managing@insideuab.com
The UAB Band performed at the "Finish the Drive" fundraiser rally on Tuesday, August 18. (Photo by Stephanie Lockhart)Hatton Smith, head of national accounts and food service for Royal Cup Coffee, had his staffers throwing small green plastic footballs throughout Alumni Hall at UAB's Alumni House. They were flying wildly throughout the conference room; some hitting inattentive patrons in the head, and in one case, clanging loudly from a sousaphone.The footballs were adorned with information on the return of UAB football, and because of the symbology, found themselves being held high above the heads of cheering UAB fans as the band played and the Golden Girls danced through the narrow aisles of Alumni Hall.
“Finish the Drive” was a meeting held Tuesday, August 18, for the benefit of UAB's donors in order to rouse donations towards facilities and general team welfare throughout the athletics department. With Smith personally greeting many attendees and leading the band, the event was designed to invigorate UAB football supporters in the wake of an announcement that there was only one month to reach the donation goals and close a $2 million dollar gap.
They got $2.2 million.
“This is a great achievement on the part of all the UAB backers,” said Smith on the amount of donations the University received.
As the chair of the UAB Athletics Campaign Committee, Smith was instrumental in the machinations leading up to the announcement of intent to bring back the three shuttered UAB athletics programs.
The athletics department cited a dearth of funds as the main reason for the decision to cancel the football, bowling and rifle programs, but after receiving pledges for donations that seemed to be sufficient, the program was reinstated on June 1 under the premise that the pledges would be fulfilled. When the announcement was made on June 1, people promised to pay in increments over five years, but there was no hard deadline for people to start getting the pledges into UAB Athletics.
“Every individual is different on how they give philanthropic gifts,” said UAB Athletics Director Mark Ingram to Kscope. “Some people were very specific on when they wanted to give their gift, others did not specify at all.”
With this lack of deadline in mind, many were caught off-guard by an email from UAB President Ray Watts released to donors, faculty, staff and students on August 14 calling for the first payments to be turned in no later than September 1 if the process of reinstatement were to continue according to plan.
“[...]We request that donors make initial payments on their pledges by September 1, 2015,” said Watts in the e-mail. “In addition, we will be seeking advance pledge payments on Jan. 15, 2016, and July 1, 2016, for those who are able to help us stay ahead of the curve.”
Why was this date created? President Watts referred to the October 1 budget approval. However, another signatory on the letter had a different answer to the question.
“We are responding to trustee requests,” said Smith in an email referring to the University of Alabama System Board of Trustees.
“We are responding to trustee requests,” said Smith in an email referring to the University of Alabama System Board of Trustees.
Smith claims that the request for donations was handed down from the top, but according to Ingram, no such request was made.
“No. No. No. We..No, that’s a date that we set. The general masses don’t totally know how much effort was put in by some of the donors to try to raise money...there was a ton of work put in by a lot of people to try to get that fundraising effort completed, which is $17 point almost three million dollars,” said Ingram. “Understanding and recognizing the magnitude of that decision, then we started the reinstatement process with the NCAA and Conference USA to maintain our BCS level and be able to come back as a full member of the league, to be able to have all of our other teams remain in the league and so on... It sounds pretty simple, but there was a lot of things involved there.”
“No. No. No. We..No, that’s a date that we set."
Ingram went on to state that the deadline moving up was a conscious decision on the part of UAB athletics in order to present a show of good faith to C-USA during a presentation sometime in mid-September. The letter was designed to elicit donations to prove to the conference that UAB fans were serious about showing their support for the return of athletics.
According to Smith, the committee to bring back football received a bit of criticism on the letter that Watts sent out, in which he also served as a signatory.
“Maybe we could have been simpler or made some more plain language about why we needed the money,” said Smith. “But in the end, I don’t think we did because everybody came to know within 30 days why that letter went out.”
The “Finish the Drive” fundraising kickoff was a rapid response to the letter designed to convince donors to move up their payments. At that meeting, Athletics Director Mark Ingram made his intentions for the upcoming fiscal year clear to everyone in attendance and those following the event through Kscope’s social media coverage.
“Our intention is to renovate every facility that we have into a new facility for every single one of our sports teams,” said Ingram.
These plans include:
-The construction of a new football operations building and a new practice field, nestled within a brand new track being built for the track team.
-Renovating Wallace Gymnasium for a Men's and Women's basketball practice facility and for a future home for a Women's Volleyball practice facility.
-A Bartow Arena renovation to add suites in addition to a renovation of the concourse and restrooms.
-The addition of press boxes, seating and locker rooms around BBVA Compass field, the new Soccer facility for both the Men’s and Women’s teams.
-Baseball and Softball clubhouse, which consists of locker rooms and office space, next to the hitting facility where they practice.
