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UAB hasn't made a formal decision yet, but athletic director Mark Ingram believes football returning in 2017 makes more sense than 2016.

"It's more ideal if we tried to do it in (2017), so we didn't do it so rushed," Ingram said. "Let's do it right rather than fast so that we keep all these things at the forefront - the safety (of players) and the respect of our peers. But if we found out through various channels that playing in (2016) was our only option, that's what we'll do."

Ingram has been in frequent contact with Conference USA commissioner Britton Banowsky about the timeline for football's return since Monday's decision to reinstate football, bowling and rifle. UAB disbanded its program last December and lost at least 56 players from its 2014 team though no one seems to know the exact number of players still on campus.

UAB has no intentions of spending time in the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) level and plans to stay at Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS), according to Ingram, but will need to decide when it wants to return to that level. Once UAB chooses its return date, it will be able to determine its strategies for recruiting, staffing, scheduling and everything else that comes with the rebuilding process. In order to stay at the FBS-level, UAB will need 76 scholarship players on its roster based on a two-year rolling average.

The school could also apply for NCAA waivers to sign more recruits and get extra years of eligibility for players that stayed on campus, among other options. The Associated Press reported earlier this week that players who remained on campus would lose a year of eligibility in 2015.

One option that could be at UAB's disposal is to sign 25 junior college recruits and early enrollees in December, plus another 25 recruits in February. Ingram doesn't view that as a viable option, though. He fears that pushing a team with too many young players back to action could create health risks.

He stressed the need to do this the right way rather than rushing to get back. Banowsky made a similar point in an interview with AL.com after UAB announced it was reinstating its football program.

"If we tried to sign 50 players in the upcoming signing class, that's going to give heartburn to our peers in the league," Ingram said. "Whether it should or it shouldn't, the reality is it does and we respect that. They've been very generous to us and supportive of us as wanting us to stay in the league, so we want to do all this respectfully to them, too."

Conference USA said in a statement Thursday that it wasn't taking any action regarding the school's membership. If UAB hadn't reinstated football, it would have needed to find a new conference home in 2016-17.

Ingram will work with head coach Bill Clark, who has been in regular contact with the school, about the best course of action. The UAB athletic director thinks the likely model will be to "sign a normal-sized class two years in a row, get a few junior college guys, a few fifth-year guys who want to play a bit and get a few transfers."