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UAB dropping football after 2016? Could this become a trend?

Buffnik

Buffnik

Real name isn't Nik
Club Member
Junta Member
University of Alabama board of trustees is voting on this. Football is expensive and is becoming more so with the facilities arms race and the 85 scholarships. With the winds now changing with the P5 breaking away from the "Group of 5" other D1A conferences and the P5 being less and less likely to prop up the budgets of everyone else with scheduling pay dates, the future gets murky.

Article on possible end to UAB football: http://www.cbssports.com/collegefoo...f-trustees-finally-ready-to-kill-uab-football

In terms of whether this is a trend or just an outlier case (UAB would be the first AD to drop football in 2 decades), it's interesting to note that the amount of money lost by the AD and subsidized by the school at UAB is actually in the middle of the pack for the Group of Five.

They're 64% subsidized by the university right now. That's pretty normal for Group of Five athletic departments, with some well over 70%.

Good article: http://www.cbssports.com/collegefoo...lone-in-losing-money-for-athletic-departments

Will we start seeing more schools go the route of Gonzaga, DU, Wichita State and others by focusing on sports other than football? Or like places such as Villanova or Georgetown that play football at a lower (or much lower) level than other varsity sports?
 
So the same trustees decide the future of University of Alabama at Birmingham Blazers and the University of Alabama Crimson Tide?

Since the Tide is in the top ten (probably top four, but I am not following that closely), maybe they figure the UAB support will just move over to the Tide. Trustees are rarely correct on these types of decisions, I'd expect an alumni & fan backlash, but what do I know? If they aren't supporting their team now, maybe they'll just let it go.
 
AlferdJasper said:
So the same trustees decide the future of University of Alabama at Birmingham Blazers and the University of Alabama Crimson Tide?

Since the Tide is in the top ten (probably top four, but I am not following that closely), maybe they figure the UAB support will just move over to the Tide. Trustees are rarely correct on these types of decisions, I'd expect an alumni & fan backlash, but what do I know? If they aren't supporting their team now, maybe they'll just let it go.
Click to expand...

I'd expect backlash from the Tuscaloosa side as well. Now they have to go find another cupcake to pad their out-of-conference schedule with every year.
 
Brings up some serious issues no matter how it turns out.

The school made over $100 million in subsidies between direct subsidies and student fees in an 8 year period. Anytime this kind of money is involved you have to look at the ROI compared to other potential ways of using the money.

Is the UAB program raising the profile of the school, is it attracting potential students, is it a strong point of identification with alumni and area residents in a way that generates support for the school.

You don't see UAB on national TV, even in the highlights of their opponents. They don't seem to be a hot topic of conversation in their own town.

I think we are going to start to see a lot of schools looking at this decision for various reasons. The gap between the haves and the have not's isn't going to get smaller. It's hard to see the have not's being able to generate significant revenue increases to stay competitive with anyone other than themselves.

All it is going to take is the first couple of schools to have the courage (or the lack of choice) to make the hard decision and we could see a small wave of programs change. Some will go away entirely, others will drop to much less expensive levels of competition.

I think for a lot of schools the FCS option would be a good one. Would a solid FCS program at UAB get significantly less attention that a normally bottom feeding BCS level program. Go FCS and you go from 85 schollies to 63, recruiting cost go way down, travel is mostly by bus instead of plane with fewer overnight stays.

From the article is looks like the agenda is to eliminate football entirely at UAB and for some schools this might make sense but a lot of others just need to find a cheaper way to play the game.
 
I wonder how this will effect other sports at the school, including women's sports. They can now cut some women's sports because they can still meet Title IX rules. The "player's union" guys, like Northwester and Title IX folks will may now begin reaping what they are sowing.
 
i believe this is a glimpse of where football is headed.

it will take time, but i believe we will end up with 5 conferences of 16 teams each in the new "d1". they will pay their athletes and all the other stuff. each conference will be broken into 8 team divisions. division winners will play for the 5 conference championships and auto-bids into the playoffs. there will be 3 additional "at-large" playoff teams selected by the committee. everyone will play 9 conf. games and 2 ooc games (against rotating other power conferences, ala the nfl model). the loss of the 1 regular season game will be more than replaced economically by the playoff contracts.

if you aren't one of these 80 teams, you might as well drop down into recreational football levels.
 
