Absolutely massive news out of UAB today, they are cutting their football team. For the first time since 1995 an FBS school is cutting football. The school, like many mid-major D1 teams, is hemorrhaging cash with the Athletics Department being subsidized to the tune of 20 million a year. With the removal of football it looks like they will save almost 10 million a year.
http://espn.go.com/college-football/story/_/id/11967626/uab-blazers-shut-football-program
... and they'll probably spare themselves a few concussion lawsuits down the road.
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.
I heard a figure that fewer than ten college football teams are money-makers, which sounded too low, but even if you triple that, there are hundreds of D1 teams uselessly diverting their budgets away from their core mission for football.
Now SEC teams will find it even harder to find quality out-of-conference opponents.
UAB barely drew 13,000 fans per home game, and the financial drain was much too great.
There will be other schools that must make this decision in the next few years. Especially public universities, as taxpayer dollars can no longer sustain lousy football programs.
still more wrote:
... and they'll probably spare themselves a few concussion lawsuits down the road.
This. They're just getting ahead of the wave. (And making their lives, Title IX-wise, somewhat easier.)
That's a lot of male athletic scholarships going away. How will affect the Title IX gender balance for womens sports at UAB?
I don't buy the Bartow/Bryant grudge in this. They were losing money big time and made the smart decision. They are a tiny D1 school that should pump everything into basketball and keep enough programs minimally to do what they did before that football program was started.
Alabama is Auburn and Alabama and nothing else as far as football. The UAB football program was doomed to fail.
Pump all the money into basketball and make the tournament every year and give the crumbs left over to the rest of the sports.
Can you imagine how pumped the men's xc/track coach is? Fully funded overnight!
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.
changingtidesss wrote:
Can you imagine how pumped the men's xc/track coach is? Fully funded overnight!
FALSE
the men's TF and XC programs were killed when football moved up from the club team it was in early 90's. (The female college president at the time also brought in synchronized swimming so the influx of men's scholarships could be offset with an additional women's sport. It, nor she, lasted long).
And with football gone they will be kicked out of C-USA so the women's recruiting will get even tougher. Hard enough to get kids to come to a school with a square track.
sounds like a potential job opening soon..
UAB actually THE LARGEST school in the state and lost less money than 2/3rd's of the FBS programs that lose money in FBS football. Trust me this is 100% a Paul Bryant Jr BS led move to end the program that he has had designs on doing since its inception. With the playoff money filtering down to school's like UAB it was actually going to be an extra $1.5 million for them in 2 years but PBJ didn't want UAB to become relevant al because in a different era 40 years ago his dad voiced an opinion UAB shouldn't have football.
Bama only has about 25% of its players on scholarship from the state of Alabama so cutting football means about 50 in-state players on scholarship at UAB now have to look elsewhere to play FBS football if they can catch on late in their careers if a player with only year or 2 left of eligibility.
Cable tv is the cash cow for college sports the past few years. Cable tv viewing has peaked and will be in a decline. (See newspapers)
http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/07/28/2-factors-leading-to-the-demise-of-cable-tv.aspx
Football participation is down dramatically the last few years at the younger level.
The peak of this idiocy is paying a guy 7.9 million dollars over 2 years NOT to coach!
Hopkinton wrote:
UAB barely drew 13,000 fans per home game...
"Average attendance doubled this year under Clark to more than 20,000 per game..." per the OP's link.
At least 15 years ago, and maybe more like 25, I read an article in Mother Jones magazine (at least that is where I think it was - again , a good while ago!) on this very topic. There position was that D1 FB programs were net money losers, period. Maybe it is possible to search their archives for the story. As fun as college FB is to watch sometimes, I have always felt ithat it was a very poor allocation of resources.
I've read about college football being a huge money waste, too for universities. Made me wonder, and maybe someone knows the answer to this one. How much does XC/Track cost universities in relation to football?
I'm a little slow sometimes.
What do FBS and UAB stand for?
Bring Back the 880 wrote:
I'm a little slow sometimes.
What do FBS and UAB stand for?
Football bowl series
University of Alabama Birmingham