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

Regarding the faculty senate process, I believe this is all that we could expect, and its not necessarily a bad thing.

Okay, we all know that two resolutions were passed. First to have a transparent reassessment of athletics and second to have "no confidence vote" during the next meeting. The faculty senate took the high road and is not rushing the processes, but I think that their resolutions were designed to send a message more than anything.


Personally, I think that this is the faculty senate firing a shot across the bow. By the first resolution stating that they want a transparent reassessment of athletics and the second a resolution to a vote of "no confidence" is their way of saying: "you get with us to make this right (ASAP) or you're gone."

This is the way out for Watts if he wants to accept it. If he decides to work with the UAB community to fix this in a reasonable time frame, he may possibly have a future here and there will be less collateral damage because we can maintain our CUSA affiliation and likely field a team next year. If Watts doesn't work with the faculty senate and stakeholders he won't have a future here; unfortunately we will lose our conference affiliation and it will take at least 3+ years to field a competitive team.

The sad part is that if he doesn't reinstate football, we will not field a team for at least the next year or two, but he would also be gone in the next several months (bright side). If he does work with UAB and corrects the issue he may be able to stay (in the short-term).

Watts did the BOTs bidding, but now has to ask himself, was it worth it?
Its doubtful that the BOT will find Watts a job as high-paying or prestigious as he the one he currently has. If he doesn't make a good decision this may not just be the end of Watts job, but his career. If he's fired from UAB as a result of a vote of no confidence, his career in academic administration is done. He's received enormous backlash from the local and national press and no one will want him anywhere near their school's administration offices and so he may have to go back to practicing medicine (but not at UAB).

This is Watts' way out. Get with faculty senate, donors and stakeholders about re-instating UAB football, ASAP. Accept their support. Make the announcement that because of the the generosity of donors and and results of a transparent collaborative process that you have decided to reconsider the decision to cancel UAB football. The worse thing that can happen is that Watts gets fired by the BOT at some point, he's going to be fired anyway, but at least his career options will be much better under this scenario.

All it would take is a little courage.

Courage is something he has shown no trace of.

I'm not saying that should/will try to do it because its the right thing, I'm saying that he should because it is the best way to save his own skin. He should have been thinking about UAB when he made these decisions. I think he is still capable of doing the right thing but perhaps for the wrong reasons.

(12-09-2014 01:15 PM)dblaze Wrote:  Regarding the faculty senate process, I believe this is all that we could expect, and its not necessarily a bad thing.

Okay, we all know that two resolutions were passed. First to have a transparent reassessment of athletics and second to have "no confidence vote" during the next meeting. The faculty senate took the high road and is not rushing the processes, but I think that their resolutions were designed to send a message more than anything.


Personally, I think that this is the faculty senate firing a shot across the bow. By the first resolution stating that they want a transparent reassessment of athletics and the second a resolution to a vote of "no confidence" is their way of saying: "you get with us to make this right (ASAP) or you're gone."

This is the way out for Watts if he wants to accept it. If he decides to work with the UAB community to fix this in a reasonable time frame, he may possibly have a future here and there will be less collateral damage because we can maintain our CUSA affiliation and likely field a team next year. If Watts doesn't work with the faculty senate and stakeholders he won't have a future here; unfortunately we will lose our conference affiliation and it will take at least 3+ years to field a competitive team.

The sad part is that if he doesn't reinstate football, we will not field a team for at least the next year or two, but he would also be gone in the next several months (bright side). If he does work with UAB and corrects the issue he may be able to stay (in the short-term).

Watts did the BOTs bidding, but now has to ask himself, was it worth it?
Its doubtful that the BOT will find Watts a job as high-paying or prestigious as he the one he currently has. If he doesn't make a good decision this may not just be the end of Watts job, but his career. If he's fired from UAB as a result of a vote of no confidence, his career in academic administration is done. He's received enormous backlash from the local and national press and no one will want him anywhere near their school's administration offices and so he may have to go back to practicing medicine (but not at UAB).

This is Watts' way out. Get with faculty senate, donors and stakeholders about re-instating UAB football, ASAP. Accept their support. Make the announcement that because of the the generosity of donors and and results of a transparent collaborative process that you have decided to reconsider the decision to cancel UAB football. The worse thing that can happen is that Watts gets fired by the BOT at some point, he's going to be fired anyway, but at least his career options will be much better under this scenario.