If it becomes a trend, this could cause a huge drop in youth/HS football participation. The sheer number of scholarships available for football players is a huge driver.
 
Buffnik said:
If it becomes a trend, this could cause a huge drop in youth/HS football participation. The sheer number of scholarships available for football players is a huge driver.
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I agree for the most part with Liver's post. The economics will simply make participation at the highest level impractical to impossible for those who aren't in on the money distribution.

At the same time that doesn't mean that everyone else is just going to go away. I could easily see the majority of the non-P5 BCS level schools along with the top of the current FCS forming a new division. These schools would not have $20-30 million a year football budgets but they will still have scholarship players. It might be at the current FCS level of 63 per school or something between that and the 85 that BCS schools currently have.

They won't be giving "cost of attendance" like the biggest schools but there will still be thousands of significant tuition and fees and living expenses. It will still be very worthwhile to be a quality HS football player.

Beyond that you will still have the D2 schools as well giving out schollies.

Don't think the incentive to develop skills and be a quality HS player is diminished under this setting. The numbers may be different but not enough to change the numbers of kids playing.
 
Just remembered that Colorado College quietly dropped football in about 2010. I know this because they were actively recruiting some kids I tutored, and I felt it was fortunate they chose other schools. Knowing the NCAA, they'd STILL probably make a kid sit out a year somewhere else.

As with University of Denver (which dropped football in the sixties), they felt they had a strong hockey program, and could have men's soccer and lacrosse, both for less cost than football.

List of defunct football programs here. A few surprises.
 
Colorado College was a D3 program which means that technically they gave no scholarships for football. That said they found other funding to assist players who they recruited to play there (the Ivy's do the same thing at a higher level.)

A big problem for CC was the lack of other D3 schools in the area which meant that they had to travel long distances to play other schools at the same level.
 
Big changes for football are afoot.

With the money pouring into college football, I can see the P5 stealing the remaining high profile programs from non-AQ conferences. The remaining non-AQ teams will probably form another conference and some will drop out because it makes no sense financially (ie Hawaii). This conference could build a network to get those dollars and really build a strong brand. This could mean more money going into basketball and trying to get other sports to generate more revenue.

With all the concussion worries, parents are pulling their kids from football. I could see flag football becoming much more important for kids. This will drop the talent level a bit, especially affecting the non-AQ teams.
 
I've been hearing for decades that football is going to fall to the wayside at the HS level. To dangerous, to expensive, gets to much attention, lots of kids aren't big enough/fast enough/strong enough, etc. and get excluded. On and on and on.

At the same time I have heard that soccer is going to take over, lacrosse is going to take over, etc. etc.

HS football numbers have been trending down over the past few years but not by great numbers and this isn't unprecedented. It has gone in cycles, some numbers indicate that last year numbers actually came back up a little in both youth level and HS football.

Simple fact is the football is the game that draws the attention of the nation. The nations fans, parents, and kids. No other sport is able to come close to the kind of connection that football has on Americans. That may change at some point but it isn't going to be soon.

What we will see is a different way of "doing business" at the college level. Right now we have a group of schools that are included in the money and the opportunity, we have another group of schools that pretend like they are at that level but don't have and won't have the revenues to maintain even that illusion as the gap continues to widen.

That doesn't mean that those schools have to abandon football, in many cases abandoning football would be a terrible move for them. What they do have to abandon is the idea that they are competing at the "highest level" and find their appropriate home that fits their budgets, their interest, and their needs.

