Little Guy Wins as UAB Reinstates Football

"You're telling me it's because the numbers didn't look right. Numbers didn't look right! And you'll go home and sleep in a comfortable big-ass house."         

Every cause needs a face or a voice. Maybe a slogan. At least a poster. The University of Alabama at Birmingham football cause had an iPhone camera, YouTube, social media and the impassioned, quickly viral speech of tight end Tristan Henderson directed at UAB president Ray Watts.

And Monday, six months after Henderson chewed out Watts in front of the whole team, and the whole world, over dumping the football program for financial reasons, Watts announced that the numbers are looking much better now. After eliminating the team in December, he brought it back. The team will play again as soon as 2016.

What does Henderson think of how this all played out?

"I'm pumped. I am pumped," he told Bleacher Report on Monday night. "But before the press conference today, I was saying Watts could be a hero. He definitely could have been a hero. But he kind of shot himself in the foot. He said, 'I'm bringing back football, but I still think the decision I made in December was the right decision.'

"It was nowhere close to the right decision. He didn't check the numbers twice. If you were going to do something like this, you go over and over and over them. He could have stood up there now and said, 'I made the wrong decision in December. I'm going to right the wrong now.'"

Watts didn't say, exactly, that the decision to kill the program in December had been right. But close enough. He certainly defended it in his press conference Monday, saying he had agonized over killing the program and "looked at every option up to the very last moment."

Turned out, one of the options he didn't consider in trying to halt the financial drain was to ask the community, alumni, students or boosters for money. You know, exactly the type of fund-raising that defines a university president's job. Watts said there hadn't been "evidence" before to show that money would be there.

Whatever. This was a lesson in social activism, with the seat of power on campus being pressured into action by the little guy. It started with a spark that came from Henderson.

"I live right around the corner from UAB; you can see part of the campus from my house," he said. "Even today, people are driving by, seeing me out walking my dog and telling me, 'If you hadn't stood up and said what you said, what's happening today probably wouldn't be happening.'

"Do I have a part? Yeah, I guess I have a part. But if you have seen how this city came together—the UAB football fans, students, alumni, some of the players, everybody who cares about this program—it was a full-fledged community effort. The Birmingham community.

"If you could just see the passion the community had. The community had just had enough of being the bullied little brother of the system."

He's talking about the University of Alabama System—and UAB being treated as inferior to the main campus in Tuscaloosa.

Community outrage is what brought this team back. When it was killed off in December, students protested and a "Free UAB" movement started. That put the pressure on Watts, who had to be worried about his job. And it wasn't long after Watts killed the program that he formed a committee to look into the feasibility of getting the team back.

Brynn Anderson/Associated Press

"I was told this would happen a while back," UAB receivers coach Cornelius Williams told Bleacher Report. "They need to, for the players and the city."

If you haven't seen the video with Henderson's plea, it was Dec. 2, and Watts had called the team together to announce that the school couldn't afford what it would take to be competitive in football anymore. The team had just finished 6-6, its best mark since a 7-5 campaign in 2004, under head coach Bill Clark. But financially, the numbers didn't add up anymore. 

Henderson yelled back about the other players: "What are they supposed to do? Some of these cats came from 3,000 miles away and came right here to be part of this, to be a part of all this. But you say, 'Numbers?'"

His point was that players were there for reasons of the heart, while Watts was being cold.

"Alabama fans took it the wrong way," Henderson said. "A lot of people thought I was just lashing out at the president in anger. But he was taking away opportunity for young kids in an urban city, a hard city like Birmingham.

"A lot of these guys came from hard, hard places. They didn't have opportunity guys who are privileged had. They didn't get on TV, didn't have the opportunity to play in SEC programs. UAB football gave opportunity. An education opportunity."

Henderson was already 27 years old and finished with his athletic eligibility. He wasn't going to play anymore. He was speaking for his teammates. Monday, he talked about his own lack of preparation out of high school. He said he joined the Army and even went to Iraq before going to college. He said he expects to get his degree in broadcast and communication in December.

He credited the Army with helping to "prepare me as a person."

"Coach Clark taught us to trust each other and we can be a force together," Henderson said. "He used football to teach us life lessons."

Henderson himself has now taught many a life lesson: how passion can lead to change.

"I watched that video once. I heard my voice on ESPN, looked at the TV and said, 'Oh boy,'" he said. "I remembered every word. I still remember every word. My passion is to help younger people. If some of these kids hit the books properly and have one person help them along, they can do wonders in this world."

Greg Couch covers college football for Bleacher Report.