It was a dentist office, and that’s not meant to be read figuratively.

As in, the old UAB “football facility” that was demolitioned this week was so cramped and sterile and unwelcoming that it felt like a dentist office. No. The UAB football facility — the old one; the one where the old team was extracted from existence like a decaying tooth — was literally a dentist office … from the mid-20th century.

Could anything be more uninviting?

Listed, from most unenjoyably welcoming to symobolic torture chamber of despair: haunted houses, the county dump, Greyhound bathrooms, the old home of UAB football/1970s root canals.

Most people dread their visits to the dentist’s office, but that’s the place UAB football called home for decades. Imagine trying to recruit someone to either play or coach for UAB inside an old dentist office.

Hey, perspective recruit, now that you’ve seen the worst facility in the Football Bowl Subdivision and the utility shed we converted into a locker room, let’s go take a look at … Legion Field!

No wonder UAB couldn’t land anything better than a two-star recruit before the shutdown and rebirth of the program. (Yep, both J.J. Nelson and Joe Webb were two-star recruits.)

The dentist office was the first thing many visitors of UAB saw on campus when they turned off I-65 and onto University Boulevard. Imagine going to work in that place every day. Watson Brown, you’re a saint. Pat Sullivan, you’re a Birmingham treasure and deserved better.

Those two guys beat Nick Saban and LSU out of that building. How in the world?

That eyesore was the front door of a university that is (a) that state’s largest employer, (b) one of the top research universities in the Southeast and (c) ranked the top young (50 years and under) university in the country for two years in a row.

Last Saturday, former UAB football players were the first people to learn that the old dentist office and auxiliary shed/locker room were coming down. They waited so long for that day. Immediately, everyone wanted to give a donation for a commemorative brick.

On Monday, under the cover of darkness, a demolition crew began ripping and tearing that old shop out of the earth to make way for the new front door of UAB. I’m sure UAB president Ray Watts and UAB football coach Bill Clark have some ideas about what to put there, but let’s just hope it’s something worthy of representing a university that saved a city and launched it into a new era of progress.

Anyone visited UAB’s campus in the last two years? New buildings are going up all over the place. The university is also constructing a 17-story residential tower in the Five Points South entertainment district. I’m assuming the med students will avoid the place and leave it for the English majors.

It’s no coincidence the campus is thriving now that football is back, and the team’s potential is just beginning to be untapped.

The new football facility is going on its third season, and the Southside Dragons haven’t lost a home game since operating out of their new digs. UAB won Conference USA and its first bowl game in its second season back. They had to build a new trophy case for all the hardware this offseason.

This week, players slept on air mattresses in between two-a-day practices. UAB opens with Alabama State on Thursday, Aug. 29, at Legion Field. It will be a party.

And here’s the best news for the Blazers. This is the penultimate season for UAB at Legion Field. The biggest construction project of all is underway in the middle downtown’s entertainment district. UAB’s new football stadium will be finished in time for the 2021 season.

UAB is poised to be the best Group of 5 football program in the country, and if it continues on this trajectory it will be. Don’t ever forget it took pulling some mighty big teeth to get here.

Joseph Goodman is a columnist for the Alabama Media Group. He’s on Twitter @JoeGoodmanJr.