BIRMINGHAM, Alabama - If the scene outside the UAB football building Tuesday afternoon didn't break your heart, you don't have one.

I've never seen so many strong men and women, players and coaches and staffers, mommas and daddies and friends, shed so many honest tears.

Their blood, sweat and tears didn't fit onto Ray Watts' balance sheet. Their hopes and dreams didn't figure into Bill Carr's strategic study. Their choice to play and coach and study and work at UAB, to pour out their hearts for their university, was taken away by a bunch of icicles in suits.

That it was taken away three days after the program's most important victory in a decade, the sixth victory of the season that made them bowl-eligible for the first time since 2004, just made the decision to kill the program all the more cruel. The only way Watts could've stuck in the knife any deeper would've been to do it in the postgame locker room Saturday in Hattiesburg.

The university president was all about the numbers when he confirmed the terribly kept secret to the UAB football family inside the football building, and he had no answer when tight end Tristan Henderson, a 26-year-old former military policeman in Iraq, stood up, looked him in the eye and said, "We're more than a study."

Not to Watts. His unpresidential "that's BS" denials aside, he comes across as little more than the errand boy for the assassins on the University of Alabama System Board of Trustees. It's hard to tell which will send Paul Bryant Jr. into trustee retirement with a bigger smile, another national title for his beloved Crimson Tide or the death of UAB football.

Watts had no answers beyond numbers at his press conference later, either. He wouldn't say exactly when he made the decision to kill not only UAB football but the rifle and bowling teams as well. He wouldn't say how many people will lose their jobs.

He did say that he made Bill Clark aware during the interview process a year ago that a strategic study of athletics had begun and "all options" were on the table, which would include the potential elimination of the football program. If you believe that, you might want to stop reading and go feed your unicorn.

Watts wants you to believe that Clark would leave his job after one year as the head coach at his alma mater, Jacksonville State, to move to UAB even though he knew that study could result in the elimination of football after one season.

Don't believe that, but do believe this. As part of the study, the UAB coaches in all sports were asked what they would need financially to be competitive for the next five years. Might as well ask your children what they want for Christmas.

Aided and abetted by the calculators at CarrSports Consulting, the numbers the coaches provided were used against them as evidence that the school couldn't continue to support football, rifle and bowling. The level of evil genius in that chain of events is staggering.

Watts wasn't finished weaving his web. He said UAB expects to remain in Conference USA even though the league bylaws state that members must have a football program. Part of his case is that UAB stayed loyal to C-USA during the last round of realignment - as if UAB had other options.

C-USA Commissioner Britton Banowsky didn't sound very impressed. In a statement about UAB's decision to kill football, Banowsky said, "We don't fully understand the decision, nor agree with it."

Join the crowd, Mr. Commissioner. Join the crowd.

There will be time to pick apart the numbers later, to continue to identify the co-conspirators in the plot to kill UAB football, but for now, remember the people who gave the school its best season in 10 years, its greatest reason to believe in a brighter future, before their own president sold them out.

Remember J.J. Nelson, who should be an All-American as a kick returner. Remember Jordan Howard, who literally played his guts out against Marshall. Remember Clark, who overcame the uncertainty and the deception to make UAB football matter again.

With the exception of his mother's death, Tuesday may have been the worst day he's ever seen.

Me, I'll remember Dallas Noriega. After Watts told them it was over, the senior long snapper you saw raising his fist in the air at Monday's rally to try to save the program, stood near the practice field, tears streaming down his face.

Somewhere in heaven, Gene Bartow was crying, too.