Why Should I Care About UAB Athletics Anymore?

You may not believe it by looking at me today, but I was once a pretty good athlete. Not great, by any means, but pretty good. I did the normal thing as a kid, playing every sport imaginable, but it was soccer that I gravitated to the most. At just around 5 feet 6 inches tall, 130 pounds soaking wet, and with endurance for days, soccer was tailor-made for me. I played year-round on my high school team, second-tier club teams, and the odd guest spot on a premier team.

I wasn't recruited, and with just fair grades, the only college for me was UAB. I graduated from high school in 1990, and back then, UAB was known as a commuter school with the vast majority of students living at home, which was my experience. I felt my soccer days were largely over.

However, one afternoon, after a day working for the Jefferson County Environmental Services Department, I dropped by a fraternity house where I occasionally hung out. A friend and fellow soccer player told me about open tryouts for the UAB soccer team starting in about 30 minutes. I happened to have my boots in the backseat of my car, borrowed some shin guards and a pair of shorts from my buddy, and wore my sweat-and-dirt-stained work shirt to the first day of tryouts.

Three days later, I was a UAB Blazer.

The Rag-Tag Early Days

UAB athletics at that point were fairly new. The athletic department was only established in the late ’70s, and while the basketball program had experienced some success on the national stage, the rest of the sports operated on a shoestring budget and practiced and played wherever space could be found.

We shared a locker room with the baseball team in one of the older buildings on campus. Our new head coach was the first full-time coach since the soccer team launched in 1978. We played our games on a patch of grass outside Legion Field that doubled as RV parking for Alabama football games. If we played on Sunday or Monday following a Crimson Tide home game, we had to show up two or three hours early to deal with tire tracks and empty booze bottles.

I played from 1990 through 1992 before transferring, and despite the rag-tag operation and an awful win-loss record (we were 3-14-1 my freshman year), I had a blast. The roster was made up mostly of guys like me from local high schools, many of them from teams that were mortal enemies. While there were some out-of-state guys and a handful of international players, most of us had the same story—local guys getting a chance to be college athletes.

We also believed we were building something.

Building a Program

We put in loads of time coaching camps and clinics, getting young kids interested in the game, and some of us—me included—coached youth teams on the side. By my sophomore year in 1991, we were seeing larger crowds, winning more games, and creating a buzz in the community.

Also in 1991, UAB launched the football team. Starting as a Division III non-scholarship program, they were more rag-tag than we were. I had a couple of friends from high school on that first team with similar stories and the same belief that they were building something. And by and large, that’s exactly what we did.

While we didn’t win a lot of games early on, the UAB soccer program grew into a national contender by the end of the ’90s, and the football team eventually went Division I. Yes, they took some major lumps along the way, but they also had a few big wins in the early going—Mississippi State, Missouri, and an LSU team coached by Nick Saban.

So… About Today

I understand this is a lot of backstory, but it’s my blog, and it’s setting up my thoughts on the current state of UAB’s athletic department.

In short, I’m disgusted.

Most eyes are on the terrible state of the football program, and for good reason. The miracle Bill Clark pulled off, bringing UAB back two years after the program was shut down, has all but been squandered by two-and-a-half years under Trent Dilfer. I took my family to see the Blazers play Tulane in 2024, but left at halftime after enduring some of the worst football I’ve ever witnessed. (UAB lost that game 71–20, by the way.)

For Blazer games, our brand-new stadium—Protective Stadium—is lying to waste, drawing crowds smaller than some high schools. Now, with the recent stabbing of two players by a teammate just hours before a game, I wonder if the program should be shut down again, this time for good. I can't imagine what my friends who played football at UAB in the early days are thinking, watching this debacle unfold.

Basketball and Soccer: Not Terrible, But Not What They Were

The basketball team has been reasonably successful under Andy Kennedy. As of this writing, he has a record of 127–52 and has led the Blazers to two NCAA Tournaments and four consecutive conference championship games. However, the program doesn’t seem to have the juice it had back in the Gene Bartow heydays of the 1980s and ’90s.

The soccer team has been reasonably successful as well, but it has lost what made the program special. Both coaches I played under - Mick Payne and Mike Getman -were genuinely interested in developing the sport in Alabama and recruiting local players. They appreciated the efforts players like me put into the program’s early days.

Under Getman’s tenure, he would tag former players on Facebook under his personal page and the UAB Soccer account, wishing them happy birthday. For years, I would see a post wishing “Blazer great, Loyd McIntosh” a happy birthday. I always chuckled at that phrase because I wasn’t great by any means. I’ve told both coaches over the years that I had no business being on a Division I soccer program, and both of them admonished me—telling me straight up that I was a good player, that I earned my spot on the roster, and that my teammates and I were the foundation the program was built on.

Today, I couldn’t pick out the new coach in a police lineup. A quick scan of the current roster shows one player from Birmingham, one from Montgomery, and one from Georgia. The rest are international players. If there is any community involvement, I can’t see it.

The Uncomfortable Question

I hate to say this, having bled for the green and gold—literally and figuratively—but I’m going to ask this question anyway:

When it comes to UAB athletics, why should I care anymore?