Randy Smith
I've always wondered what a "vote of no confidence" ever does to a person. It's not something you just hear about in the sports' world. It can come in the political arena as well as the business world. The Faculty Senate at The University of Alabama at Birmingham voted "no confidence" in school President Ray Watts. This comes after Watts dropped the football program at UAB, saying the dismantling of the program would save the university almost $50 million over five years. There is quite a bit of irony involved in this bold decision. First, it comes in the most unlikely place in the world to drop football; Birmingham, Alabama. You know...the self proclaimed "Football Capitol of The South."
The home of storied Legion Field....the city where the legendary Paul"Bear"Bryant held court and ruled for years.
Even though UAB has had a football program for less than twenty years, there still seems to be a lot of jealousy involved when it comes to the University of Alabama in nearby Tuscaloosa. Other teachers at the school tell you that football is important to any school, allowing the student to have a complete "student experience" whether they are an athlete or not. When the vote of "no confidence" was held, several spectators in the audience, dressed in Green and Gold UAB jerseys, applauded and yelled, "UAB...UAB...UAB."
Ray Watts became the UAB president in 2013, after serving the university as a Senior Vice President as well as the Dean of the School of Medicine. After being in office a single year, he dropped the football program creating few friends and many enemies. Among his newly created enemies is first year football coach Bill Clark, who led the Blazers to a 6-6 record and to a bowl game. Needless to say, the scholarship athletes who now no longer have a place to practice their trade, should also be considered to be enemies.
To sum it all up as to how other students at UAB feel about this unpopular decision, was a message on social media that said,"It's not about the U or the A. It's about the B."
The city of Birmingham once supported a USFL team that played at historic Legion Field. Now that the Blazers are no more, the only real football in the city is played at Southern Conference member Samford. Once, the Crimson Tide played at least half its games at Legion Field and with no team at UAB, there will be no college football at all now.
In all fairness to Ray Watts, he made a decision that he felt was the best for UAB. It's kinda like the one made at East Tennessee State several years ago, when football was dropped in Johnson City, though Johnson City is no where close to being an iconic southern football city as Birmingham, Alabama is. After a few years without a football team, ETSU brought the sport back and even hired former Tennessee head coach Phillip Fulmer as a consultant. The Bucs will play once again this fall, and everybody is happy once again in upper east Tennessee.
After hearing of the vote of "no confidence", Watts said, "I'm obviously disappointed, but what this vote means to me is that I have more work to do to find common ground so we can move forward, and I am up for the challenge."
Only the state board can fire President Watts, and they still say they support him. So it appears that football fans in the game's capitol of the South will have to wait until the next president comes in to rescue the game they love, and that may not be as long as we think.
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Randy Smith has been covering sports on radio, television and print for the past 45 years. After leaving WRCB-TV in 2009, he has written two books, and has continued to free-lance as a play-by-play announcer. He is currently teaching Broadcasting at Coahulla Creek High School near Dalton, Ga.
His career has included a 17-year stretch as host of the Kickoff Call In Show on the University of Tennessee’s prestigious Vol Network. He has been a member of the Vol Network staff for thirty years.
He has done play-by-play on ESPN, ESPN II, CSS, and Fox SportSouth, totaling more than 500 games, and served as a well-known sports anchor on Chattanooga Television for more than a quarter-century.
In 2003, he became the first television broadcaster to be inducted into the Greater Chattanooga Area Sports Hall of Fame. Randy and his wife Shelia reside in Hixson. They have two married children, (Christi and Chris Perry; Davey and Alison Smith.) They have four grandchildren, Coleman, Boone, DellaMae and CoraLee.
To contact Randy: rsmithsports@epbfi.com