BACK WHEN: Air Hackney and the flaming of the Frogs

On Friday night, UAB hosts Navy at Protective Stadium. The game is on ESPN. It is the first major Friday night national television showcase for the Blazers at their new home — under the lights, in the stadium this community built after the shutdown and The Return.

It is not the first time UAB played under Friday night lights on ESPN.

That happened 22 years ago, on Oct. 15, 2004, at Legion Field. And what the Blazers did that night is what many observers who were there consider to be the high-water mark of the first era of UAB football.

UAB was 4-1. Watson Brown's team had already beaten Baylor of the Big 12, Mississippi State of the SEC, Memphis and Cincinnati. Their only loss was at Florida State. Conference USA's preseason coaches' poll had picked the Blazers to finish sixth in the 11-team league. They were first.

TCU came to Birmingham at 3-3, 1-2 in the conference.

On the Blazers' second play from scrimmage, Darrell Hackney hit Roddy White in stride down the middle of the field for a 58-yard touchdown. White — who would leave UAB as a first-round selection of the NFL's Atlanta Falcons and eventually a member of the Falcons' Ring of Honor — ran away from everyone, and Legion Field shook.

TCU answered with a grinding, 13-play, 74-yard drive that chewed nearly five minutes off the clock. Cory Rodgers scored from six yards out to give the Horned Frogs a 14-7 lead with 3:52 left in the first quarter.

It didn't matter. Hackney was warming up.

A shovel pass to Dan Burks for 17 yards tied it. A 16-yard strike to Reggie Lindsey put UAB ahead. And then came the sequence that defined the night.

A 55-yard kickoff return gave TCU the ball at the UAB 43. Brandon Hassell threw a 41-yard pass to Reggie Harrell, and suddenly the Horned Frogs were at the 2-yard line, poised to take back the lead.

They never scored.

Shamar Abrams stuffed consecutive runs up the middle. On fourth-and-goal from the 1, Sam Williams and David Miller stopped Robert Hobbs cold.

"That goal-line stand was huge," Hackney told the Birmingham Post-Herald. "I told the defense, 'Give me a stop, and I'll put us in the (end) zone.'"

Defensive end Larry McSwain put it plainer: "I was always taught from high school that you can tell what a defense is made of when they stop a team on the goal. UAB defense."

Hackney kept his word. After TCU punter John Braziel shanked a kick 14 yards, Hackney found Norris Drinkard coming out of the backfield for a 10-yard touchdown. He closed the half with a 40-yard bomb to Lindsey.

Hackney threw five touchdown passes in the first half — 12-of-17 for 282 yards — and finished with 337 on the night.

UAB 35, TCU 14 at the break. The final would be 41-25, but it was never that close.

"I think it's the best he's been," Brown told the Post-Herald of his star quarterback. "I didn't see him miss a throw."

The most memorable moment from that night still lives on YouTube.

Hackney fakes a handoff, steps up in the pocket, tucks the ball and runs. A TCU defensive back tries to bring him down. Hackney stiff-arms him into the turf — swats him away like a gnat — and picks up 19 yards.

The announcer's call: "Some quarterbacks get away from pressure like Doug Flutie. Hackney gets away from pressure like Godzilla."

An announced crowd of 33,280 filled Legion Field. For the first time anyone could remember, the pregame scene looked and felt like college football.

"For perhaps the first time in program history, there truly was a big-game feeling in the parking lots surrounding the stadium," the Post-Herald's Cary Estes wrote. "Smoke hovered in the air from dozens of BBQ grills, children were throwing footballs and there was a genuine air of excitement. It's what a college football game is supposed to feel like."

The Post-Herald's Ray Melick noticed who was in the stands: "There was no Ruben. No big-name opponent from a BCS conference. No Oprah-like giveaway to entice people only for what they might go home with. An announced crowd of 33,280 showed up anyway, and for once, the number looked real, as in real, live football fans. UAB football fans."

Hackney, the quarterback everybody said was too short, called the 41-25 demolition a moral victory.

"To be 5-1 is huge," Hackney told the Post-Herald. "It's a moral victory for this program."

Moral victory — for a game UAB won by 16 points on national television. That's how far beyond expectations this season had gone.

Brown tried to keep the lid on.

"We're numb," he told the Post-Herald. "I don't even want to talk about it. I hope we stay numb and it just keeps going."

Four days later, the Blazers appeared in the BCS standings for the first time in program history — No. 24, between Notre Dame and Virginia. No. 27 in the AP poll. No. 22 in the coaches' poll.

"We're starting to feel it," linebacker Zac Woodfin told the Post-Herald. "We're going to take this BCS ranking and try to run with it, try to hold on to it. We're not satisfied with this at all."

Hackney went further.

"I think we can win this conference championship," he told the Birmingham News. "We don't play Louisville and it's good for them that they don't play us."

He caught himself. "I really can't speak on the conference championship. We're trying to take it one game at a time." Then: "But it's hard not to think about it."

