The clock hangs just outside the office of UAB head football coach Bill Clark, an ever-present electronic reminder counting down the days--second by second--until the Blazers' 2017 season-opener September 2 at Legion Field. Common in college football offices throughout the nation, these countdown clocks serve to motivate the team toward the upcoming season.

The difference with the one at UAB is that when it was first installed, the number of days until kickoff--displayed in bright red--was nearly 600. That figure was so high because after the UAB program was shut down for financial reasons following the 2014 season and then reinstated six months later, it was determined that the

Blazers would need two full offseasons for player recruitment and preparation before taking the field again.

"I almost didn't put [the clock] up at first, because of how many days away it was," Clark says with a chuckle. "I thought, 'Why are we reminding ourselves that we have to practice and prepare for that long with no games to play?' But I kept telling everybody to be patient, and before we know it we're going to look up and that clock is going to be at zero."

That moment is almost here. After a two-season absence, UAB football is back and better than ever, at least off the playing field. With newfound enthusiasm from both fans and the business community, approximately $40 million has been raised in support of the program, funds that led to the creation of a new multi-purpose football building, as well as a covered practice field.

The team's return to action coincides with the revival of the city the Blazers call home. From Regions Field to Railroad Park, from Avondale to the Rotary Trail, Birmingham has been on a winning streak in recent years. And for many people, keeping UAB on the football field was important not only for university, but also for maintaining the city's positive momentum.

"When you lose something, it stings," says Royal Cup Coffee CEO emeritus Hatton Smith, one of several area business leaders who helped raise funds for the program's reinstatement. "There was this perception that Birmingham couldn't even support a local college football team. That hurt. There was a kickback in the community against that.

"[The program's return] was an immense victory for our city. It shows that Birmingham has a bright future. And it gives us confidence. If we can do this, then what's next?"

So how did UAB football reach this point of importance and newfound popularity, especially in a state where the football focus rarely extends beyond Alabama and Auburn? Here is a quick look at the history of the program.



First Quarter: The Beginning

A basketball man was responsible for the birth of UAB football.

When Gene Bartow was hired by the University of Alabama at Birmingham in 1977, he was given the title of Athletic Director and charged with overseeing the implementation of the school's entire sports department. But make no mistake, Bartow's primary task was to coach basketball. After all, he had been lured away from UCLA--one of the most prestigious programs in college hoops--just two years after leading the Bruins to the NCAA Tournament's Final Four.

This was a basketball-lifer hired to do a basketball job. And he did it extraordinarily well, lifting the fledgling Blazers to national prominence in the 1980s with seven consecutive trips to the NCAA Tournament. But along the way, the athletic director kept having a nagging thought. He wondered why a large university like UAB that was located in a football-crazy state shouldn't have a football program of its own.

Others, including then-university president Charles McCallum, gradually agreed. So, in 1989, UAB formed a club football program with Dr. Jim Hilyer--strength-and-conditioning coach and School of Medicine professor--serving as its head coach. The team moved up to the NCAA-sanctioned, non-scholarship Division III level in 1991, then jumped into Division I-AA scholarship football just two years later.

Suddenly, only four years after the formation of the club program, UAB football was just one step below the level of the Tide and the Tigers. But while the Blazers might have been close to their in-state brethren on paper, they were nowhere near equal footing in terms of facilities and support.

There are some amazing stories from those early years, and as a former sportswriter for the Birmingham Post-Herald who covered UAB at that time, I can

attest that most of them are true. Yes, the on-campus locker room for the team was so small that players had to get dressed in shifts before practice. Same thing for the training room, leading many players to get their ankles and wrists taped while sitting in the back of a pickup truck parked next to the practice field.

There were players who arrived at the practice field wearing scrubs, having just finished working at UAB Hospital as part of their medical school training. Others had to leave practice early in order to get to their night jobs.

There were no true offices for the coaches, and the practice field was shared with various intramural teams. I once played a game of Ultimate Frisbee on the field--kicking up divots with my cleats--moments before the football team arrived for practice.

Yet despite all these obstacles, Hilyer led the Blazers to a 27-12-2 record in his four seasons as head coach. He stepped aside when it was announced that the program was moving up a level once again, to top-tier Division I-A, just in time for the 1996 season. Watson Brown, the former head coach at Vanderbilt, was brought in to try to duplicate in football what Gene Bartow had done years earlier in basketball.



Second Quarter: The Rise

To understand the task facing the Blazers in the mid-1990s, consider this tidbit. In 1992, UAB's Division III non-scholarship team played a home game at tiny Lawson Field (which is usually used for high schools) against Gallaudet University, a college for the deaf and hard of hearing.

Just four years later, the Blazers made their Division I-A debut, taking on the Auburn Tigers in front of 80,000 people at Jordan-Hare Stadium. The fact that UAB lost only 29-0 and kept the game reasonably close into the fourth quarter was sort of a victory for the Blazers.

The program experienced several major milestones throughout the next 10 seasons, including a stunning 13-10 victory in 2000 over LSU, which was coached at that time by none other than famed Alabama head coach Nick Saban.

