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(08-10-2017 09:18 PM)UABslant Wrote:  I genuinely hope this is righting a wrong. UAB and the system allowed positive periods in the program's early years to be squandered & even dumped upon by UA System trustees & our own inaction to strike while the iron was hot.
It looks like the surveys we were asked to do a while back we're actually taken to heart and our administration realized the only way to fix it was to hire the people who do it for one of the top programs in the country (they are, there's no point in denying it).
We have committed to the program, now the admin is committing to do what it takes to make it successful... I hope.

Two things I think may be going on.

One, even if the administration doesn't like the fact UAB football exists (that is certain at the Board level. I think if UAB were truly independent Watts probably isn't hostile, he just doesn't give a damn either way), they do have to keep up UAB's image. The rest of the university is growing and maturing in incredible ways, and it would be incredibly awkward and embarrassing if the rest of the university was finally growing up into a world class university but the athletics department was still run like Pike County High School. Over the past few years it seems like the motto at UAB has become 'if you're going to do something at all, do it right' even if you're forced to do that something against your will

Two, specifically with Bruno Event Team, I think getting Hallman on board is as much a political thing as it is a gameday experience thing. He wasn't the biggest cheerleader for UAB during the whole shutdown debacle, and IIRC was against an on campus stadium. He doesn't seem to like anything that happens in Birmingham unless he's got a finger in the pie. Getting him involved makes a lot of things easier, including the new stadium, and getting the new stadium under the auspices of the BJCC fits back into point one above.