UAB Set to Welcome Football Again

College football has always been a competitive and cherished sport. Almost all the Universities in the US have their own football teams who take part in competitions. Amidst all the fun, the level of rising expenditure in the sport cannot be ignored. Keeping this in mind, President of The University of Alabama-Birmingham, Mr Ray L. Watt announced that the university would no longer have a professional team of its own and will drop its top-tier football program.

This decision came as a shock to all the people related to the sport in the college and also to all the students. Since football has been a part of the Universities’ curriculum for a long time, shutting it down in this fashion did not seem to be appropriate. Ever since people heard about the college’s decision, a lot of protests broke out against it. Doubts were raised about Mr Watts and his leadership skills. Pretty soon, a movement under the banner “Free U.A.B” started in which majority of the students took part actively.

As a result, students along with other people of the city started contributing towards the cause. Through the movement, millions of dollars were raised and the money was pledged to the University as additional funds. The students even agreed to pay higher fees to keep the football program rolling.”The biggest single difference is now we have tangible commitments for additional support that we never had before,” Watts said at a news conference. “Without that additional support, we could not maintain a balanced budget.”

After receiving the money, Watts succumbed to the public pressure on Monday and stated that football along with two other cancelled sports, women’s riflery and bowling, would be reinstated.
The University received funds from people all over the city and businessmen etc. Watts told the media that $17.2 million were received as outside funds and will be used for sports along with the $20 million which were set aside by the University for Athletics.

However, after the announcement it is still unclear so as to when the team will be ready again to play. There will be a lot of NCAA hurdles that the University will have to clear before putting a team on the field. If everything goes good then U.A.B can be expected to make a debut in 2016. President Watts has said that he is working with NCAA and Conference USA to keep the conference and FBS standing.

First published in Bangalorean.