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

http://blog.al.com/comebacktown/2014/02/...k_lik.html

My guess would be Tuscaloosa.

(02-18-2014 09:49 AM)the_blazerman Wrote:  http://blog.al.com/comebacktown/2014/02/...k_lik.html

Like Bessemer, or even Ensley.

A smaller Detroit

That was a good article.

It was a good article.

I like any article that champions UAB and realizes that Birmingham would be a lot crappier without it.

I hate when people write in choppy 1-2 sentence paragraphs.

It's like your reading the ramblings of someone with incomplete thoughts.

Please learn how to write in paragraphs.

(02-18-2014 10:22 AM)The Answer UAB Wrote:  It was a good article.

I like any article that champions UAB and realizes that Birmingham would be a lot crappier without it.

I hate when people write in choppy 1-2 sentence paragraphs.

It's like your reading the ramblings of someone with incomplete thoughts.

Please learn how to write in paragraphs.

I'm not sure if your post structure is ironic or parodic.

I hate it when your trying to make a point & you loose you're train of thought.

(02-18-2014 10:30 AM)demiveeman Wrote:  

(02-18-2014 10:22 AM)The Answer UAB Wrote:  It was a good article.

I like any article that champions UAB and realizes that Birmingham would be a lot crappier without it.

I hate when people write in choppy 1-2 sentence paragraphs.

It's like your reading the ramblings of someone with incomplete thoughts.

Please learn how to write in paragraphs.

I'm not sure if your post structure is ironic or parodic.

It's iambic pentameter

Birmingham would be a wasteland without UAB. Had UAB not come along when it did, Birmingham might have ceased to exist as the steel industry was winding down as UAB made its ascension as the city's biggest employer.

EVERY major Alabama city is dependent upon its local resources many of which are run and , in some cases, owned by those who live elsewhere. USX, which employs about 4,000 steel workers, has a larger payroll than UAB if you only count those at UAB who live within B'ham. The top paid UAB people are found in 280 and I-65/59/20 rush hour traffic everyday. UAB can't unify a metro area that many of its major leaders help to maintain in separate political entities.

Sure, I would love to see a metro area government as seen in Mobile and other southern cities. The push for it must come from those who have encouraged its separation into local fiefdoms. The central city can't lead it, nor can UAB with its own divisions of income levels. As with school districts, the current push in our metro area (Gardendale, Irondale, Pelham) is for MORE separation, not less.

USX is one of the main reasons Bham is as separated as it is. Back in the day, the company (Tennessee Coal & Iron) wanted no part of the city and wanted to control its own everything (housing, police, stores, etc.) and made sure its properties stayed out of the city limits. That is why Fairfield, Midfield, Ensley, Bessemer, Tarrant, and other "factory towns" were never part of Birmingham.

The Walking Dead

(02-18-2014 02:52 PM)CourtsideBlazer Wrote:  USX is one of the main reasons Bham is as separated as it is. Back in the day, the company (Tennessee Coal & Iron) wanted no part of the city and wanted to control its own everything (housing, police, stores, etc.) and made sure its properties stayed out of the city limits. That is why Fairfield, Midfield, Ensley, Bessemer, Tarrant, and other "factory towns" were never part of Birmingham.

The "TCI School" later became known as Ensley HS. When a slick political maneuver in Montgomery resulted in annexing Ensley into B'ham.(along with Highland,AL, West End, AL and Woodlawn, AL), the Ensley leadership held a "funeral parade" through that city complete with casket marked "ENSLEY" and many area stores (like Goldstein & Cohen) continued to designate Ensley as their mailing address as long as they were in business.

It was said above but it bears repeating: Without UAB, Birmingham would strongly resemble Detroit. The loss of major industry, the lack of intelligent and competent city government, that is very similar. UAB injected the medical and research and spinoff businesses that changed the face of a Southern Rust Belt city.

(02-18-2014 10:22 AM)The Answer UAB Wrote:  It was a good article.

I like any article that champions UAB and realizes that Birmingham would be a lot crappier without it.

So we can thank UA for allowing Birmingham to have an extension of the university in Tuscaloosa.

(02-18-2014 04:07 PM)BamaScorpio69 Wrote:  

(02-18-2014 10:22 AM)The Answer UAB Wrote:  It was a good article.

I like any article that champions UAB and realizes that Birmingham would be a lot crappier without it.

So we can thank UA for allowing Birmingham to have an extension of the university in Tuscaloosa.

The BoT in 1968, anyway.

And it wasn't benevolence, but common sense. You put a teaching hospital where the people are.

(02-18-2014 05:02 PM)Smaug Wrote:  

(02-18-2014 04:07 PM)BamaScorpio69 Wrote:  

(02-18-2014 10:22 AM)The Answer UAB Wrote:  It was a good article.

I like any article that champions UAB and realizes that Birmingham would be a lot crappier without it.

So we can thank UA for allowing Birmingham to have an extension of the university in Tuscaloosa.

The BoT in 1968, anyway.

And it wasn't benevolence, but common sense. You put a teaching hospital where the people are.

The medical school was moved from Mobile - where it was a one year school - to Tuscaloosa - where it became a two year school and in the 1940s was moved to B'ham where it became a four year school. During the Space Decade of the 1960s, Werner von Braun told the state legislature that if they didn't immediately set up a top flight engineering school in Huntsville, he would recommend that Congress take the space program to Houston.

At that time, building up AL A&M into an integrated engineering school was not something the state legislature could deal with so UAH was established, and while they were about it, they upgraded the UA Extension Center in B'ham into UAB in 1969. Since both were to be primarily academic schools, no thought was given to either of them getting involved in any level of athletics, especially not at the D1 level. That all happened in the next decade or two.

As we have all become (painfully) aware, our state legislature is not known for thinking and planning more than one year ahead at a time. EX: They can't tell any school district today what funding it will have in the coming August,2014 school term.

I thought Birmingham was a bank town after the steel industry got smaller. Compass, Regions, Southtrust.