The hits just keep on coming for UAB president Ray Watts. After UAB fans started “Fire Ray Watts” chants at the NCAA tournament while Watts was present, now Watts is being put on the defensive by Alabama state representative, Jack Williams.
Williams demanded that Watts resign from his position as president after alleged documents showed that the decision to terminate UAB’s football program was made prior to the beginning of the season despite Watts claiming the decision was made later on.
Alabama state representative Jack Williams is calling for the immediate resignation of UAB president Ray Watts, alleging that confidential correspondence obtained by his office indicates that school trustees, faculty, coaches and players were deliberately misled as plans were made to shut down the Blazers’ football program in 2014.
“It clearly shows the decision had been made in spring or early summer to kill the program,” Williams said when reached before a Monday morning news conference in Birmingham. “The president is lying to the board, faculty, students and the community at large … I call for Dr. Watts to resign.”
Watts later issued a statement taking issue with Williams’ allegations about the timing of UAB’s football elimination.
“Mr. Williams claims the football decision was made prior to the 2014 season,” Watts’ statement said. “This is categorically untrue.”
“A comprehensive review of the Athletic Department was begun as a part of the overall campus wide strategic planning process I announced when I became president,” the statement continued. “We conducted a specific review of the football program and the budget, based on known expenses. With information in hand, I began the decision-making process. I made that final decision in November and felt it was appropriate to wait until after the regular season to tell the team and the UAB family. At UAB, as with any major organization, it is common to prepare for potential scenarios from a communications standpoint, even prior to a final decision being made. The documents shared by Mr. Williams are consistent with such a process.”
Williams has been a vocal critic of the decision to eliminate the program. He is also the publisher of BlazerSportsReport.com, a site on the Rivals.com network of college websites.
Williams said documents show that school administration received detailed recommendations from its consulting and public relations firms in early September 2014, outlining the December dates best suited to soften the impact of an official announcement ending the UAB football program. He said that contradicts a Nov. 6 statement by Watts that said the athletic department review was ongoing and “an incomplete process.”
Williams cited a Sept. 5 letter from Bill Carr of CarrSports Consulting, which had been hired by the university to assess the UAB athletic department, that warned if the school dropped football, “it is our professional opinion that an announcement at any point during the regular season would be extremely problematic for all parties.” Instead, it said, “Carr Sports recommends that notification be delivered as soon as possible after conclusion of football’s regular season.”
At the time, the letter said CarrSports was “preparing a summary document” relative to UAB athletics. Its final report, which included financial projections based on UAB athletics with and without a football program, was dated Nov. 18, 2014.
Williams also cited a strategy memo from the New York-based strategic communications firm Sard Verbinnen & Co., also dated Sept. 5, that referred to UAB’s “contemplated announcement” and said that after “additional input” from CarrSports that it also endorsed a postseason statement, preferably on Dec. 1 or 2.
AL.com, in a story posted Monday, cited a Sept. 3 draft document from CarrSports that was “virtually identical” to the Nov. 18 one Watts said he used to help him make the decision to eliminate football.
This is just more egg on the face of Ray Watts and the UAB administration. No matter how they keep trying to spin things, it is quite obvious to everyone with eyes that the decision to terminate the football program was premeditated.
The longer this plays out and the more people continue to dig into the process that led to the termination of UAB’s football program, the more it seems like this process goes a little higher up than the administration at UAB. While there isn’t concrete evidence of Board of Trustee members having a hand in the decision making process, there seems to be evidence that they were at least in the loop of what was going on.
UAB alumni, students, faculty and the community have made it blatantly obvious that they do not trust and don’t have confidence in Watts as the president of the university, yet the BOT continues to say they support him, rather than take action and look into why they feel the trust has been broken. To me, that alone shows that the BOT does not seem to be in a rush to right the wrongs going on in Birmingham.