All it would take is a little courage.

Great read! Thank you for expressing your opinion and vision. Hope it all works out like you expressed!

(12-09-2014 01:15 PM)dblaze Wrote:  Regarding the faculty senate process, I believe this is all that we could expect, and its not necessarily a bad thing.

Okay, we all know that two resolutions were passed. First to have a transparent reassessment of athletics and second to have "no confidence vote" during the next meeting. The faculty senate took the high road and is not rushing the processes, but I think that their resolutions were designed to send a message more than anything.


Personally, I think that this is the faculty senate firing a shot across the bow. By the first resolution stating that they want a transparent reassessment of athletics and the second a resolution to a vote of "no confidence" is their way of saying: "you get with us to make this right (ASAP) or you're gone."

This is the way out for Watts if he wants to accept it. If he decides to work with the UAB community to fix this in a reasonable time frame, he may possibly have a future here and there will be less collateral damage because we can maintain our CUSA affiliation and likely field a team next year. If Watts doesn't work with the faculty senate and stakeholders he won't have a future here; unfortunately we will lose our conference affiliation and it will take at least 3+ years to field a competitive team.

The sad part is that if he doesn't reinstate football, we will not field a team for at least the next year or two, but he would also be gone in the next several months (bright side). If he does work with UAB and corrects the issue he may be able to stay (in the short-term).

Watts did the BOTs bidding, but now has to ask himself, was it worth it?
Its doubtful that the BOT will find Watts a job as high-paying or prestigious as he the one he currently has. If he doesn't make a good decision this may not just be the end of Watts job, but his career. If he's fired from UAB as a result of a vote of no confidence, his career in academic administration is done. He's received enormous backlash from the local and national press and no one will want him anywhere near their school's administration offices and so he may have to go back to practicing medicine (but not at UAB).

This is Watts' way out. Get with faculty senate, donors and stakeholders about re-instating UAB football, ASAP. Accept their support. Make the announcement that because of the the generosity of donors and and results of a transparent collaborative process that you have decided to reconsider the decision to cancel UAB football. The worse thing that can happen is that Watts gets fired by the BOT at some point, he's going to be fired anyway, but at least his career options will be much better under this scenario.

All it would take is a little courage.

I think you nailed it. No one in the faculty senate wants this but they also hate the way they and the players have been treated. I think this is their way of giving him an out and save face.

Hopefully Watts has seen the error of his ways today and he works to quickly reinstate the football program.

But, the question remains do we keep him or do we get rid of him? He got whipped good today and still continues to take a hammering from the student body. The BOT will simply replace him with another lackey if we do get rid of him. So, do we want another BOT puppet or do we keep the puppet we have brought into line?

There is something very prestigious about being the head of one of the premier medical institutions in the world. No doubt about that. The title and the salary are nice, but Dr. Watts sole purpose here was not make any segments of the university better. He got a directive to kill athletics and is carrying it out as we speak. I don't know if he particularly cares about his title or the money, but, as evident by his actions, he definitely believes being cool with the board is worth it.

That said, it doesn't matter what Dr. Watts does going forward. There is no trust in him anymore. Regardless of what he does, no one can trust him anymore. He could reinstate all teams right now and I would still want him gone. He is a liar, and someone that is prone to conducting important meetings and making vital decisions behind closed doors without input from invested parties. And that's at best. The people in the meeting were polite and practiced proper decorum so they couldn't say in those terms, but I heard what everyone had to say loud and clear. Dr. Watts has to go.

Theoretically, the board could just ignore the vote of no confidence and take not action on it, right?

(12-09-2014 01:38 PM)thebernreuter Wrote:  Theoretically, the board could just ignore the vote of no confidence and take not action on it, right?

Yes. But it's an incredibly risky move for them at this point. If they ignore the vote on the resolutions there's going to be even more light pointed at them. They prefer to work in the background and all that stealth would evaporate

(12-09-2014 01:38 PM)thebernreuter Wrote:  Theoretically, the board could just ignore the vote of no confidence and take not action on it, right?

