there's more to it than this wrote:
Paul Bryant, Jr. wanted to kill the UAB football program and he got it done. He had a vendetta against Gene Bartow at UAB for exposing the corruption of Alabama coaches. Tuscaloser wants nothing to detract from Alabama football in state, and certainly wanted no distraction from UA campuses in Birmingham or Huntsville. Cutting UAB football was simply a move to allow more money and interest for the bloated beast that is Crimson Tide football.
This. It's about more than just losing money. The University of Alabama (Tuscaloosa, mostly) Board of Trustees, of which Paul Bryant Jr. is the president, is pulling the strings here. The bottom line is they don't want to divert any assets (money, recruits, etc.) away from the product in Bryant-Denny.
This isn't the first time they have undermined UAB's football team either. The Board nixed their hiring of Jimbo Fisher (now of Florida State) as head coach back in 2006, instead offering him the offensive coordinator position in Tuscaloosa. They also nixed plans for a new on campus stadium with a (far more fitting) capacity of about 27,000 in 2011. UAB currently plays at a dilapidated Legion Field, a couple of miles from campus in a not-so-great part of town. Even so, the attendance this year was far better than past years, including almost 30,000 against Marshall.