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Make it stop. It's not funny what the University of Alabama System Board of Trustees does to UAB. It's torture.

It's waterboarding, really. They get UAB's little legs up in the air and ... glub glub glub.

We give you life! And we can take it away!

It has been a cruel game from the start.

Former UAB president S. Richardson Hill had to pull teeth to get a UAB athletic department at all. He had to fight the trustees.

Former UAB president Scotty McCallum started club football. He did it despite the trustees.

When UAB started talking of a move to Division 1, then-trustee Jack Edwards came right out and told UAB to stick to what it knew: Medicine. And while UAB under president J. Claude Bennett did get D1 life in 1995, every breath it drew was followed by a dunking.

Watson Brown was hired as the coach, and in 2000 his team stunned LSU in Baton Rouge. But in a matter of months the trustees laid down an ultimatum: Become financially self-sufficient by 2004, or close the football program.

In 2004 UAB went to a bowl game in Hawaii, and the ultimatum was eased after that season. But Brown looked around and saw the program still fighting for survival.

"I don't want to be an AD 10 years from now that just completely made ends meet and nothing else," he said then. "I think you get better when you invest to get better."

He was gone the next year. And then ... gasp.

UAB in 2006 was poised to hire Jimbo Fisher, now Florida State's national championship coach, as head coach. Fisher agreed to a $600,000 deal, and UAB boosters agreed to pay half. The plane was on the tarmac when the trustees said ... stop.

They refused to approve the contract. It wouldn't be fiscally responsible.

Instead they sentenced UAB to coach Neil Callaway, who breathed death into the program. He left in 2011, with an 18-42 criminal record. Coach Garrick McGee came next, and he was a dud, too. Just like the facilities.

In 2012 a group of UAB fans clamored for a smaller stadium, because Legion Field is just too big and depressing. But when supporters pushed a small $75 million Southside stadium, trustees didn't believe the financing. They wouldn't even bring it up to talk about, and ignored UAB students who gathered at their meeting.

It was just more glub, glub, glub in the name of fiscal responsibility. This from a board that doesn't blink at paying former UAB President Carol Z. Garrison and former UA System Chancellor Malcolm Portera millions of dollars in retirement.

And now first-year UAB Coach Bill Clark leads the UAB team with hallmark positivity. He has won five games, doubled attendance and restored life to the program. So of course it is happening again. Where did the air go?

Former players and boosters are sure the program will be shut down in three years. Clark only has a three year contract and no non-conference games are scheduled after 2017. Trustees won't talk about it and UAB President Ray Watts has not denied it.

And it is all too much to take.

UAB is told it ought to be grateful just to be alive, but this is no way to live. You can't be expected to build fans when they are constantly just waiting to get soaked. It's not fair.

This must stop.

UAB should be given the air it needs to live and to thrive and to compete. Period. And if trustees are unwilling to get out of the way and allow that, the program -- and I hate to say this -- should simply be put out of its misery.

Let it really live. Or let it die now.

It's time to end the torture.