Mines doesn't break the bank to play football. They aren't on national TV but they draw decent crowds and give the alums something to rally around. They recently received donations to build a state of the art stadium, state of the art for their level. A facility they can be proud of and that is a centerpiece of the campus. CSU Pueblo has done very well for the school playing D2, North Dakota State has put their school on the map playing FCS. They easily get more bang for the buck than a lot of lower end BCS conference schools get.

Bottom line is that college football is a business. It may not be their fault but a lot of schools are in the wrong market and it is costing them huge money. Eventually that will have to change. They won't go away, they will just adjust to what the market will bear.
 
Not to be outdone, Paul Quinn College in Texas turned its football stadium into an organic vegetable farm.
 
Best way to reduce concussions: remove face masks and go back to leather helmets. It will be in the players self interest to tackle property and not lead with the head.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
IowaBuffFan said:
Best way to reduce concussions: remove face masks and go back to leather helmets. It will be in the players self interest to tackle property and not lead with the head.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Click to expand...

Cliff notes for non readers:

No face mask, they tackle good


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
MtnBuff said:
I've been hearing for decades that football is going to fall to the wayside at the HS level. To dangerous, to expensive, gets to much attention, lots of kids aren't big enough/fast enough/strong enough, etc. and get excluded. On and on and on.

At the same time I have heard that soccer is going to take over, lacrosse is going to take over, etc. etc.

HS football numbers have been trending down over the past few years but not by great numbers and this isn't unprecedented. It has gone in cycles, some numbers indicate that last year numbers actually came back up a little in both youth level and HS football.

Simple fact is the football is the game that draws the attention of the nation. The nations fans, parents, and kids. No other sport is able to come close to the kind of connection that football has on Americans. That may change at some point but it isn't going to be soon.

What we will see is a different way of "doing business" at the college level. Right now we have a group of schools that are included in the money and the opportunity, we have another group of schools that pretend like they are at that level but don't have and won't have the revenues to maintain even that illusion as the gap continues to widen.

That doesn't mean that those schools have to abandon football, in many cases abandoning football would be a terrible move for them. What they do have to abandon is the idea that they are competing at the "highest level" and find their appropriate home that fits their budgets, their interest, and their needs.

Mines doesn't break the bank to play football. They aren't on national TV but they draw decent crowds and give the alums something to rally around. They recently received donations to build a state of the art stadium, state of the art for their level. A facility they can be proud of and that is a centerpiece of the campus. CSU Pueblo has done very well for the school playing D2, North Dakota State has put their school on the map playing FCS. They easily get more bang for the buck than a lot of lower end BCS conference schools get.

Bottom line is that college football is a business. It may not be their fault but a lot of schools are in the wrong market and it is costing them huge money. Eventually that will have to change. They won't go away, they will just adjust to what the market will bear.
Click to expand...
Cliff's notes: maybe.
 
Let's keep in mind FBS actually has been growing in teams steadily. We had a large new batch this season alone.

On one hand, you have UAB and Hawaii looking at dropping football. Yet numerous schools in the Southeast -many of them commuter schools like UAB- have flooded into FBS in recent years. What gives? cmgoods knows the Georgia State situation better than I do, but it would seem that before making the leap to FBS this year they should have investigated what a near identical school like UAB was experiencing: a **** ton of financial trouble and complete apathy (You're a Tide fan at UAB outside of a very small minority who support UAB first and foremost) . I see a big difference between schools like Appalachian State and Georgia Southern moving to FBS: They already have diehard support.

Sure, we've seen some commuter school success stories. UCF and Houston, among others. I believe Old Dominion (although they're rapidly changing from a commuter school to being traditional) and UTSA have chances to become the "next" UCF or USF. But as a whole, the whole commuter school going FBS route seems so risky.

On another note, Idaho is in deep **** with the collapse of the WAC and the MWC having no interest. Boise State refusing to play them anymore - which would be a huge financial boon for Idaho - isn't helping. Idaho is stuck in the Sun-Belt, playing UL-Monroe and South Alabama. The Kibbie Dome holds 16k for football and they aren't even close to filling it. Without a miraculous MWC olive branch (won't happen as long as Craig Thompson is MWC commish), I don't know if Idaho can stay afloat. Seems a question of when they'll retreat to FCS and the Big Sky.
 
