(07-02-2015 04:04 PM)airtroop Wrote:  

(07-02-2015 11:38 AM)CajunFanatico Wrote:  

(07-02-2015 11:02 AM)Usajags Wrote:  The article says they have raised $17m and need another $13m for the facility upgrades. That is asking a lot from a fan base that is has seemed to reach "donation fatigue". And this is for a program that is currently not looking at playing a game until the third season from now.

I also see CBC not getting a new contract until these numbers are met. No reason to have a contract and have to pay a coach for a team that doesn't exist. As long as he doesn't have a new contract, UAb is not playing football.

A classic Catch 22.......we're not going to commit to a longterm coaching contract until we're sure the money's there......and we're not going to donate our hard-earned dollars until we're sure we've got a coach.

UAB football fans have a long row to hoe.

YUP. This reminds me in a lot of ways of the time USA spent tens of thousands of dollars on a Carr feasibility report at the turn of the century (yeah, the same "Carr Sports" UAB hired to tell them to drop football). The BOA at the time (all bleeding crimson for the most part) hired them to appease we Jags fans who were screaming for USA Football and of course, we got what we should have expected.

Carr comes back and recommends USA do a "season ticket drive" to gauge community interest in a football program and IF successful, implement a NON-SCHOLARSHIP D-IAA football program to begin with and join the Pioneer League. This was enough for many of us to "bite", including myself, who worked closely with the athletic department to make something happen. My part in the process was as a marketing consultant, donating many hours of my time for absolutely FREE.

First thing I told the AD at the time was "We need a coach. Even if not on salary, let's give the season ticket holders a name and a face IF we were able to sell 4k (I believe it was?) season tickets. The AD agreed and ran it up the flagpole to the Tide fans in charge. He called me within an hour and told me they said "NO!" Next, I said "Well, let's tap your 20+ thousand national alumni base with a professional call center who is willing to work FOR FREE just so they can put "University Of South Alabama" on their resume?" The AD agreed. He called me back within an hour and told me the Roll-Tide-Rolls had again said "NO!"

Instead, they had a couple of students volunteering to tap the alumni base one by one with a very short time frame remaining in our "Season Ticket Drive". Had they said "YES" to the professional call center, located right in the City of Mobile, they could've tapped all 20+ thousand within days... but NOPE!

So what happened is we fell behind the QUOTED number of season ticket holders goal (I believe we had generated only about 2500 paid holders) because it was hard to get people to buy into a conceptual, POSSIBLE football team with no coach who would be willing to sign a cheap contract were we to achieve the Tide fans' impossible "goal" (under the circumstances and handcuffs).

This is what I sense is going on at UAB (I hope I'm wrong!). You'd be surprised just how much BS goes on behind the scenes in a deceptive, doomed to fail scheme. It sure smells the same to me.

I thought it was 6k. There was NO advertising for that drive anywhere. I didn't see any commercials. Nothing on the news. The only place I ever heard it mentioned was at basketball games.