UAB football

Consider it official. UAB Football is dead.

http://csnbbs.com/thread-716371.html

I guess we will be taking their place in the East next year for football.

So I guess we will be playing Marshall, MTSU, WKU, ODU, FIU, and FAU next year. We also will play 2 random teams from the West I assume.

I suspect that if you were a non-starting junior and only had one more year of eligibility that you may just wrap school up. I wonder if they could set up a day to have coaches visit to review potential transfers?

The UAB Press Release:

https://www.uab.edu/news/updates/item/5595-university-of-alabama-at-birmingham-announces-results-of-athletic-department-strategic-review

How broke is UAB's athletics department? The truth and the myth

Contention: UAB is unfit to compete financially with the schools in its own conference.

Verdict: False. In Conference USA, UAB is a middle of the pack financially. Throw out all the subsidies and its athletic losses are sixth worst, behind Old Dominion, Middle Tennessee State, Florida International, North Carolina Charlotte and North Texas.

Conference USA Commissioner Britton Banowsky
Statement on UAB:

"We are aware of the study but disappointed with the decision to discontinue the sport of football at UAB, particularly because of its effect on the lives of the student-athletes and coaches that have worked so hard to restore the quality of the program. We don’t fully understand the decision, nor agree with it, but do respect it and the authority of the UAB Administration to make it.

As a conference, we will move forward in our pursuit of excellence in athletics and academics, with the primary goal of providing a positive educational experience for all of our 5,000 student-athletes. Our universities have invested in athletics, and in facilities to support athletics, and are focused on their student-athletes and the contribution college athletics makes on their campuses and in their communities.

UAB has been a contributing member to the Conference since its inception and has expressed a strong interest in remaining a member, a topic that the Conference’s Board of Directors will take up in the months ahead. The Conference’s current bylaws require all members to sponsor football."

This is sad news. But hopefully a wake up call to all mid major programs that they need to work together to cut costs, take advantage of natural rivalries to fill stadiums, support their teams to the utmost if they want to keep them, etc.

There are going to be a lot of people buzzing around a lot of schools that are going to look at this as a way forward for any AD in financial hot water.

So what say you Niner Nation? Let UAB stick or send them packing?

My vote - we have to stick to our guns and keep to the rules. They didn’t bend for us when we got thrown out so why bend for them now?

Comprehensive coverage on the demise of UAB football:

AL.com: UAB Football dead: Full coverage of Blazers’ decision

[quote=“Gassman, post:128, topic:29110”]So what say you Niner Nation? Let UAB stick or send them packing?

My vote - we have to stick to our guns and keep to the rules. They didn’t bend for us when we got thrown out so why bend for them now?[/quote]Completely different circumstances. We CHOSE not to have football.

UAB is having it taken from them against their will.

Why would you willingly support degrading the basketball side of the conference for a decision that was out of UAB’s hands?

CUSA football blows and will never be good. Basketball is already pretty bad, no reason to make it worse because of arbitrary rules that can be changed.

This is a really sad day. After our long hard fight to get football it stings to see UAB lose their program. If the powers at be in AL let them build up their facilities and build their own stadium over the last 20 years they would not be in the financial shape they are in today. UAB has a lot of similarities to Charlotte and is like our sister school too bad they can’t pursue a path like ours. This whole experience makes me appreciate what we have and our administration much more. I’m glad we didn’t start football any later otherwise the detractors would use this as an example to shoot our program down.

clt was amazed by the crappiness of the uab facilities.

We are very fortunate.

[quote=“Niner National, post:130, topic:29110”][quote=“Gassman, post:128, topic:29110”]So what say you Niner Nation? Let UAB stick or send them packing?

My vote - we have to stick to our guns and keep to the rules. They didn’t bend for us when we got thrown out so why bend for them now?[/quote]Completely different circumstances. We CHOSE not to have football.

UAB is having it taken from them against their will.

Why would you willingly support degrading the basketball side of the conference for a decision that was out of UAB’s hands?

CUSA football blows and will never be good. Basketball is already pretty bad, no reason to make it worse because of arbitrary rules that can be changed.[/quote]
UAB basketball has been pretty average. It’s been very much like Charlotte (save for a first 4 bid).

I have to imagine as a program they are going to drop in a lot of sports.

Personally, I want UMASS. if we can’t get them, then drop FIU and call it good.

[quote=“Niner National, post:130, topic:29110”][quote=“Gassman, post:128, topic:29110”]So what say you Niner Nation? Let UAB stick or send them packing?

My vote - we have to stick to our guns and keep to the rules. They didn’t bend for us when we got thrown out so why bend for them now?[/quote]Completely different circumstances. We CHOSE not to have football.

