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Still don't believe UAB President Ray Watts set out months ago to kill UAB football and cover his tracks with the plausible deniability of an objective feasibility report?

Well look to the binding agreements -- after you reply to that email from the guy who says he found your million bucks.

Look, for instance, at the July contract UAB renewed with the city of Birmingham to schedule its home games at Legion Field. In years past, both the city and UAB sought multi-year deals for the lease, because that's the way they were done. The contract in 2010 ran for four years, until the end of UAB's 2013 football season.

But this spring, UAB asked for a different deal. And though it irked some city workers, UAB got what it wanted. A one-year contract to play at Legion Field.

"This Agreement shall have effect for a period of one (1) year beginning at the start of UAB's 2014 football season (July 21, 2014) and ending at the conclusion of UAB's 2014 football season (December 15, 2014)."

Because UAB knew football would be gone after that.

JD Crowe got this one right.

It was right there in the binding agreements all along. It was writing on the legal wall, and it should have been obvious.

But it wasn't. Because the city thought it had a good relationship with UAB.

It wasn't. Because the city thought it had a mutually beneficial partnership with UAB.

It wasn't. Because people looking at the document were simply too naive, at that point, to believe UAB's president capable of stabbing his own students and his own city in the backs while keeping a straight-enough face to describe it as necessary surgery.

That might as well have been what he told players this week, when he finally met with them and finally met them. He told them the numbers didn't work. Sorry. He told them a report commissioned to analyze the football program's viability - so sad so sad - just made it impossible.

At least he had the wherewithal to meet with the football players and, if not look them in the eye, stare icily away as they poured their emotions at his feet. He did not meet with the bowlers, or the rifle squad. An email is enough for teams you don't want around.

It's all that report's fault anyway. You know the one. It is officially called: the CarrSports Report on UAB Athletics Strategic Planning. What it should be been named is "How to shut down football and make the whole thing look like an accident."

It is the deception that stings. It is the way Watts and his office deflected questions, avoided students and the public and misled those around him that hurts. The only answer he gave with any fire this week was a fervent "BS" when I asked if he had been hired by the Board of Trustees to shut down the football program.

"That's BS."

But even that came across as BS. Because Watts leaves a string of gaping skeptics everywhere he goes. Not just students. Not just players. Not just media and football fans.

The mayor of Birmingham -- who championed cooperation with UAB and has essentially been UAB's home field partner -- called Watts last week after rumors of the football program's demise began to explode on the internet. William Bell was told, even on the eve of the team's destruction, that no decision had been made.

Nothing to see here. Move along. Until...

Until it became a crime scene.

What Watts did to UAB in the convenient name of "fiscal responsibility" may, to some, remain debatable. How he did it was a crime. Premeditated.