No More Football In The Magic City

   Birmingham is a great city, nicknamed the "Magic City", but it's about to lose some of its magic. The powers that be are taking it away - to the disapproval of many. What I'm talking about is UAB football.

   UAB is one of the three University of Alabama System colleges (UA & UAH being the others) and it is renowned primarily for its academic medical center & hospital, although UAB is a full fledged university which teaches all aspects of academics. Like many colleges it has an athletics program & this includes football.

   The UAB football team has existed since 1991, 1991 - 1998 in Division 1-A, 1999-2014 in Division 1, but after this year those in charge decided to shut down the program due to monetary loss (they've also shut down the women's bowling and rifle teams).

   I am a UAB grad and I have to admit that I rarely went to any of their games (maybe 1 or 2 in my lifetime) so I can't claim to be a big supporter, but others did go. And the UAB Blazers football team have lacked success, their first few years being their best from 1991-1994 where they went 27-12-2, all other years finishing below .500 except for this year they went 6-6, not great, but they are bowl eligible. So UAB will now wait to see what bowl game they go to.

   The thing that is upsetting so many people is that there seems to be a few in power who don't want UAB to compete in football especially in this state where Alabama controls them from afar in a sort of nefarious and conspiratorial way. I wouldn't try to explain who the people are that make the decisions about UAB football or what their true motives are, but I'd have to say that there does seem to be something underhanded going on. Especially when the football program is now finally doing the best its done in many years and is drawing more people. To cut it off and say that it just costs too much money just doesn't ring true. It can't succeed if it doesn't exist. And why now? It took them almost 20 years of bad play to finally decide to cancel football? Why dangle it in front of us playfully mocking UABs students with the hope that they could have a football powerhouse like UA to then, when it just starts to get good, take it away? Some might say that those in power at Alabama don't like how things are going at UAB and so they've 'pulled the plug' on us.