Dream big, Birmingham

"We would do Birmingham a great disservice if we dreamed too little dreams."

Joseph S. Volker said that during UAB's formative years as an independent, autonomous university within the University of Alabama System. He was talking about what this institution could become. On Wednesday, the Association of American Universities answered.

UAB accepted an invitation to join the AAU — Alabama's first and only member in the 125-year history of the most prestigious research university association in North America.

Consider the company. The AAU has 73 members. Yale, founded in 1701 — 75 years before the United States existed. Harvard, 1636. Johns Hopkins, MIT, Stanford, the University of Chicago, every Ivy League university. Institutions that have shaped American science, medicine, law and public policy for centuries.

UAB was founded in 1969. It is the youngest university in the AAU. What took other institutions a century or more to build, UAB has built in 57 years — a research enterprise that has grown from $379 million to more than $915 million in annual expenditures since Ray L. Watts became president in 2013. Alabama's largest employer with more than 37,000 employees. A Health System with 15 hospitals and the fifth-largest hospital in the United States. Four UAB schools rank in the top 28 nationally for NIH funding. Georgetown was the only other school added this week.

That is not an athletics story. Not yet. But it belongs in the conversation about where UAB is headed — all of UAB — because the same institution that just earned recognition alongside the most prestigious research universities in North America also fields an athletics program. And that program's peer group, whether Birmingham has fully absorbed this or not, looks nothing like a regional bus league.

There are 41 FBS football programs whose universities hold AAU membership. Read the names: Schools like Michigan, Ohio State, Oregon, Texas, USC, Notre Dame, Stanford, Florida, Georgia Tech, North Carolina, Virginia.

That is UAB's institutional peer group now.

Among those 41, only four other non-Power 4 schools: Buffalo, Rice, South Florida and Tulane. Three of those four are in UAB's conference. Nine are in the ACC — Cal, Duke, Georgia Tech, Miami, North Carolina, Notre Dame, Pitt, Stanford and Virginia. Notre Dame is an ACC member for all sports except football, where it plays a partial ACC schedule.

UAB's institutional peers are not in a bus league. They are in the ACC. The seat is at the edge of the table. The question is whether UAB goes and grabs it.

UAB has everything it would need to be one of the top programs in the Group of 6 and near the top of the conversation when conference realignment shuffles the deck again.

The institutional profile speaks for itself. AAU member. R1 research university. More than $915 million in annual research expenditures. Alabama's largest employer. A $12.1 billion annual economic impact on the state. A metro area of 1.2 million people producing more than 30% of Alabama's GDP, anchored by Fortune 500 headquarters and a corporate base deep enough to fund an athletics program twice UAB's current size.

The football infrastructure already exists. Protective Stadium cost $175 million, seats 47,100 and opened five years ago in downtown Birmingham. It can host Power 4 football tomorrow. The market can support it — Birmingham has ranked No. 1 nationally in college football television viewership for more than 20 years per Nielsen.

The competitive proof exists too. After the university shut down football in 2014, Bill Clark rebuilt the program and won 49 games in six seasons. He won two CUSA championships, three straight division titles and beat No. 13 BYU 31-28 in the 2021 Independence Bowl. The coaching misfire that followed was corrected inside of three seasons.

The basketball tradition runs 48 years deep and few Group of 6 programs can match it. Bartow recruited from UCLA's bench to a brand-new campus and had UAB in the Elite Eight within four years. The program has 17 NCAA Tournament appearances, conference titles in three different leagues, and in Andy Kennedy has one of the sport's winningest active coaches — a 411-231 career record, six consecutive 20-win seasons and a contract through 2030-31.

The assets are real. The credentials are now confirmed at the highest level. The question — the only question — is whether UAB invests in the athletics program to match the institutional profile.

The evidence for that investment is not theoretical. It has been measured.

South Florida quantified it this fall. The university's first athletics ROI report found a $2.52 return for every dollar invested — $96 million in total value flowing back to campus through visitor spending, hotel revenue, tax receipts and donor growth. Annual giving to USF athletics rose from $9.2 million to $14.3 million in a single fiscal year. The Bulls drew more than 21 million television viewers last season, outpacing 13 Power 4 programs per game.

USF responded by pushing its revenue-sharing commitment to the House v. NCAA settlement cap, breaking ground on a $348.5 million on-campus stadium and hiring a CEO of Athletics.

Memphis took a different path to the same conclusion. The Tigers committed $21.3 million in athlete revenue sharing this fiscal year — $9 million to men's basketball alone, the largest allocation in the American. AD Ed Scott has said publicly that the spending is designed to position Memphis for the next wave of conference realignment.

UAB's own football program generated at least $1.16 million in estimated institutional brand exposure value from three nationally televised games this season, per a Diehard advertising-equivalency analysis using a $43.50 CPM, 95 equivalent 30-second placements per broadcast and a 15% university brand attribution rate. The Blazers' two weeknight ESPN appearances averaged 868,000 viewers — 6.7 times the audience of the Saturday ESPN2 game at Memphis. UAB ranks fourth among 14 American Conference programs in television exposure.

The return is real. The institutions investing in athletics are the ones capturing it.

