UAB's Blueprint to Get Football Back to Bowl-Worthy Status

UAB football is back from the dead. Now the hard part begins. 

On Monday, university president Ray Watts reversed a controversial decision from six months ago to terminate the football program in light of what was claimed to be financial concerns from the Carr Report. (The validity of the Carr Report is debatable; as noted by Jon Solomon of CBS Sports, the file is filled with "miscalculations, discrepancies and bad assumptions.")

At the end of Monday's press conference, UAB opened the floor up to questions beginning with this stunning statement: 

"We might not have all the answers." 

Answers, however, are what UAB's administration need to provide. Currently, there's no specific blueprint for picking up where the program left off. 

Funding is the primary issue. Put simply, there's no resurrection without financial backing, and the program is as strapped as ever. According to Solomon: 

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Watts laid out three conditions for the return of football: UAB can't exceed the amount of institutional support it currently provides for athletics; public and private donors must meet "reasonable" timelines to convert their pledges into money, a timeframe Watts said he will make public at a later date; and UAB won't borrow money to improve outdated athletic facilities. UAB is a rare Football Bowl Subdivision School that for years has not carried an annual debt service due to athletics

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According to Watts, more than $17 million was raised to bring the program back to life. Why this money was raised after football was discontinued is a legitimate talking point, but one that Watts is unwilling to answer: 

Nevertheless, the money is there now, yet another $13 million is needed for facilities. When will Watts and Co. get it? That's not clear.

Furthermore, will they keep beating the fundraising drum? Again, details are at a premium. 

There's truth to the idea that UAB's popularity soared post-mortem, but that's not a sustainable business model. It's up to Watts and the athletic department to lay out a master plan to solicit donations as much as it is up to donors to pony up. Ultimately, people are only going to pay for what they know they'll get. 

Right now, though, no one is really sure what they're getting. 

If anything, Monday's press conference raised more questions than it answered. Even the most obvious one—when will UAB football play its first game?—didn't have an answer to match. New athletic director Mark Ingram said the goal is to get the program playing as soon as possible, "which may be 2016." 

"May be"?

Sure, restarting a football program doesn't happen overnight. There are NCAA and Football Bowl Subdivision issues that need to be ironed out, like scholarship numbers and sports sponsorship requirements. For example, Solomon explains "Division I membership without football requires a minimum of 14 sports (eight women's and six men's teams), compared to 18 with football."

No one's doubting that these are complicated issues, but 1) this is something UAB should have thought of before ending football, and 2) it's their job to have the specifics now. 

Yet the best response the administration can give is an ambiguous date with no timeline of which to speak. UAB may restart football in 2016, or maybe it'll be 2017. Who knows? Even pushing back the start date at a later point wouldn't have been as bad as the "may be" answer. At least there'd be a plan. 

The lack of a plan hurts the second part of the reinstatement blueprint: investing in head coach Bill Clark. Imagine you're Clark and tasked with putting together an entire roster with no start date. Try recruiting to that. 

The good news is that Clark is a well-liked coach who led the Blazers to their best season in 10 years. UAB is lucky to still have him. If anyone can rebuild the program—again, from scratch—it's him. Thus, it behooves UAB to invest in Clark (financially and in other supportive ways) just like it plans to invest in facilities.

In a way, the two go hand-in-hand. Wanting to restart football is one thing, but the administration can't possibly leave Clark high and dry with no help and no plan. The guy is already fighting an uphill battle most wouldn't want to deal with in their lifetimes. 

The third step of the blueprint is refilling the roster. The problem here is that many players who had options to go elsewhere did. In all, nearly 60 players have transferred from the program.

As Zach Barnett of FootballScoop.com reports, "Sources tell FootballScoop that the vast majority of players with offers to play elsewhere have taken those offers, meaning head coach Bill Clark will essentially take over an expansion program." 

That means Clark will have to put together a hodgepodge of players to even have a suitable roster. 

Even then, that doesn't mean UAB will "pick up where it left off." 

The irony of it all is that Clark had UAB rolling when the administration decided to discontinue the program.

Perhaps the single best example of this came in a Nov. 22 loss to Marshall at home. Even though the Blazers came up short 23-18, it had the undefeated Thundering Herd on the ropes for all 60 minutes. In an interview with Bleacher Report last December, Marshall athletic director Mike Hamrick said there was a buzz around UAB football at that game that he hadn't witnessed in years—if ever.

In a matter of weeks, though, the program was done. For that reason, the 6-6 Blazers were not selected to participate in a bowl game. 

For UAB, starting over is not the same as rebuilding. The foundation of the 2.0 Blazers will be on chance.

Funding means there's a chance to field a team at the FBS level; even then, that's bypassing the traditional start-from-scratch route. Fielding a team means there's a chance to play a game. Playing a game means there's a chance to win. Winning a game means there's a chance for fan support and more money. Fan support means, eventually, there's a chance UAB can get back to where it was in 2014. 

All of these chances will be slim if the administration doesn't provide more concrete details. 

If the decision to end football (along with bowling and rifle) was made hastily and with an agenda, as AL.com's Kyle Whitmire and others believe it was, then the decision to bring it back wasn't planned out much better. Watts, in fact, admitted he came to the conclusion to reinstate football on the day of the presser. Whether that's actually true or not—recall that UAB hired the firm College Sports Solution this spring to review the Carr Report—it's an indication of how disarranged the whole process has been. 

Of course, Watts would have you believe in some roundabout way that he's the person responsible for the resurrection of UAB football. It's an odd spin to put on the situation: In order to boost the program, it had to be terminated first. It's a backwards way to look at it. 

Watts is no savior. That title would have been more appropriate if UAB football never died to begin with. Clark, along with whoever decides they're going to be part of the restarting process and the people who will pay for it, will make UAB football a proud program again. They're the people who hold the blueprint for the Blazers' future.

The administration certainly didn't give them much of one, after all. 

Ben Kercheval is a lead writer for college football. All quotes obtained firsthand unless noted otherwise.