The unofficial online home for fans of the UAB Blazers. Part of Collegiate Sports Nation (CSN).

Dear Dr. Watts,

On Tuesday afternoon, I did your job. I stood outside the UAB Football Building and I shook the hand of every player who exited, looked them in the eye, and either thanked them or apologized to them.

They were all so very, very young. Some were not yet shaving. Some had acne. Most were crying. All of them had just been betrayed. By you.

Now, I am not a leader of UAB; I’m not even an employee anymore. I’m simply an alumnus, some middle-aged white guy the players had never seen before who insisted on speaking to them. But they did, and they were gracious. They did not scream, they did not curse, they did not rage against injustice. They represented my university with nobility and courage.

I saw actual leaders on that day. I saw Dusty Davis, team chaplain, give comfort and support with a strength of purpose that could only have come from some other presence. I saw Tim Alexander. I saw Bill Clarke. I saw Ty Long.

I did not see you. Well, not until you scurried out the building’s back door, surrounded by a phalanx of armed guards. I watched as your pudgy stormtroopers flung young women to the ground to clear your escape path. I saw utter hatred in the eyes of those you swore an oath to lead.

I could go on, but you’ve probably gotten the point by now. I was going continue by praising Hill and McCallum and calling you a pale shadow, and follow on, maybe in a separate essay, demolishing the laughably transparent lies in your letter to the “UAB Family” (you know, like taking credit for Garrison’s projects, or your inability to define a single one of these awesome future plans, and by the way, did Ty Long not tell you clearly that you are not allowed to use that word?).

But you’re expecting that so let’s skip to the real issue. Where I formerly considered you merely incompetent, I have come to the conclusion that you’re just plain evil. And I know evil. I’ve met evil and looked it in the face.

And when I saw you address Tristan Henderson, I saw that look in your face as well.

I’m not talking about a policy difference here, Ray. You are not fit to lead others in any capacity. You have no empathy, you have no honor, you have no shame.

Sir, you may not realize it, but you are a sociopath. Let’s look at the 16 signs of sociopathy as defined by Hervey Cleckley:

1. Superficial charm and good "intelligence."

I would say you meet this one, but so do many others.

2. Absence of delusions and other signs of irrational thinking.

Cleckley means that you do not appear superficially mentally ill to the layman, and while you meet this, again, so do many others.

3. Absence of "nervousness" or psychoneurotic manifestations.

Again, you show no outward symptoms.

4. Unreliability.

I think you qualify.

5. Untruthfulness and insincerity.

Oh my. You’re way past the max on this one. Forty-two years at UAB? So you made up your MD degree and lab work at Emory? Or are you really 81 years old? Or did you mean to say, “I lied my ass off” rather than "worked," and you just mis-spoke?

6. Lack of remorse or shame.

Yes, this would definitely describe you.

7. Inadequately motivated antisocial behavior

Again, that’s you all right.

8. Poor judgment and failure to learn by experience

You realize that you told a combat veteran that your desk experience at a medical school, exaggerated desk jockeying at that, trumps the horrors he’s lived, right? That one shocked even me.

9. Pathologic egocentricity and incapacity for love.

Definite on the first one (see above). Yes, you worked hard. Do you get that all of us with UAB degrees from the commuter days worked hard? I don’t think I had any classmates who didn’t work a real job, too, and sometimes two or three.

On the second, I know what I mean when I say I love UAB. You would not be capable of your recent actions if you meant the same. So I’m going to mark this one a yes.

10. General poverty in major affective reactions

You certainly met this one on that football meeting video.

11. Specific loss of insight

Oh my yes.

12. Unresponsiveness in general interpersonal relations

If you treat everyone like you did Tristan Henderson, then you max out here, too.

13. Fantastic and uninviting behavior with drink and sometimes without

I just don’t know. You look like a man who likes the booze, but looks can deceive.

14. Suicide rarely carried out

My Catholic faith forbids my following up on this one. My thoughts alone will bear heavy penance.

15. Sex life impersonal, trivial, and poorly integrated

I do not know, nor do I wish to.

16. Failure to follow any life plan

Now this one is definitely not you. You have a plan. It sickens me, but it’s still a plan.


Dr. Watts, you are not a well man. A well man does not act as you do on that video. You do not need to be serving as UAB’s president. Rather, you need to be seeking the mental health treatment that you desperately need. I have no psychiatric training, but I am absolutely certain that you are not fit, by reasons of either mental health or performance, to serve as president of UAB. For your own good, and that of UAB, please resign your post immediately.

