When the University of Alabama at Birmingham announced June 2 that there would be gridiron games this fall, many around the country were perplexed—and many others thrilled—by the obvious victory for the sport that is a way of life in Alabama.
The announcement came exactly six months after university President Ray Watts turned off the lights on the field, signaling the end of the program. Keeping football on campus, it was decided then, was too expensive and took too much away from the rest of the campus—67 percent of the $30 million budget came from the university’s general fund, and another 7.6 percent came from student fees. (And this at a school in one of the smaller Football Bowl Subdivision conferences: Conference USA.)
Watts had said that, after hiring a consultant who projected that fielding a competitive team would cost $49 million over the next five years, “there was no way for us to cover that unless we took away from education and research and health care.”
But after rallying cries from students, alumni and the city of Birmingham, the school caved and announced it would field a team for the 2015 season after all.
Football-1, University Budgets-0.
And so, the team will return to the field in a conference in which you cannot compete in any sport if you do not field a football team. The university will cap subsidies from the general fund at $14.49 million for each of the next five years ($200,000 less than the 2015 subsidy amount), and the city of Birmingham, UAB’s National Alumni Society and the student body have all pledged to do their part to chip in to make up the difference.
UAB is not alone in this quandary over athletics.
