re: What's your take on UAB's situation?

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Hate it for football program but Bartow built it into basketball.

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They go hand-in-hand unfortunately. Without a football program they aren't welcome in C-USA. Same goes if they wanted to move to the Sun Belt.

Other options could be the SOCON where 2 of their 10 current members don't play football. But I don't see the SOCON wanting to add another Birmingham school on top of Samford and make it an uneven 11 teams in most all sports.

Next likely stop if they want to stay in D1 for basketball might be the Big South Conference which has 11 members but none closer to Birmingham than South Carolina. Atlantic Sun has 8 full-time members with Birmingham geographically landing close to their core. If UAB wanted to turn into an HBCU then the MEAC could work maybe.. or SWAC.
OVC (Jacksonville State's conference) has 12 members already.. don't see that one changing.

If that doesn't work they can't hang independently in D1 hoops. Only one school is currently declared independent for next year and that's NJIT. They're not going to last.

If they have to drop to D2 they're heading to play with UNA, UWA, UAH, Delta State, Kentucky State, Union, etc. in the Gulf South.