In 2004, the Blazers got off to a 5-1 start and were ranked No. 24 in the nation in the Bowl Championship Series Standings, the program's first appearance in any national poll or rankings. They ended the year with their inaugural post-season bowl appearance, in Hawaii.

But even as the team showed progress on the field, their situation off the field barely changed. There were a few improvements in the facilities, but for the most part, a feeling of stagnation began to hit the program, and Brown left after the team went 3-9 in 2006.

"We had it going there for a while," Brown told me several years later. "We were close to getting really good. We just needed a little something more."



Third Quarter: The Fall

Instead of moving forward, the program took several huge strides backward. There were a total of nine consecutive losing seasons, and attendance at Legion Field for home games rarely reached 10,000 people. The team was not winning and--even worse--had become basically irrelevant, even in Birmingham.

Briefly, new life was injected into the program with the hiring in 2014 of Clark, an Alabama native who brought an air of enthusiasm with him from Jacksonville State. But after the Blazers went 6-6 for their first non-losing season in 10 years, it was announced that the university was shutting down the program. UAB football would be no more, becoming the first Division I team in the nation to disband in nearly 20 years.

And then something unexpected happened. People within the Birmingham community began to protest the decision. Loudly. Students and fans and a few local politicians took up the cause. Demonstrations were held on campus and chants reverberated through Bartow Arena during UAB basketball games. The rabble had been roused, and they were determined to be heard.

"We wanted to keep it in front of everybody's face," says UAB graduate student Timothy Alexander, who helped organize several of the rallies. "We fed students just to get them together. We took them to the state capitol. We worked with the SGA president. Wherever the camera was, we wanted to be there. We might not have had money, but we all had different resources to keep it active."

This sudden passion being demonstrated for the football program caught the attention of those who do have money, and plans began to be made for the Blazers to complete the ultimate Hail Mary pass.

"Other people kept it alive at first," Smith says, "and then the business community stepped up and coalesced in a way it really hadn't before."



Fourth Quarter: The Comeback

A number of prominent business leaders met for breakfast at the Birmingham Country Club one spring morning in 2015 to discuss the financial situation facing the UAB football program, and what they could do to help. Within days, they already had lined up $4 million in pledges.

"There were people who didn't go to the games who still thought UAB should have a football program," says Craft O'Neal, chairman and CEO of Birmingham-based O'Neal Industries. "We're in the Deep South, and we felt like football is important for UAB undergraduate growth."

There are some statistics to back that up. After the announcement was made that UAB was ending the program, the school's first-time freshman class dropped from 1,748 in 2014 to 1,621 in 2015. Then, after the program was reinstated, the 2016 class jumped 24.7 percent to a total of 2,021, the largest in UAB history.

What does that mean for the city? Well, according to the Birmingham Business Alliance, it is estimated that for every 1,000 UAB students, there is a total annual economic impact of nearly $50 million for the city.

"It just felt like that without UAB football, the city was going to lose some of that momentum we've gained recently," O'Neal says. "Being from Birmingham and loving our city, that's why I wanted to get involved, to help UAB and our city.

"You had all these groups pulling together in a unified effort, and that made the difference. It took all of that. It took a team effort from everyone to make this a reality."

By June of 2015, approximately $27 million had been raised through the UAB Football Foundation, the city of Birmingham, and the UAB Undergraduate Student Government Association. When UAB president Ray Watts announced the program's reinstatement later that month, he said, "The biggest single difference is we now have tangible commitments for additional support that we have never had before."

And so the countdown began, with Clark working to assemble a team basically from scratch. There were a few players who stuck it out and stayed with the team for two years without playing a single game. There were others who transferred to another school but have since returned to UAB for this season. And, of course, there are the fans who have endured two seasons without a hometown team to cheer for.

They have all been waiting--second by second--for the moment when UAB football finally returns to the field, where they will be met with what is expected to be a new level of excitement for the program.

"My gut feeling is we'll have more than 40,000 people at that first game," says Tommy Brigham, chairman of ARC Realty and one of the program's financial supporters. "We're going to have a different experience for UAB football, unlike anything that's been seen in the past.

"This is just the beginning of the beginning. I think this is a chance to put a legacy stamp on the future of Birmingham, and have a coalescing of all these things that are making Birmingham a better city."

UAB Player Loyalty

Players on the 2014 team who stayed at UAB:

DL Shaq Jones

LB Tevin Crews

WR Wally Adams

CB Darious Williams

CB Jordan Petty

S Tajh Lowe

WR Zavier Morris

OL Zach Sims

OL Bryant Novick

Players on the 2014 team who transferred and then returned:

WR Collin Lisa (Buffalo), PK Nick Vogel (Southern Miss)

TE Stephen Pickren (Chattanooga), OL Lee Dufour (South Alabama), S Jordan Petty (Old Dominion)

--By Cary Estes | Photos by James Acomb and the Alabama Media Group archives

This story appears in Birmingham magazine's August 2017 issue. Subscribe today!