That is just plain nuts...That was another funny one. We could all use a few good laughs after this mess.

This is beautifully written. As an aside, I recently read a summary of a study that indicated many CEOs of larger organizations have a tendency towards sociopathic behavior. Since he clearly is attempting to treat an educational institution as a for-profit enterprise, it's safe to assume that he at least thinks of himself as the CEO of UAB. Easy step from there to the sociopathic behavior you've outlined.

(12-04-2014 03:01 AM)Doktyr X Wrote:  That is just plain nuts...That was another funny one. We could all use a few good laughs after this mess.

I'm not laughing in the slightest. That's not a normal person in those meeting room videos, indifferent to that much raw emotion or maybe even enjoying it. No one who shows behavior like this needs to be involved in education in any capacity.

Understand the need to express what is inside. Very much. Hence this place. Yet it is way too late for letters. The only thing that matters now are masses and dollars.

I hope he reads this, believes it and ODs on whiskey and sleeping pills trying to forget it.

"Nobody loves UAB more than me" - and yet you did nothing to stop this. Nothing to lead. Did nothing to support. You never gave it a fighting chance.

Here's the chain of logic (it's not purely an outpouring of emotion):

1. Ray Watts is not fit for his job. Whether he meets a clinical definition or not, he shows way too many signs to be given such a huge public trust. When you put the meeting video together with the building exit, and then look at the press conference, what, 30 minutes later, where he's totally unruffled. It's uncanny. Clark couldn't carry on with his own press conference, of course he's closer to it, but Watts shows zero reaction. That's not normal.

2. Next question would be: if he's so manifestly unfit, that is, you can tell he should never have had the job just by looking at him, how did he get there? You don't just wander into an $850,000 a year job. Well, there was an impressive search committee. Did they not notice during interviews and background checks and discussions with his references, co-workers etc.?

3. And here it gets troubling. The whispers are out there that there was no search. That the committee was informed that Ray Watts would be their choice. No fervent discussions of different candidates' merits, no checking with recommenders etc. I do not know for sure that this is true, but I've heard it in multiple places and it merits deeper investigation. I would like to know for sure: what happened in that search committee?

4. And thus we come to SACS. SACS does not care about football, or about manifestly unfit university presidents (well, maybe a little about the latter). They do care very much about the holy process of selection. And they will review UAB in February, and all it takes is one of the search committee members to pull one of the reviewers aside and say, "you know, there's something else ..." Or to decide to answer the questions of a probing reporter. The list of search committee members is a public record; in fact, it was re-posted here on Blazertalk.

5. So, if UAB's committee did not pick Ray Watts - and these are not stupid people, or inexperienced, so I have a hard time imagining they would have missed these signs in a real search - who did?

6. And then it gets really interesting.

You may have just found the chink in their armor. Start drafting those NDAs you heartless motherfers!

Did you actually mail this letter to that sleazebag? Damn!I agree with every word of it, for what it's worth.

In all seriousness, the BOT as a group may have a group mental disorder. I say that because I have been to a few of their meetings. It is really kind of creepy. They act like a collective, not individuals. Someone reads the minutes of the last meeting. After that, they start voting on agenda items; nobody ever asks to add or strike items from the agenda. Someone read the motion description, PBJ asks for discussion, there is sometimes a clarification, then silence for a moment, and PBJ calls for a vote. He says "all in favor" and every hand goes up. "All opposed" - silence, no hands go up. "Motion passes" and it goes on like that for a few hours. Every motion on the agenda passes with a unanimous vote. No dissent or open opposition to anything.

Matrix - am I right?

Its a well-oiled Machine, huh?

(12-04-2014 12:43 PM)UAB Band Dad Wrote:  Its a well-oiled (i.e. monies changing hands, conjugal back-scratcing, etc.) Machine, huh?

EIFY (Elucidated it for you)

It's not called the machine out of artistic taste

I did not choose that word at random.

"Welcome to the Machine" - Pink Floyd, great song.

It may very well be that after two centuries of supporting institutions and practices that were , at least in principle, anti American, anti democratic and violated the premises set forth by the "Founding Fathers" in all major national documents, Alabama has become an example of just what we fought to defeat in so many wars. "We have met the enemy and he is us".