-The construction of a Men's and Women's tennis stadium. Six Courts are needed to meet NCAA competition qualifications, but the new stadium would have twelve.
-Renovation of the Beach Volleyball stadium, north of Bartow Arena and Wallace Gym, taking the facility from three sand courts to five.
How much is all of this going to cost? The only dollar figure given at the ceremony was $15 Million for the new football operations facility and the renovations to the football practice field and track.
No dollar figures were given by Ingram in his speech on any of the six other projects, and no indication was given on where the athletics department hoped to source the money, other than the kindness of donors, like Steve DeMedicis, owner of Iron City that was touted as having given a significant contribution to the new track at the “Finish the Drive” ceremony. Other donors that have made their presences felt in the past are local Birmingham businesses, and the Birmingham City Council, which has pledged to donate $500,000 dollars annually to the school’s athletics program.
Ingram has stated to KScope that the reason that the dollar figures were not announced at the initial ceremony was because the overall figures have not been quite nailed down just yet.
“Approximately it’s about $55 million in facilities, that $15 for football is part of that $55...As we get closer to each project we’ll figure how much we need,” said Ingram.
In addition to new practice facilities for many of the teams, UAB’s marching band also received a promise for practice time on the new turf field being built in order to host practices by UAB’s new football team.
According to UAB Marching Band member and Senior Pre-Nursing major Logan Harbin, the facility upgrades are a welcome improvement, but it is a sort of bittersweet victory for the squad.
“I personally see it from both sides of the spectrum, if I was somebody who had pledged the money I would be upset if I had it budgeted out to pay in January and not this soon in September, said Harbin. “From the admin standpoint, I see having the money in sooner would be helpful in starting the facility upgrades needed to come back more competitive than ever.”
In addition to the successful fundraising efforts over the past month, there is another improvement for UAB Athletics possibly on the horizon.
In a phone conversation this past Saturday, Hatton Smith told Kscope that a new football stadium was at the discussion stages, and unless a private donor emerged, the school would be partnering with the BJCC to possibly build the stadium in the Uptown district. At this point, the talk of building the stadium is still not concrete, but it would fit Ingram’s plan to increase the overall competitiveness of the Athletics program by updating every facility.
According to Smith, a partnership with the BJCC would prevent the costs of a new stadium from being passed on to the students, so tuition would not be affected. The rest of the money is expected to be provided by the yearly fundraising goals.
Ingram told Kscope that any meetings and plans for a new stadium would have been the product of a coalition of local business owners like Hatton Smith, who would be out on their own in regards to making the deals and plans happen, but that UAB Athletics was open to the idea.
“We’ve had some very high level discussions,” said Ingram. “We are open minded about it..we are absolutely open minded about being a partner or tenant to the city.”
Throughout the process of renovation and updating facilities, UAB Athletics has often asked for donations by giving the impression that the money was an issue hindering their competitiveness.
Given these talks, the student body has formed a few opinions on the official announcements of UAB’s finances, mainly due to the fundraising letter sent out to the entire student body in which the deadline for donations was announced.
“In a way, if it’s a way to get the sports department back on their side or on their feet, I guess it would be a good advancement,” said Eli Foree a sophomore marketing major. “One thing that confused me about all of this is that...we were told last year was ‘budget, budget, budget’ but for some reason we can afford all of this now? So that’s a big question I have….But I’m in complete approval for it.”
Depending on who is asked, the budget for UAB Athletics is doing either relatively well, or quite poorly.
The website of the Office of Postsecondary Education, ope.ed.gov, has financial data on file for every college athletics organization in the country for the 2013-2014 fiscal year. In that year, the most recent on file and the one proceeding our current year, UAB spent a grand total of $30,381,988 on athletics. The school drew in a grand total of $31,018,623 in revenue, meaning that the Athletics Department found itself operating at a surplus of $636,635.
The surplus of $636,635 is higher than many of UAB’s competitors in Conference USA, of which none have talked about cancelling any athletics programs. According to ope.ed.gov, Florida International University presented a surplus of $561,143 last year.The University of Texas at El Paso reported their surplus as only $123,774. and Louisiana Tech University was dwarfed by UAB’s profits at $38,685.
That’s not to say that it is the highest, as the University of North Texas reported a $4.8 Million dollar profit. Middle Tennessee State netted a $1.4 Million surplus this past year, and University of North Carolina-Charlotte is right behind UAB at a profit of $622,545.
When asked about the state of the general revenue profit seen under the previous Athletics Director Brain Mackin, Ingram seemed to be unaware of the publicly available numbers.
“I’ve not seen that, that was made over a year ago,” said Ingram. “That would have ended a year, I’m not clear on that….I don’t know. I don’t know."
Casey Marley contributed to this report.
