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It's nuts.

You can't buy Peanut Depot peanuts at UAB's Bartow Arena anymore. Nope. Buy a sack full of goobers at a Blazers basketball game and you're now left holding a bag packaged in ... Tuscaloosa.

That's right. Tuscaloosa.

Talk about a sack full of goobers.

It's an affront, an outrage, UAB fans contend. Shell-shocked visitors to basketball games complain about "another clueless anti-Birmingham decision made at UAB."

In the wake of the move to end UAB football last year and the heart-felt belief by Blazer faithful that Tuscaloosa's UA Board of Trustees was behind the move, choosing T-Town peanuts over Birmingham's best is a big deal. And a big, if unintended, statement.

"This just screams of another situation where they don't think about the things they are doing," UAB backer Chuck Tuggle said. "We're in Birmingham. This is Birmingham."

It ain't peanuts.

The concessionaire for Bartow Arena, McAlister's, has held the contract since April. McAlister's General Manager Sonny Gouge said the decision to use Nut Shop peanuts from Tuscaloosa instead of Peanut Depot peanuts was purely a business decision. About dollars and cents.

He said there was no political statement, no Tuscaloosa intervention. It's not as if Paul Bryant Jr. has some connection to a peanut cartel. In fact, Gouge said, his company donated to the Free UAB effort and provided food to protestors.

"I get it," he said. But "it was strictly a business decision."

Which would have been fine - although the Peanut Depot guy insists he offered to match the price of the Tuscaloosa vendor. The trouble came as Gouge continued.

He said Tuscaloosa nuts were packed fresh, and provided customers "a better product."

A better product than Peanut Depot, with their big Virginia nuts?

That's ... nuts. Saying such a thing in Birmingham is like saying Van Gogh painted by numbers. It's like saying Vulcan should put on some pants. It's like telling Birmingham that one of its prides and joy, one of its landmarks, is inferior to ...

Tuscaloosa.

And saying it now? It's like telling the UAB football team, as you kill the program, that you love the university more than the players do.

Concessions kingpin Robbie Yarbrough, whose Y-Cater company long ago held the Bartow contract and still sells food at events across the city, blanched at the slight to Birmingham's peanut kings.

"Peanut Depot's quality is second to none," he said. "I have used them for years because they are a local product and because of the quality."

But it was Mayor William Bell who said it best:

"Everyone knows that the Peanut Depot has the best peanuts anywhere," Bell said. "The System needs to get on board and Free UAB and free our nuts."

Indeed.

They are Birmingham's own, at a time when Birmingham must appreciate its own. They represent Birmingham, at a time when Birmingham must support itself.

It seem like a little thing, these peanuts. But it's an outrageous thing.

As Tuggle said, "We're in Birmingham."

UAB -- and all those who work for it -- ought to realize that by now. That's business, too.