UAB is having it taken from them against their will.

Why would you willingly support degrading the basketball side of the conference for a decision that was out of UAB’s hands?

CUSA football blows and will never be good. Basketball is already pretty bad, no reason to make it worse because of arbitrary rules that can be changed.[/quote]

Who do you bring in for football only then? Or do you leave it at 13 FB?

I didn’t like the tone of that letter written by their president.

It made it sound like subsidies are prima facie a bad thing.

  1. If subsidies are so bad then why is everyone doing it?

  2. Athletic subsidies are exactly that. Athletic subsidies. They are in seperate buckets correct? It’s not like they are taking money that could have been used for library books. It doesn’t work like that. Am I incorrect on that?

  3. Is “athletic subsidies” going to be a new code word for the forces if evil out there that want to shut down certain programs?

  4. I don’t see what’s wrong with athletic subsidies. Using Charlotte as an example the students voted for them and it got approved and now they have a football team. It’s all about priorities. If a college community feels it’s a priority to support athletics then what’s the issue here? There is more to this life than balancing the books. We do lots of stuff in our lives that don’t make financial sense. We do them because we can afford them and we enjoy them.

clt says one Apple state fan suggested that we will get demoted to the sunbelt due to this.

clt says don’t underestimate the weed at Apple state.

If you look at the garbage report, it says that between 2014-2015 to 2015-2016 after dropping football, our revenue will decrease by 4,451,002 and our expenses will decrease by $3,870,079. They're not even going to decrease the subsidy, they are just soft capping it around 20 million. They just want to drop football. The future projections for football assume our expenses will increase dramatically (due to building projects) but the ticket sale revenue won't even increase at all. This study assumes that by dramatically improving facilities and by having a much improved football team, ticket sales won't even go up according to these numbers? How does that even make sense?

It basically just looks like a screw-job.

[quote=“NinerAdvocate, post:137, topic:29110”]http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eAvSuQEh6lI

If you look at the garbage report, it says that between 2014-2015 to 2015-2016 after dropping football, our revenue will decrease by 4,451,002 and our expenses will decrease by $3,870,079. They're not even going to decrease the subsidy, they are just soft capping it around 20 million. They just want to drop football. The future projections for football assume our expenses will increase dramatically (due to building projects) but the ticket sale revenue won't even increase at all. This study assumes that by dramatically improving facilities and by having a much improved football team, ticket sales won't even go up according to these numbers? How does that even make sense?

It basically just looks like a screw-job.

[/quote]

Towards the end of the video, 4 minute mark, one of the athletes starts talking and you can hear students chanting in the background. This video is full of the feels.

Of course the money could be spent on other things, including academic items like library books, academic buildings, or financial support for students. I’m not arguing that athletic subsidies areprima facie bad, in fact as I argue below they are usually presented in a way to make them look much larger than they actually are, but its naive to argue that there is no opportunity cost associated with them. Yes, very much spending money to “subsidize” athletics does mean the school is not spending money on something else, which may actually be academic-related items. For example, we could have asked the students to pay an extra $300/year to build more computer labs or a better wireless environment instead of football (they actually did agree to pay a small extra fee to do just that recently.)

Now, that said accounting for college athletics revenue and expenses is weird and difficult. Most schools, even some of the best football schools (i.e. those that can sell out 90,000 stadiums) spend more on football than they make from direct revenue, i.e. from things like ticket sales, concession sales, etc., so they get a “subsidy” from the school. What they normally do not get is a transfer of state dollars - most states directly outlaw this. What they frequently do is use “non-state” revenue to make up the difference. The problem is that there is a LOT of indirect revenue that they get because of football that does not get accounted for as football revenue. For example, the school-branded sweatshirts and other merchandise, which mostly sells because of football, will not be credited as a football revenue - it will be credited normally to some sort of “auxiliary services unit.” Plus football brings donors to campus and provides an environment in which it is relatively easy to ask them for additional donations, usually for things other than football. A great local example of this is the recent gift from the Johnsons for the band building. That will not be credited as “football” revenue, although if it were not for football the College of Arts and Architecture would not be getting that donation or the new building.

The reality is that most football programs “lose” money from an accounting standpoint - but they make money in other ways for the universities. This is why football is so pervasive at colleges across the country - its not because university presidents are particularly interested in subsidizing athletics it because they look at the total benefits and see that they outweigh the total costs. At UAB it may very well be that the total benefits were not very high - maybe they really were losing real money, but I doubt it. I think the UofA trustees told the president to kill football and he found an excuse to do it. But there really is no way to argue that just because the funds are in an athletic subsidy bucket that they could not have in some way been used for non-athletic purposes.

clt says the observer provides an unsigned editorial.