The Board won't take any action on the vote anyway. If the Senate votes no confidence, the most likely thing to happen would be Dr. Watts stepping down. There's an outside chance he could refuse and Dr. Witt and the Board forces him out, but I find that extremely unlikely.

I think that giving people a way out after a bad decision is the way to go. In some ways he probably regrets this decisions since it has cause so much bad press for himself and the university. If negative UAB articles are on the front page of the Birmingham News and other negative media is present most days this reflects poorly on him. The fact that he is mentioned by name in most of this coverage is even more damaging, and there is only one way he can make it go away. Make no mistake, if Watts does the right thing he is still gone in the next year or two, but he will at least be able to get another job elsewhere as a university administrator.

Remember, even the governor loathes all of this negative publicity and could save face if things were to change, although he would probably claim "I told you I'd get to the bottom of it and I did!" -- after doing nothing. So there are some others who would love for this to disappear.

Now to answer your question do we want him? I would say if he reinstates football and truly do what he pledged to do, which is to work with the UAB community in the future then I would say he could stay for some measure of time, but during that short stay there would have to be transparency like never seen before at UAB.

Edit: Short stay = transitional period

(12-09-2014 01:15 PM)dblaze Wrote:  Regarding the faculty senate process, I believe this is all that we could expect, and its not necessarily a bad thing.

Okay, we all know that two resolutions were passed. First to have a transparent reassessment of athletics and second to have "no confidence vote" during the next meeting. The faculty senate took the high road and is not rushing the processes, but I think that their resolutions were designed to send a message more than anything.


Personally, I think that this is the faculty senate firing a shot across the bow. By the first resolution stating that they want a transparent reassessment of athletics and the second a resolution to a vote of "no confidence" is their way of saying: "you get with us to make this right (ASAP) or you're gone."

This is the way out for Watts if he wants to accept it. If he decides to work with the UAB community to fix this in a reasonable time frame, he may possibly have a future here and there will be less collateral damage because we can maintain our CUSA affiliation and likely field a team next year. If Watts doesn't work with the faculty senate and stakeholders he won't have a future here; unfortunately we will lose our conference affiliation and it will take at least 3+ years to field a competitive team.

The sad part is that if he doesn't reinstate football, we will not field a team for at least the next year or two, but he would also be gone in the next several months (bright side). If he does work with UAB and corrects the issue he may be able to stay (in the short-term).

Watts did the BOTs bidding, but now has to ask himself, was it worth it?
Its doubtful that the BOT will find Watts a job as high-paying or prestigious as he the one he currently has. If he doesn't make a good decision this may not just be the end of Watts job, but his career. If he's fired from UAB as a result of a vote of no confidence, his career in academic administration is done. He's received enormous backlash from the local and national press and no one will want him anywhere near their school's administration offices and so he may have to go back to practicing medicine (but not at UAB).

This is Watts' way out. Get with faculty senate, donors and stakeholders about re-instating UAB football, ASAP. Accept their support. Make the announcement that because of the the generosity of donors and and results of a transparent collaborative process that you have decided to reconsider the decision to cancel UAB football. The worse thing that can happen is that Watts gets fired by the BOT at some point, he's going to be fired anyway, but at least his career options will be much better under this scenario.

All it would take is a little courage.

I sincerely hope you are right and I wish that I was that optimistic, but I don't believe that Watts will resend his decision to kill off football. He has given absolutely no indication that he might be willing to do so. I believe his plan, which he is starting to reveal, is to admit he went about it all wrong and will allow all kinds of input, but in the end he will stand by his decision and insist it was a good one. He will then try to save his job by trying to mend damaged relationships with the UAB family and by promising to never make decisions in that manner again.

Since he will have already done the BOT's bidding, they may continue to support him. Or, given enough pressure, they may fire him and use him as a scape goat, However, they would provide him a platinum parachute and have him sign a NDA. In this scenario he will be put out to pasture to live in luxury and never have to work again. Then if the BOT is smart they will replace Watts with someone with excellent public relations skills with instructions to repair all that Watts broke. The replacement will have only one commandment from the BOT, Watts' decision on football will not be reversed.

We would due well to remember it is the BOT, not Watts, that holds all of the cards. Anyone who comes up with another more optimistic scenario obviously has more trust in the BOT or believes they are more easily frightened than I do.

