In early December of last year, the University of Alabama at Birmingham announced that they would be firing their athletic director, Brian Mackin, and closing down the football program, despite it having only existed for less than twenty five years. The school’s president, Ray Watt, cited monetary problems for the school, saying that the program wasn’t adequately covering the cost of operation and that the school didn’t have enough money to continue funding it. That seems fair. If a program is sucking money out of the school at a rate that it can’t keep up with, the only logical thing to do is to cancel it. The only problem is, it wasn’t.

Watts went on ESPN’s College GameDay in December and said that the decision to shut down the football program was only a fiscal one. He told the cast of the show that “Nobody has come forward with a firm commitment of any additional resources, and we’ve asked.”

Co-founder of the UAB Football Foundation, Jimmy Filler, called Watt’s bluff on the statement, saying that the school hadn’t sought funding from its boosters. Filler said that he and another chair member of the UAB Football Foundation had pledged $5 million to the program, and, according to him, “we had only just begun.”

Alright, so that’s five million dollars. Not all that much, considering administrators at UAB had estimated that it would take approximately forty-nine million dollars to sustain the program over the next five years. Here’s the thing, though, that was just two of the school’s many boosters. Others, like donor Don Hire, also claim that they were not approached to help fund the program. It’s not likely that the only boosters that were willing to help the program were skipped over in the fundraising process. It’s much more possible that there wasn’t a fundraising process to begin with.

One UAB faculty athletics representative came forward and said that last spring, Watts failed to share that a pledge had been made to get turf on one of the practice fields. Watts denied before the beginning of the season that a donation had been made and that first year head coach, Bill Clark, was ever promised the turf. UAB boosters were told otherwise earlier in the year.

According to them, the pledge had been made, but the donation disallowed by University of Alabama System trustee, Finis St. John. St. John denied that he had a hand in shooting down the donation, but one shouldn’t be too quick to trust such a statement, seeing as he sent a letter to 10,000 trustees in 2011 showing disapproval towards the football program.

It’s pretty obvious that the people in charge in the University of Alabama System don’t care about or for the Birmingham football program. Everyone the program matters to was shut out before the cancellation was announced. Boosters who would have willingly injected money into the program were denied opportunities to do so, coaches were lied to about facility upgrades, and most importantly, players were kept in the dark. Players to whom this program means more than anyone to. Players who depended on UAB for their livelihood and education. They were all ignored and tossed aside, then out of the school.

All it took was a few powerful people and some fake numbers to ruin everything for a hundred college athletes. A coach that left his job at Jacksonville St. and came to the city to coach the team to their fourth winning season ever is now without a job and is holding out on finding a new one on the off chance that the program isn’t quite dead yet. This is something that may stain the University for the rest of its existence.

The good news is that the program has an ever so small chance of survival. After closing the program down, the University of Alabama System trustees took a vote of no confidence for Watts. If everything goes as planned, he may be out of a job next year and the football program reinstated. Just, don’t hold your breath.