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Buffnik said:
It would not surprise me if in my lifetime we become a nation where the "big 3" sports in high schools are soccer, basketball and lacrosse.
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Or american football becomes a lot more like rugby, or we just start favoring rugby. Because, let's be honest, from an outsiders perspective, how ridiculous does american football look? I've played it, had fun doing so, I love watching it, but it's no surprise that our football is being crushed under its own weight. It's a circus sport really. We've had giant dudes running into each other at full speed for decades, and our only solution was to make the padding better so they could run into each other harder without getting hurt. The whole philosophy of the sport has to change in order to survive long term.
 
Buffnik said:
It would not surprise me if in my lifetime we become a nation where the "big 3" sports in high schools are soccer, basketball and lacrosse.
Click to expand...

Nik I know you're from NJ, but I don't know if you originate from one of lacrosse's original "pockets" or not. I'm from one here in the Charlottesville area and the growth of lacrosse is frankly more shocking than the rise of soccer. Soccer was easy to see by the 90s that it was coming and will only continue to ascend for a variety of reasons. While lacrosse is a great game and its appeal is clear with sleek uniforms and just an exciting fast-paced game, it is remarkable to me how quickly it has gone national outside of preppy Mid Atlantic pockets. It's not a cheap sport though given the price of all the gear. However, football isn't cheap either, so what's to stop it. NCAA Lacrosse competitiveness has risen so quickly that it has even caught legendary coaches at old established blue blood programs off-guard.
 
UAB better drop football after all of this. The speculation has created a toxic situation coaching and recruiting-wise for months now.
 
TDbuff said:
Or american football becomes a lot more like rugby, or we just start favoring rugby. Because, let's be honest, from an outsiders perspective, how ridiculous does american football look? I've played it, had fun doing so, I love watching it, but it's no surprise that our football is being crushed under its own weight. It's a circus sport really. We've had giant dudes running into each other at full speed for decades, and our only solution was to make the padding better so they could run into each other harder without getting hurt. The whole philosophy of the sport has to change in order to survive long term.
Click to expand...

Your description of football might be the coolest thing I have ever read.

Football: watch grown men run and smash into each other at full speed with the same padding used 50 years ago, designed to allow them to run into each other faster.
 
Buffnik said:
It would not surprise me if in my lifetime we become a nation where the "big 3" sports in high schools are soccer, basketball and lacrosse.
Click to expand...

CVilleBuff said:
Nik I know you're from NJ, but I don't know if you originate from one of lacrosse's original "pockets" or not. I'm from one here in the Charlottesville area and the growth of lacrosse is frankly more shocking than the rise of soccer. Soccer was easy to see by the 90s that it was coming and will only continue to ascend for a variety of reasons. While lacrosse is a great game and its appeal is clear with sleek uniforms and just an exciting fast-paced game, it is remarkable to me how quickly it has gone national outside of preppy Mid Atlantic pockets. It's not a cheap sport though given the price of all the gear. However, football isn't cheap either, so what's to stop it. NCAA Lacrosse competitiveness has risen so quickly that it has even caught legendary coaches at old established blue blood programs off-guard.
Click to expand...

You two better throw volleyball (men's) into the mix too - fastest growing sport among HS boys right now.
I'm sure the volleyball shorts are helping that trend. :thumbsup:
 
:lol: Football isn't going to be replaced. How many high schools in the state of colorado don't have a football program? The numbers in football are higher than any other sport. Obviously at some point that will go down. Just like any other sport at some point. Most of this hysteria is linked to the concussion issues we are seeing.

Flag football numbers are extremely high at the youth age levels. In fact they've shown increases the last few years. Until we start seeing a major decrease at the high school and college levels, will it start becoming a problem.
 
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