DEVELOPING: UAB To Announce The End Of Football Today

((HT: Al.com/Scarbinsky))

At some point today, it is expected that UAB President Ray Watts will announce the end of the football program.

Funny thing is, according to AL.com's John Talty, is that the football program looks like it was a proftable one.

The football program posted a slim positive margin of $24,222 in a time frame of Oct. 1, 2013 to Sept. 30, 2014, according to the U.S. Department of Education's Equity in Athletics data

Yes, it's heavily subsidized. The HQ knows that...

But in an interview with Barnett Wright, former university President and founder of the football program, Scotty McCallum, said it shouldn't be a Board of Trustees decision to make:

"This is not the Board of Trustees' decision," said McCallum, who was instrumental in the first UAB football team taking the field in 1991. "The decision should be made by the (UAB) president and the faculty members at the university. It's ridiculous for the Board of Trustees to even think about dropping it."

At the same time, what the HQ- and a lot of you out there- already think was publicly divulged by Talty in an interview with UAB Football booster Jimmy Filler. Filler is the head of the UAB Football Foundation. The Foundation is set to donate $5-million to the efforts of keeping football around, but Filler claims to Talty that no one ever called him to discuss the matter once he came to the fore and the idea is two decades old to blow up the program:

Filler doesn't believe the study will have any impact on whether the program folds or not. Instead, he says, its fate was sealed as far back as 1991 when former UAB coach and athletic director Gene Bartow advised the NCAA to investigate Alabama's basketball program. In the letter to the NCAA, published by The Los Angeles Times in 1993, Bartow wrote that several former Alabama football coaches had been penalized by the NCAA and that they were "trained" by legendary Alabama coach Bear Bryant.

Filler believes Paul Bryant Jr., the son of Bear Bryant and a member of the Board of Trustees, has been trying to kill UAB's program for years as a "vendetta" for Bartow's letter. Filler has battled Bryant Jr. and the rest of the board for years to try to get UAB a new football stadium with little success.

"Coach Bartow was a dear, close friend of mine. He said this (would) happen," Filler said. "He said it two weeks before he passed that they wanted to kill UAB athletics. My good friend and dear man was 100 percent right."

There is talk that President Watts will make a public announcement of the university's intentions when it happens...

May his God help him if he does with the reaction he will receive on campus...

Here was the look this morning from campus as students were set to march again:
((HT: MyFoxAL.com))