Unsurprising news out of Birmingham today as the UAB student body overwhelmingly approved a $25 student fee increase to properly support the reinstatement of Blazer football in a vote that never should've been necessary in the first place.

Around 4,000 students voted in the special resolution, and 84.1% of them voted yes for the fee increase. Which, hey, let's look at the approval rate with which UAB's Student Government Association, which was already supposed to represent the interests of the student body anyway, voted for the resolution supporting the student fee increase.

19 in favor, 3 against, or an 86.3% approval rating. Boy, it was sure necessary to determine that the SGA doesn't represent the wishes a whopping 2.5% of UAB's student body, wasn't it Ray Watts?

Of course, we already knew that the UAB community was overwhelmingly in favor of both reinstating UAB football and keeping it in the first place. Today's vote was just a speed bump to reinstatement.

But it was nice of UAB Athletic Director Mark Ingram, who had previously been all but mum on the matter, to show up to encourage students to vote yes. Hopefully this means that he really is in the corner of properly supporting football from an institutional perspective and isn't the Ray Watts puppet some #FreeUAB partisans have suggested he is.

Now, we normally try and keep things relatively impartial and call it like it is from our perspective, and not #FreeUAB's. But I believe I speak for most of Underdog Dynasty's staff when I say the following:

Sit down, Board of Trustees.

Sit down, Ray Watts.

UAB football is coming back, and the community will support it more than ever thanks to your malevolent incompetence. By creating PR disaster after PR disaster, you've made all Blazers hyper-vigilant to any moves that might be considered part of a "death by a thousand cuts" strategy to kill football all over again. Any chances of you hoodwinking the UAB community once again with few noticing is nil. They will hold your feet to the flames if you try any shenanigans again, and so will we.

So just sit back and support the program like any competent administration would do, or at least get out of the way. Let the Blazers succeed or fail on their own terms, not yours. It's the least that UAB deserves.