I’m not a numbers guru – like you didn’t know that already – so I couldn’t pick through all the fuzzy math contained in the report UAB’s president relied on to shut down the football program the way Andy Schwarz could. But the one assumption made there that jumped out at me as being questionable at best was that Conference USA, which has a requirement that all members field football teams, would continue to accept UAB as a part of the conference and keep the checks flowing.
Turns out that was more than questionable. It was wrong.
Conference USA has communicated to UAB that the league won’t amend its bylaws to keep the Blazers without football, according to sources familiar with the discussions.
UAB dropped football in December and has a study from a consultant expected to be released by May 15 on whether the school made the right decision in cutting the sport. Conference USA’s executive committee meets in June and will formally vote on UAB’s future. But there is not interest from two-thirds of C-USA’s presidents to change the league’s bylaws requiring football as a condition of membership.
Assuming UAB doesn’t reinstate football for 2016, the school will most likely be a C-USA member for one more academic year in 2015-16, given the short timeframe for the Blazers to find a new home. C-USA is reluctant to kick out UAB and leave its sports without playing schedules.
So it’s one and done for the Blazers. And what about that money? Er… what money?
UAB would not receive a full revenue share next year in C-USA if it stays. UAB is expected to receive about $2.2 to $2.4 million this fiscal year from C-USA. The College Football Playoff is expected to be worth about $800,000 for UAB. C-USA’s postseason football revenue increased by about 500 percent this year due to the CFP compared to past revenue from the Bowl Championship Series.
That’s a lot of money to lose. Maybe the school can recoup some of the loss by asking for a refund on the report for getting advice based on this:
When UAB eliminated football, bowling and rifle in December, the report the university used did not include a financial model accounting for no C-USA revenue.
Then again, I’m not sure it would have mattered if it had.
Enjoy your new home in the Missouri Valley Conference, fellas.
Get The Picture 
They will be getting exactly what they deserve.
Maybe the report will tell them some more programs they can drop to keep from going into debt after C-USA gives them the boot.
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This tells me these college administrators are no smarter than I am. They just make a whole lot more money.
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College administrators. CEOs. Politicians.
At this point, the observation works pretty much across the board.
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Senator, you are ignoring the value to UAB fans. The president and board of trustees saved UAB fans from the dilemma of having to decide whether to watch players who may get a name, image and likeness or ACoA stipend.
Blazer fans wanted to just cheer for guys who only wanted to have UAB on their helmets.
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Or: it freed 85 young men from slavery. Way to go, UAB! 🙂
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Apparently a couple of powerful uab trustees, including Paul Bryant, Jr. do not want another fbs football team in Birmingham because it may compete with UA for influence in Birmingham.
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Sorry, the players are transferring to other schools so they will still be ruining college football, just not in Birmingham.
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With the way UAB has screwed this up I full expect them to close all sports and give the AD a raise.
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The more info that comes out about this, the more bizarre it gets. One would think a fairly large university would do the study about the effect of dropping football BEFORE they actually dropped the sport.
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I am convinced the Trustees and president wanted to drop football and then asked consultants to dream up reasons justifying it.
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Why did they want to drop it? Does anyone know?
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What happens inside the bunker stays inside the bunker
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Apparently a couple of powerful uab trustees, including Paul Bryant, Jr. do not want another fbs football team in Birmingham because it may compete with UA for influence in Birmingham.
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The trustees told the president to drop football. Wanting to keep his job, that’s what the Prezbo did. All of this went down prior to the report. The report was just CYA.
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You can’t fix stupid!
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I’m sure the president and AD will take pay cuts to help offset the losses, right?
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I still think dumping football was a good move. Sure, the way they went about it was as ham-handed as it gets.
Saying the “school” will miss the revenue is baloney. Only the truly naive believe that line of b.s. The students and school staff never did and never would see a dime of football money, or get any of the benefits of having a football program.
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Assuming your argument that UAB and the students won’t get any football monies is true, it overlooks the fact that UAB basketball and the other sports will lose the benefit of football revenues.
The CFB playoff money, the football television revenue and C-USA shares help keep the tennis teams afloat.
As for your assumption about the school not getting any money, the marginal cost to UAB of teaching classes to those 85 football players is far less than the full tuition per student UAB received from football scholarships.
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Well, the good side of them dropping football is the introduction of Ganus as a Dawg.
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Get used to this story. You’ll be seeing it again with Georgia State within 10 years–tops.
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Nope. GA State is in a good position. The CFB playoff money will be really good. It has appeal as a conference member being smack dab in the Atlanta television market.
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Gasky, GA State is the WORST major college football program in the nation. As soon as I saw who they hired to start it I knew it would be shit. Look at the won-lost record. Since going D-IA the Panthers have won only 1 game–and that was at home against a D-IAA school by ONE POINT! I haven’t researched it (because I really don’t care enough to) but I’ll bet GA State doesn’t average 10,000 of their fans per home game. Apparently they did draw a crowd of Georgia Southern fans to the Dome for the GA Southern-Georgia State game, but that’s about it. Sell tix to opponents’ fans who want to see their teams kick GA State’s asses in the Georgia Dome. The Panthers are in a crap conference and are the worst team in it. They won’t be getting any playoff money because neither they, nor anybody in their conference, will be getting in any playoff–Georgia Southern included. Their only hope is for a few bowl bucks through the conference and it won’t be much. We could go back and forth about this all day long but let’s just revisit this in about 5 years. We’ll know better then.
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