 1996. The football team has had its ups and downs. Let’s be honest there have been more downs than ups. Some of UAB’s difficulties were due to not hiring the right coaches and the bigger part of the difficulties came from powerful wealthy individuals who had no interest in upsetting the balance of power in this state. Alabama only ranks #1 in football. We are an embarrassing 49th or 50th in just about every other meaningful category. This is mostly due to a severe lack of opportunity. Many of Alabama’s citizens are poor and uneducated. This is exactly the way that greedy selfish power elite like their population to be. Let me paraphrase the late George Carlin; “They want you just smart enough to operate the heavy machinery but not smart enough to figure out how badly you are being exploited. He just described the power dynamic in Alabama in one sentence.
Gene Bartow left a legacy by building something good and positive, creating opportunities for hard working Alabama families in a state where few such opportunities exist.
UAB’s football program has survived on the slimmest of budgets. For years the football team had to lift weights in the basketball weight room in the basement of Bartow Arena. Everyone in the country knows UAB football has the absolute worst facilities for practice and games. Legion Field is a dump in one of the worst parts of town for crime and poverty.
In 2011 UAB put forth a plan to build an on campus stadium. The “impartial” Alabama Board of Trustees (who are charged with making decision in the best interest of all three University of Alabama campuses) refused to even let the issue come up for a vote.
Meanwhile 60 miles to the west in Tuscaloosa, Paul Bryant, Jr. a member of the “impartial” University of Alabama Board Of Trustees, was donating 10 million dollars of his own money to kick start a capital campaign to improve facilities at the University of Alabama for their football teams facilities so that they could stay competitive in the SEC. In 2012 The University of Alabama opened a new football-training center last February. Any professional team would be happy to have it. The amenities include a $9 million weight room, a hydrotherapy pool with a Club Med–style cascade of hot water and an anti-gravity treadmill that’s more NASA than Nautilus. Coach Nick Saban goes over the finer points of football with his team in a 212-seat theater with a multiplex-sized screen. After practice, players shoot pool or kick back on a leather couch with a video game, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its January issue.
In spite of that setback, UAB has soldiered on under the incompetent and inept leadership of coaches handpicked by this board to destroy the football program and any support or moral that it might even think about attaining. When the UAB president had all but signed Jimbo Fisher to a contract to coach at UAB, the deal was torpedoed by certain powerful members of the board of trustees. Rumor at the time was there was no way the board would ever approve a good coach for UAB and besides, they felt like they needed to do their part to keep Jimbo Fisher in an assistant coaching capacity so that he could come be Nick Saban’s offensive coordinator at Alabama. That did not happen, but here is what did happen. The next thing you know, Jimbo is leading Florida State to the National Championship game and UAB is faltering under the so called leadership of Neil Callaway and Garrick McGee. The losses are piling up at UAB and a once proud underdog program is losing support and football games in the football cemetery known as Legion Field. After the 2013 season insult was added to injury when Garrick McGhee left UAB to become an offensive coordinator for disgraced head coach Bobby Petrino at Louisville. Some said it was because he was promised a new stadium and facilities when he was hired and those things did not materialize. Most UAB fans were stinging from the rejection but also relieved that this pathetic excuse for a head football coach was not going to haunt the program as long as Neil Callaway did. Real supporters of UAB know that if given half a level playing field, UAB will always find a way to win. The problem up till now was that UAB was not given a fraction of an even playing field with their competition in lowly Conference USA, much less the SEC.
They say it is always darkest before the dawn and as far as UAB football was concerned it couldn’t get any darker. Then the dawn came and UAB did the unthinkable. They hired a winner. A real man of integrity and character who would pour his heart and soul into this job and create a winner in spite of every obstacle that was placed in his way. Coach Bill Clark did just that. From the moment he was hired the UAB fan’s breathed a huge sigh of relief. Finally a coach that was not put in place to keep the program on the plantation but raise the program to heights never imagined. Enthusiasm and attendance are up this year and the team is sitting at 5-5 (3-3 C-USA) with a legitimate shot at becoming bowl eligible with a win against the undefeated Marshall Thundering Heard at Legion Field next Saturday.
While the ever trusting UAB fan base was basking in the glow of having a respectable football team and looking forward to many more winning years, bowl games and conference championships on the horizon.
As Lee Corso would say; “Not so fast my friends”. The word leaked out two weeks ago that UAB had not scheduled any football games out of conference beyond the 2016 season. This sent shock waves through the hearts and minds of UAB supporters. What could this mean? Well some UAB contributors got to the bottom of it quickly and found out that the new UAB president was conducting a “feasibility” study into all aspects of UAB including football. Was her refusal to play this game and conduct this bogus study the real reason Dr. Carol Garrison was let go as President of UAB only to be replaced by this hand puppet of the Board of Trustees. Nothing like letting the fox guard the hen house. Since that day the skies of opportunity have grown dark over the UAB campus once again. The damage has been done. Coach Clark will never trust the administration again and will probably take the first decent offer to come his way just to escape this situation. Football commitments are de-committing and recruiting for Coach Clark has taken a severe blow that will be difficult if not impossible to overcome. So whether the decision is made to keep or eliminate the football program the product has been hurt. If the football team goes away, so does the conference affiliation for all the other sports at UAB. This will be one major step in the nefarious evil plans of some men on the Board of Trustees to destroy all the dreams and opportunities that Coach Bartow and President Hill created for countless Alabama families. Some things are just wrong and this is a social injustice that is depriving some of any opportunity while providing others with extra spectacular opportunities. For some reason It reminds me of a time past in Birmingham where people of color were told they had to know and keep their place. Sit in the back of the bus, drink from only that water fountain but not this one, use that bathroom but not that one. In the 1960’s people from all over America banded together behind Dr. Martin Luther King and marched and brought attention to a great injustice. Not that the plight of one athletic department can compare to racial discrimination of an entire race of people, but there is something about this situation that just rings all too familiar. It is really sad that 50 years after the struggle for racial injustice was won right here in Birmingham this kind of injustice can be allowed to persist.
When we see an injustice such as five big strong kids beating up one small weak child and we walk right past this mugging and do or say nothing, we become a party to the mugging. The only thing needed for evil to triumph is for good men and women to do nothing. So as you sit and cheer for Alabama as they march towards another National Championship, ask yourself if it is right or wrong for a program with so much power, amenities, facilities and tradition should be mugging the poor kid down the block who is just trying to better him or herself? I think if you are honest with yourself you will say that this is simply wrong and must not be allowed to continue for one minute longer.
#freeuab.
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