The competitive bar inside UAB's own conference is rising. James Madison University spent $23 million to join the American and will arrive with a $78.6 million athletics budget — nearly double UAB's $42.1 million, the lowest in the conference. JMU has a College Football Playoff appearance, four consecutive years of season-ticket sellouts and $440 million in estimated earned media value from a single season. The Dukes' own FAQ made the calculus plain: "The new formula in 2026 all but guarantees only one Group of Six participant in the 12-team model. ... It is imperative that JMU place itself in the best possible position to be the highest-regarded institution for the one Group of Six spot."

USF, Memphis and JMU are all making the same bet — that aggressive investment now positions them for whatever comes next. None of them are waiting.

UAB holds institutional credentials that all but a handful of G6 programs would trade for. It has not necessarily invested in its athletics "front porch" in the same manner.

The AAU membership makes that gap dangerous.

Conference realignment has not finished moving. Clemson, Florida State, Miami, North Carolina and Notre Dame remain the ACC brands most likely to draw interest from other leagues. If even some of them leave, the ACC backfills. South Florida and Tulane — both AAU members, both spending aggressively on athletics — would be among the first calls. Memphis, without the AAU credential but with the athletic investment to compensate, would be in the conversation too.

UAB has watched this before. Cincinnati, UCF and Houston were conference peers. They left for the Big 12 on July 1, 2023. TCU and Louisville made similar moves before them. Several of those programs had weaker institutional profiles than UAB's. They moved up because they invested in the athletic product when the window was open.

If USF, Tulane and Memphis move to the ACC and UAB stays behind, the American shrinks — and UAB's institutional profile sits in a conference that no longer reflects it. That is the cost of waiting.

The upside of acting is just as clear. The ACC schools that would remain after any departures — potentially schools such as Duke, Virginia, Georgia Tech, Pitt, Stanford, Cal — are AAU universities. UAB is now an AAU university. The academic fit already exists. The research collaboration opportunities, the institutional prestige, the recruiting reach that comes with that alignment — none of that is limited to athletics. A move into a conference with those schools would reshape UAB's national profile across every dimension.

UAB is not going to match the SEC budgets in this state. Nobody is asking for that. But the next athletic director should walk into the job with a two-part mandate: build UAB into one of the strongest programs in the Group of 6, and position the university to force its way into a Power 4 conference if an opening emerges. That move would change UAB permanently — its visibility, its recruiting, its fundraising, its revenue opportunities, its academic partnerships, its standing in higher education. Ed Scott at Memphis and Rob Higgins at South Florida are already operating with that mandate. UAB's next AD needs the same charge and the institutional backing to execute it.

September 7, 1991.

A sweltering afternoon in Jackson, Mississippi. UAB, a Division III program, played its first NCAA football game.

Gene Bartow paced the sidelines.

Bartow was a basketball man. He had come from UCLA to build UAB Athletics from nothing — and in only its third year of competition, he had the Blazers in the Sweet Sixteen. In its fourth year, they were in the Elite Eight, a couple of possessions away from the Final Four. This was a man who did not dream small.

But Bartow believed football was part of the vision. He knew it would not be easy, but he also believed, UAB's potential and aspirations demanded it. His vision for UAB was never to be in a bus league. His vision was for UAB to stand with its institutional peers — academically, athletically, as a city.

"Ten years from now, 20 years from now, who knows where this might lead?" Bartow said. "If in the year 2010 UAB is a member of the ACC or some other major conference, we'll have to say football was one of the reasons."

Thirty-five years later, UAB has the credential Bartow would have wanted. The AAU said yes. The stadium is built. The basketball program is strong. The football program has proven it can win. The data proves the return. The conference peers are spending. The window is open.

So hire the AD who gets it. Hire the one who walks into the room and does not see a mid-tier athletic department in a mid-tier conference. Hire the one who sees an AAU research university with a $175 million stadium, the No. 1 football television market in the country, a basketball tradition that most Power 4 schools would kill for, and a city that raised $48 million from sheer force of will when administrators tried to kill the program. Hire the one who looks at all of that and says: we are going to be the best program in the Group of 6, we are going to position this university for a Power 4 conference, and we are going to do it now.

Not the one who manages. The one who leads.

The one who gets in front of the Board of Trustees and tells them this is the moment — not in cautious language, not buried in a PowerPoint, but with the conviction of someone who knows exactly what this institution is worth. The one who walks into Regions and Protective Life and Vulcan and EBSCO and Blue Cross and tells them their university just joined the most prestigious academic association in the country and their athletics program needs to match. The one who stands in front of people at Protective Stadium and Bartow Arena and tells the fans, the students, the alumni — every single person in green and gold — that this program is done settling. Done watching conference peers leave for bigger stages. Done being outspent by programs with half the institutional profile.

Memphis is spending $21.3 million in athlete revenue sharing. South Florida maxed out the House settlement cap and broke ground on a $348.5 million stadium. JMU wrote a $23 million check just to get in the door. Those programs are not better than UAB. They are led by people who refuse to wait and are not apologizing for dreaming big dreams.

UAB needs that person. Birmingham deserves that person. The AAU just handed this university the credentialing moment of a generation.

Go for it.