Again, I hope to hell that I am dead wrong.

I know for a fact that Watts has previously stated in private that when he leaves the presidency he intends on going back to practicing medicine. So the impact this has on his future career as an administrator is of no concern to him.

(12-09-2014 01:49 PM)hooverblazer Wrote:  I know for a fact that Watts has previously stated in private that when he leaves the presidency he intends on going back to practicing medicine. So the impact this has on his future career as an administrator is of no concern to him.

Interesting, but I don't think he probably expected his tenure to be this short.

In my original post I only tried to speculate what the potential outcomes could be through (semi) rational thought. I just don't think he could have seen himself leaving UAB this fast.

If he doesn't reverse this, but we end up getting rid of him, I'd sign a petition to prevent a portrait of him from being placed in next to the other presidents (in Volker Hall?).

If Watts reinstated UAB Football, Rifle, and Bowling teams would it need the BOT's approval?

He claims this was his decision solely, it should be solely his to overturn. Right Ray?

What I fear is the BoT hiring a very good PR person for Watts, then telling him to stay in his office with his mouth shut and to avoid all cameras.

I think he plans to stick by his decision, act contrite and say he'll never do it again. He won't, we don't have another football team. He'll try to ride it out, and he will unless he is forced out.

(12-09-2014 01:45 PM)mixduptransistor Wrote:  

(12-09-2014 01:38 PM)thebernreuter Wrote:  Theoretically, the board could just ignore the vote of no confidence and take not action on it, right?

The Board won't take any action on the vote anyway. If the Senate votes no confidence, the most likely thing to happen would be Dr. Watts stepping down. There's an outside chance he could refuse and Dr. Witt and the Board forces him out, but I find that extremely unlikely.

Another thing to consider in the no confidence vote is that it may not pass so Watts would still be in charge & the only outcome of all this would be maybe he apologizes & says it won't happen again but does nothing about what he's already done.

(12-09-2014 01:49 PM)CajunBlazer Wrote:  I sincerely hope you are right and I wish that I was that optimistic, but I don't believe that Watts will resend his decision to kill off football. He has given absolutely no indication that he might be willing to do so. I believe his plan, which he is starting to reveal, is to admit he went about it all wrong and will allow all kinds of input, but in the end he will stand by his decision and insist it was a good one. He will then try to save his job by trying to mend damaged relationships with the UAB family and by promising to never make decisions in that manner again.

Since he will have already done the BOT's bidding, they may continue to support him. Or, given enough pressure, they may fire him and use him as a scape goat, However, they would provide him a platinum parachute and have him sign a NDA. In this scenario he will be put out to pasture to live in luxury and never have to work again. Then if the BOT is smart they will replace Watts with someone with excellent public relations skills with instructions to repair all that Watts broke. The replacement will have only one commandment from the BOT, Watts' decision on football will not be reversed.

We would due well to remember it is the BOT, not Watts, that holds all of the cards. Anyone who comes up with another more optimistic scenario obviously has more trust in the BOT or believes they are more easily frightened than I do.

Again, I hope to hell that I am dead wrong.

No doubt, it is an uphill struggle and the odds are against us. We've got a long way to go, and probably won't win, but we will fight anyway. Today was just a small skirmish, and I think we can be happy with how it went.

BTW, did I say how much I love the UAB community?

We DEFINITELY need the students to stoke the fires and get the Blaze burning come classes in January. They must not forget and need to get their rage on again.

It might be helpful to pinpoint some influential students, perhaps cheerleaders, Greeks, players, Tim, to be sure and raise the rabble come January. They have to be there standing room only when the faculty reconvenes in January.

I still think Dr. Watts is finished no matter what. Saying you'll do this or that doesn't mean anything when people can point at what you did do. Actions are louder than words, and there's no way I'll ever trust him again. In addition to that, the community, the student body, athletics, and faculty are united on this issue. It'd be one thing if it was a just the faculty senate believing his mishandled some institutional situation that most of us wouldn't even noticed, but Dr. Watts has taken teams from us. People are not going to abruptly stop being angry and protesting.

I fully expect the next guy to be attached to the strings of the board, but we just have to be clear that we were wronged and we want the situation fixed before its handled. Reinstate the teams first, then we can all join hands with the new guy and set about mending and achieving.