Scott Adamson of the Post-Herald stepped back and took in the full arc. Thirteen years earlier, UAB football had played its first game as a Division III program on a field in Jackson, Miss. that was barely up to AA high school specs. The Blazers lost 28-0 to Millsaps College.

Now they were in the BCS Top 25.

"A program that started with a bunch of guys who wanted to play football for free has evolved into a program that has a legitimate, big-time football team its entire city can be proud of," Adamson wrote.

Then he added a line that would read very differently a decade later: "Despite the best efforts of some members of the University of Alabama Board of Trustees, it's not going anywhere."

It was going somewhere, but not where anyone expected.

Even before the TCU game, the relationship between UAB and the community it was trying to win over had shown its fault lines. The game had been moved from Saturday to Friday to accommodate ESPN's cameras. Friday college football was new in 2004 — the NCAA had only allowed CUSA schools to play on Fridays since 2001. This was UAB's first time.

The front page of the Birmingham News on game day — the morning of the biggest game in UAB football history to that point — ran the story not as a celebration but as a controversy. The headline: "College, prep vie for fans."

Birmingham's high school coaches lined up to object.

"The principle of colleges invading high school Friday nights is a bad first step that's probably going to lead to more things that are going to hurt Friday night high school games," Briarwood Christian coach Fred Yancey told the News.

"That will definitely hurt our crowds," Spain Park coach Vince DiLorenzo said. "It'll take away somebody that should be going to a high school game."

Even Brown — who was also the athletics director — couldn't bring himself to celebrate his own team's national TV appearance.

"I wouldn't say I'm thrilled about it," Brown told the News, "but at the same time it's important that we do it and we do gain something from it. We gain national exposure, number one, against a very good conference opponent."

One voice that morning sounded like a fan. Angela Rogers had two sons playing football that night — Corderrius, a junior at Homewood High School with a game at Briarwood, and Cornelius, a sophomore on the UAB squad. Both kicked at 7 p.m.

"I'm there rain, sleet, snow," Rogers told the News. "I'm like the postman. I love football, and I love my boys."

Thirty-three thousand, two hundred and eighty people showed up to Legion Field that night. Hackney threw five touchdowns in one half. The city's high school coaches survived.

On the same page of the Post-Herald that carried the BCS story, a different headline ran alongside it: "UAB's Donohoe resigns after arrest."

Pat Donohoe, the defensive line coach — a man who had been on Brown's staff since Brown's first UAB team in 1995 — had been arrested on a marijuana possession charge during a traffic stop on a recruiting trip. The arrest happened four days before the TCU game. He resigned the following Monday.

Donohoe was the emotional driver on that coaching staff. The defensive players balled out for him. The goal-line stand against TCU — Abrams, Williams, Miller, the whole unit refusing to give an inch at the 1-yard line — played with the kind of edge Donohoe coached into them.

The high-water mark and the first crack, on the same newspaper page.

Without Donohoe, the defense started to come apart.

UAB went to New Orleans and lost a 59-55 shootout to Tulane on a sweltering afternoon. The Blazers came home to Legion Field and collapsed in the second half against South Florida during one of the worst storms to ever hit that old stadium — a torrential downpour that turned the field into a swamp and the game into a 45-20 nightmare. That was on national television too. Only 9,220 showed up.

They beat Houston and Army, then lost a heartbreaker at Southern Miss, 26-21.

The season ended at 7-5. UAB made its first bowl game — the Hawaii Bowl, Christmas Eve — but Timmy Chang and Hawaii scored 59. The Blazers scored 40 and still lost by 19.

It was the best season in UAB football history to that point. It was also the first of many moments when Blazer fans would learn what it feels like when Lucy pulls the football away and Charlie Brown somersaults to the hard ground again.

The programs UAB beat in 2004 went on to do the things Blazer fans dreamed for themselves on that Friday night at Legion Field.

Baylor rose to national prominence. Mississippi State reached No. 1 in the AP poll. Cincinnati made the College Football Playoff. Memphis and Houston became consistent top-25 programs and went to major bowls. TCU — the team Hackney shredded on ESPN for five touchdowns in one half — won the Rose Bowl and played for a national championship. TCU, Houston and Cincinnati are now all members of the Power 4 in the Big 12.

The University of Alabama Board of Trustees — well, ahem, the UAB administration — that Adamson warned about in October 2004 shut down UAB football in December 2014.

But it came back. The fans willed it so with a movement that should be a movie.

UAB returned to the field in 2017 and immediately started winning at levels never before seen here. Protective Stadium replaced Legion Field. The program is building again under Alex Mortensen.

This week, UAB plays under ESPN's Friday night lights again. The newspaper headlines won't protest, this time, because, well, the News no longer prints and the Post-Herald no longer exists. Lamar White, Roddy's son, wears No. 84 for the Blazers. How far UAB football is from another moment like Oct. 15, 2004 remains to be seen.