Given the upside-down story of U.A.B., it figures that the Blazers led Conference USA in scoring defense (17.3 points a game) yet did not have a player named to the league’s first-team defense. The sophomore running back Spencer Brown was a star with 1,149 yards rushing, but many accept that the real star is Clark, the Eddie Robinson National Coach of the Year. He was the coach when the program folded in 2014, and he revived it by furiously recruiting junior college players for immediate help.

Smith said many saw the shuttering of U.A.B. football as another failure for Birmingham. The city has scrubbed at the permanent stain left by menacing police dogs and fire hoses turned on civil rights protesters in the 1960s and the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in 1963, which killed four girls. Birmingham, once on par with Nashville and Atlanta, fell far behind its rivals in size and economic development.

“The city has had a crisis of self-confidence, so the loss of U.A.B. football added to that,” said Smith, 68. “We had a failed football program in the heartland of football fever. It was a total slap in the face of Birmingham. We can do better than run a white flag up.”

Birmingham certainly has problems that a college football program cannot fix. The poverty rate is 28.1 percent compared with 12.3 over all in the United States, according to 2017 Census Bureau data. A 2017 school board candidate’s website deplored the statistic that just 8.2 percent of the city’s eighth graders were proficient in reading and math.

Watts made it clear in the months after his decision that if sufficient money was raised, he would consider restoring the program, which began in 1991 as part of N.C.A.A. Division III. Watts said he heard the doubts about the validity of a report he used as evidence to shut down the program, so he commissioned a second report, which he said cost U.A.B. about $75,000.