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Study out on UAB Football closing

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by Neutral Corner, Apr 23, 2015.

  1. Neutral Corner

    Neutral Corner Well-Known Member

    UAB Blazers, dropped for financial reasons, made money, study finds

    This is OSKR's report. Andy Schwartz wrote a couple of columns examining the Carr Report last December, and concluded that their numbers were bogus and the report was designed to give cover to closing down the football program. OSKR was hired to do a full report by the UAB Committee examining the decision to close the football program, and were shortly fired by the university president who claimed that they were biased because of the previous articles. A booster came forward and paid for the completed report which has just been released.

    Schwartz was a consultant on the Ed O'Bannon case.

    Another report by CSS was commissioned by the committee to replace the OSKR report, and that should be out in two or three weeks. The team on that includes Kristi Dosh, former sports economics reporter for ESPN and author of "Saturday Millionaires".
     
  2. LanceyHoward

    LanceyHoward Well-Known Member

    The same report indicated the bowling team at UAB, which was also dropped, made money. I believe the bowling team at UAB had zero income (they did not charge for tickets) and they did not have any media or sponsorship income. Assuming that there was at least a few direct costs (for buying uniforms) how is it possible to run a profitable program with no revenue? Presumably the same methodology was used for football.

    The ESPN report on this indicated the school underestimated future income from ticket sales (why would these increase without an expensive new stadium) and the increased revenues brought in by the increased interest in football due to the BSC (not sure how much of those monies would drop to UAB).
     
  3. Neutral Corner

    Neutral Corner Well-Known Member

    I doubt bowling made much. It did provide some women scholarships, and it was a Top 25 program this season.

    It was a title nine thing.


    Ticket sales would increase because the team was much better under Bill Clark. Left alone, that team would have competed for a conference championship this season. Ticket sales went up 130% last season... although that was over an utterly dismal, low water mark of a season the year before.
     
  4. BurnsWhenIPee

    BurnsWhenIPee Well-Known Member

    So what's the endgame of this? To try and say that UAB didn't have the right to shut down the programs? To get them to reverse course and revive it all?

    I don't have any doubt that the people making these decisions are dishonest assholes. Just wondering what the effort is going toward.
     
  5. The Big Ragu

    The Big Ragu Moderator Staff Member


    Yeah. I am sure the decision had less to do with finances than politics.

    But that report is suspect at best, because they are making up their own qualitative and quantitative points to define what are costs and benefits, and what aren't.

    They say that athletic scholarships aren't a cost -- i.e. if you increase tuition, it doesn't mean it is costing you more than it did to offer the education at the lower tuition. That may or may not be true in the case of UAB, but it is kind of convoluted. Unless they know the actual cost of educating a player -- and they don't -- the only real data point they have is how much they can get students to pay for the education (i.e. -- the price). Otherwise their report is an opinion / guess, not something factual.

    Worse than that, they made a ton of qualitative judgments about how much the athletic programs are worth to the university and discounted the actual costs by the financial benefits they attributed to having those sports in Conference USA, etc. I believe that those qualitative benefits do actually exist. But again, without being able to measure them more accurately than them randomly (for whatever their motives are) pulling numbers out of thin air. ... it makes their report BS.
     
  6. RecoveringJournalist

    RecoveringJournalist Well-Known Member

    If the people in Birmingham were as fascinated with UAB football as people on this board are, the program would be thriving.
     
  7. RubberSoul1979

    RubberSoul1979 Active Member

    Aside from California-based schools (Cal-State Northridge, Pacific, Long Beach State, etc), who was the last program to drop football? Boston U. and Wichita State -- I'm talking FBS, not FCS -- don't count.
     
  8. JackReacher

    JackReacher Well-Known Member

    People?
     
    FileNotFound likes this.
  9. LongTimeListener

    LongTimeListener Well-Known Member

    [​IMG]
     
  10. micropolitan guy

    micropolitan guy Well-Known Member

    Villanova was the equivalent of an FBS program when it dropped football after the 1980 season. It was non-scholarship I-AA when it came back in 1985, has since has evolved into a competitive FCS program and is one of just three private schools to win an FCS national championship.
     
  11. Neutral Corner

    Neutral Corner Well-Known Member

    That's pretty much me. I'm a UAB fan, and never hid that from the jump.

    Basically, the UAB people want their damn programs back. It was closed because Paul Bryant, Jr. and a couple of cronies wanted it closed. The board has made moves to systematically hamstring the program for years, then complained that it ran a slow forty. More than anything else they want to control their own university, and there are attempts to force through some governance changes legally, but the UA System Board of Trustees are among the most wealthy and influential people in the state. No one wants to be on their bad side. Add that the statehouse is full of politicians who graduated from UA Law and it's a tough fight.

    UAB has a two and half dollar budget and can't afford football? Really? When every other program in the state that wants it can?

    I can't think of another program in the NCAA where the people who control one program are huge and active boosters of another program, donating millions.

    The other side of the coin is that this fight was never supposed to go on this long. A lot of dirty dealings have been dragged out into the open and continue to be. Kevin Scarbinsky, John Archibald, and Kyle Whitmire continue to write stories that reveal just how incestuous and crooked the BoT is. Paul Bryant Jr.'s bank is the tie that binds UA trustees | AL.com If UA Board of Trustees is family, Protective Life is a big brother | AL.com

    The Board is really a last bastion of the old school plantation mentality, combined with Bubba-mafia style corruption. They routinely flout open meetings laws, FOIA requests, pretty much do as they please and dare anyone to do anything about it. Most of them are products of The Machine, UA's notorious system of big money families sending their scions off to Tuscaloosa where they join the right fraternities and rule the place from the shadows. They then grow up and become big businessmen and politicians who do the same. The Machine has been in the news a bit of late as a black student who was not Machine backed managed to get himself elected SGA President. The other SGA members then proceeded to block his putting in place a chief of staff four times. He finally had to go to a university Justice Committee to get his guy seated.

    I guess I'm surprised people are not more interested. There's one hell of a long form in it.
     
  12. LongTimeListener

    LongTimeListener Well-Known Member

    Oh, if there's a longform story to be written about football in the South, it will be written. Bet on that.

    Just don't get Devil talking about by whom.
     
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