http://www.al.com/opinion/index.ssf/2014/12/birmingham_needs_uab_not_ua_tr.html
Birmingham needs UAB, not UA trustees' plantation mentality: opinion
Several years ago, I was driving with some friends to Chicago when we ran low on gas. We pulled off the interstate to find a filling station in Gary, Indiana, a place so desolate and dead that one of my travelling companions called it suburban Moscow after the apocalypse.
Indeed, the public buildings there bared some traces of Stalinist design, or maybe that's just what Art Deco looks like when it decays. It was a poisoned place where nothing seemed to grow but for weedy lots and sprigs of grass pushing through the cracks in the sidewalks. I don't consider myself easily intimidated by rough neighborhoods in post-industrial cities, but that place seemed broken and hopeless in a way that gave me chills.
What the hell had happened there?
Then I looked out the car window. There, a large ghostly industrial building loomed. Written on its side in enormous block letters was the answer to my question.
It read, "U.S. Steel."
This hell hole wasn't just another nasty notch in America's rust belt - it was an alternate universe that we had somehow slipped into. Gary had been another outpost of the steel barons, exploited and then left to rot. In holiday movie terms, this was our Pottersville - what Birmingham could have become had things happened a little bit differently. I wanted to rush home and run through the Magic City's streets like a madly joyous George Bailey.
Merry Christmas, Vulcan!
Merry Christmas, Alabama Theatre!
Merry Christmas, mildly satanic Five Point South fountain devil statue!
Just as we pulled back onto the interstate and moments before we put that nightmare town behind us, one of our crew blurted it out loud: "This is what Birmingham would have been without UAB."
A backbone with no spine
When the steel industry in Birmingham withered, the city's economy clung to two things - the banks and UAB. Then, all but one of the city's major banks were swallowed by bigger competitors out of state or overseas. And there was also that unpleasantness at HealthSouth. The city went from having four Fortune 500 companies down to one.
But through it all, there was old reliable UAB. Depending on how you count the jobs, UAB is the largest employer in the state. Along with the good paying jobs it brings, UAB acts as a point of entry for many highly skilled professionals and a training ground for local students looking to improve their stakes in life.
From now on, let's just call him "Cub." (The Birmingham News/Joe Songer)
It is the economic backbone of Birmingham.
Only there are two things wrong with that last sentence. First, it implies that UAB is somehow interconnected with Birmingham, and second, by calling it a backbone, readers might infer that the leadership there has something resembling a spine.
Not that UAB has been without strong administrators. Just two university presidents ago, it had Ann Reynolds, who sued the University of Alabama Board of Trustees for sexism after she was forced to resign in 2002. The UA system settled her lawsuit for $475,000 and a confidentiality agreement to shut her up.
The board replaced her with Carol Garrison. In Birmingham, Garrison was a visible and active leader in the community. But she, too, strayed a little too far from her masters in Tuscaloosa. In 2012, she was marched to the same guillotine, but when the blade fell on her neck,
the basket was padded with a better severance package.
The board replaced her with Ray Watts who, as far as anyone can tell, is currently leading the university from an undisclosed bunker beneath one of the school's myriad red brick buildings. Where Garrison was a public figure in Birmingham, I'd challenge any member of the Rotary Club to pick Watts out of a lineup.
Even students protesting in the streets and calling him "coward" haven't baited an answer from him. Watts has gone into hiding.
More than football
The message from Tuscaloosa has been clear: We own this plantation. Don't believe for a second that UAB has autonomy. It's called the University of Alabama
at Birmingham for a reason. It's an appendage, and the UA trustees call the shots.
That relationship with Tuscaloosa hasn't been clearer than in recent weeks, when it became apparent that the board was finally set to kill UAB's football program.
But let there be no misunderstanding. This is about more than football.
This is about grudges held by powerful people, one in particular. Let's just call him "Cub."
This is about whether the state's largest city will have a meaningful, healthy relationship with the state's largest employer. Already,
Mayor William Bell has written a letter to Watts asking why much smaller schools in smaller cities can manage to keep their football programs alive, but not UAB. The fact that the mayor had to make that letter public tells you all you need to know about how receptive the UA system has been to his input or input from other city political and business leaders.
Birmingham has seen that attitude before. Just scratch out the letters UAB and replace them with USS.
Birmingham needs UAB, but it doesn't need another absentee landlord.
From now on, let's just call him "Cub." (The Birmingham News/Joe Songer) 
they let go the rifling team and bowling at the same time too for additional collateral damage
