New York Times Writer Advocates the University of Colroado Drop Football

It’s A Shame About Rae.
(Not really. It’s a shame about the kid he tried to kill. But it had to be said because the Lemonheads.)

 

It was a major issue. When he shut down the program, President Watts said that doing so would free up major budget dollars and allow MBB to move up to a better conference. There were several problems with that, starting with the fact that zero groundwork to make such a move was made first. There are not many conferences that are basketball only, the geographical location and travel costs make an invite from most of them unlikely, ans there had been no negotiations with any of them. UAB is not a private school, not a Catholic school. Basketball was left hanging in mid-air with no idea what would happen. C-USA was helpful in that UAB was not immediately booted for not meeting the conference requirements as well as offering time for UAB to explore its options. Strict interpretation of the bylaws should have forced us out.

Bottom line was that Watts' statement that doing away with football would allow for a much improved basketball team made him look unprepared and completely clueless, which he indeed was. The football shutdown was a political hatchet job. There were indeed budget problems, but the school administration never went to the alumni/fan base and said "Football is in deep budget trouble, and if we don't sell more season tickets and raise substantial money via donations the program is in danger of being shut down". No attempt to fix the problem was made other than to pull the plug. The financial study used as a fig leaf for the shutdown was intentionally slanted, obviously so.

 

As to donations, the UAB experience is that shutting down football radicalized a pissed off alumni and fan base who promptly raised forty million dollars, but the shutdown here was a unique event. The local business community got behind bringing it back and made large contributions both through donations and sponsorship. That said, football is one helluva lot better under Bill Clark, attendance is up, facilities have been funded and built, a new municipal football stadium is being built. UAB's enrollment has hit record levels in each of the years since The Return.

I doubt that this has any direct parallel at other universities, though.

As to things like Homecoming, that rubbed sand into the raw wounds. Homecoming featured a soccer game. You can imagine how well that went over. You also had issues like an entire marching band with no football halftimes to perform. I have a good friend whose daughter was in the marching band, and there was no football during her junior and senior year. They played at high school games, parades, did all sorts of things in an attempt to offset the loss... but if you want to get a truly bitter assessment of the value of the shutdown you should hear him speak of how his daughter was robbed of her college experience.

The shutdown was ill-conceived and not thought through. This repeatedly became obvious as issue after issue surfaced once it was accomplished. It made both the UAB administration and the UA Board of Trustees look bad, particularly as documents surfaced that showed that about 80% of what the public was told about closing the program was either inaccurate or outright lies.

 

You said Stanford twice.

 

He likes Stanford.

 

You forgot about the waitresses.

 

Yes, I meant UCLA in the public school category.

 

I think that was somewhere north of here.

 

Steve Harvey's bit on Rae Rae in Original Kings Of Comedy has me cackling every time.