http://www.al.com/sports/index.ssf/2017/...=hootsuite
"It's a wolf in sheep's clothing," says UAB athletic director Mark Ingram. "They are trying to buy what they think is a win."
Ingram understands why he's so popular with Power 5 ADs these days: They think the freshly resurrected Blazers are easy prey. The benefit of the perception the UAB program will need years to rebuild is Power 5 schools are willing to pay more. It has allowed UAB to only play one guarantee game a year after generally playing two annually before the 2014 shutdown. UAB plays Florida this year, Texas A&M next year and Tennessee in 2019.
"I can make the College Football Playoff, but the likelihood of me making the College Football Playoff is extraordinarily slim. What's a victory for a Conference USA school? It's a bowl game," Ingram says. "My funding model requires us to play one of these guarantee games, but if I can play one instead of two, that's an enormous lift for us. It gives me one more game to get to six wins."
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UAB head coach Bill Clark seemingly has the most laid back approach of the five in-state FBS head coaches about non-conference scheduling, letting Ingram handle the majority of it on his own.
"I'll say to Bill we need a guarantee game in 2022, here are the teams available and looking for a game," Ingram says. "I'll ask, 'Do you care?' And normally for the guarantee games, he doesn't really care."
Clark did influence UAB's decision to play Texas A&M in 2018 instead of Oregon. The idea of playing at Oregon and getting West Coast exposure was attractive to university leaders, but Clark reminded Ingram that his program doesn't recruit out there and would be better served to play in Texas. Not only is UAB more likely to recruit a Texas recruit than an Oregon one, the opportunity to play on SEC Network, which is widely available in UAB's geographic base, was far more advantageous than being on the Pac-12 Network which has long had distribution problems.
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When UAB announced in June 2015 it would bring its football program back, Ingram was handed a blank canvas. The school had already bought its way out of its scheduled games and had to start building a schedule as soon as possible. The UAB AD has games scheduled through 2020, including a 2019-20 series against South Alabama, but his general philosophy has been to not schedule too far into the future. He's betting prices for guarantee games will keep rising, providing plenty of financial incentive to be patient. All it takes is one guarantee game to fall through to force a Power 5 school scrambling and willing to pay big money at the last minute. In that scenario, UAB could be the prettiest girl still at the bar at last call.
There are plenty of risks with that. If Saban's pitch that Power 5 schools only play each other ever came to fruition, it'd cripple schools banking on the big guarantee game payday. Similarly, if Power 5 conferences moved to nine conference games, it'd eliminate hundreds of opportunities for Group of 5 schools. It could pay to have deals locked up far into the next decade if Power 5 conferences ever did that.
"None of us know what the landscape will look like," Ingram admits. "If any of those leagues go to more conference games, that will change things. Good or bad, I don't know."
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Talty: How Alabama schools build their non-conference football schedules
