Back When: The most competitive 72-0 you'll ever see

UAB football wasn't even four years old in September 1994. The program had spent two years as a non-scholarship Division III team before moving to Division I-AA.

Now it would get a taste of the big time.

For playing a Big Eight football game at Kansas, UAB received the paltry sum of $100,000 — and had to pay the team's travel out of it. That one game increased UAB's football budget by 20%. This season, McNeese received $750,000 to play at LSU. Ball State got $1.9 million to go to Ohio State.

It was a different world in 1994.

If the money sounds absurd, the scholarship numbers were even more unbelievable. UAB had two players on full scholarship. Two. Another 38 shared 18 scholarship equivalents. Most of the coaching staff were on modest stipends or were volunteers. Kansas had 85 full rides, a $2 million football budget — four times UAB's. The year before, Kansas had lost to Nebraska by one point. Nebraska played Florida State for the national championship in the Orange Bowl.

UAB loaded up for the football team's first plane ride and landed in a Big Eight stadium that also hosted teams like the Cornhuskers and Oklahoma Sooners. In their last home game before UAB arrived, Kansas had beaten Michigan State on this field. The Blazers had ambitions to move to Division I-A by 1996, and games like this were part of the cost.

Earlier, we told you about the most lopsided victory in UAB history. This is the story of its most lopsided loss.

I was there in the radio booth, in my second season as the Blazers' color analyst.

The final score on Sept. 24, 1994, was Kansas 72, UAB 0. But when you're new, you find victories in places that don't always show up on the scoreboard. For one half, it might have been the gutsiest performance ever by a UAB football team.

This is how it happened.

UAB received the opening kickoff and drove 70 yards. John Whitcomb completed three straight passes to Derrick Ingram for 56 yards. The Blazers reached the Kansas 10.

First down: motion penalty. Second down: fumble.

That sequence — compete, compete, compete, self-inflicted wound — would define the afternoon.

The day before the game, Jim Hilyer took his team to Memorial Stadium to get a feel for the field. The players congregated near midfield, where a grinning Jayhawk dominated the turf. Several of them started beating the painted bird in the head with their helmets. Defensive end Shannan Dodson kicked it in the behind and stomped on its beak.

Earlier that afternoon, at a walk-through inside the Kansas indoor facility, a couple of Kansas players wandered in to watch. I was on the sideline in my role as the color analyst for the UAB radio broadcast, and I overheard them. They saw five relatively small UAB offensive linemen line up in front of Whitcomb.

UAB senior guard Mike Trammell, a four-year starter and Clifford Allison Scholarship recipient, was 5-foot-10, 240 pounds. Kansas offensive guard Hessley Hempstead was 6-3, 295. Hempstead would go on to be an NFL draft pick who wore the uniform of the Detroit Lions. Trammell would go on to fill out the hospital scrubs of a UAB registered nurse.

That was the difference at every position.

"That can't be their offensive line," one of the Kansas players said.

"We should beat these guys 70-0," said the other.

He was close on that prediction. But it was probably tougher than he imagined for a half.

After the fumble killed UAB's opening drive, Kansas recovered at its own 10 and drove 77 yards for a touchdown. L.T. Levine scored from a yard out. It was 7-0 after one quarter.

That was the only score of the first period. Two full scholarships against 85, and UAB was in the game.

The Jayhawks added a field goal and two more Levine touchdowns in the second quarter to make it 24-0 at the half. But the score did not reflect what had happened on the field. UAB had been inside the Kansas 20 twice and did not score. The Blazers had fumbles, dropped passes and missed tackles — and every one of those mistakes let Kansas extend drives or take the ball away. Without the self-inflicted damage, UAB could have been on the scoreboard twice.

Whitcomb was 14 of 21 for 186 yards in the first half. That is not a quarterback getting pushed around. That is a former Division III passer picking apart a Big Eight secondary for 30 minutes.

Ingram, a Division III All-American, caught seven passes for 107 yards by the end of the game and showed he could play at any level. Defensive tackle Josh Evans made life miserable for Hempstead for much of the day. Evans would earn I-AA All-American honors in both 1993 and 1994 — but Kansas was the first real evidence he could be more. He went on to play 10 years in the NFL with the Houston Oilers, Tennessee Titans and New York Jets. He started a Super Bowl.

While they were a start-up, UAB was not without talent. In addition to Evans, safety Izell Reese played seven seasons in the NFL. Whitcomb and Ingram wrote the UAB passing records, and many of their marks stand today. Pat Green remains one of UAB's all-time leading rushers. He shared the backfield that year with UAB's first true high-profile recruit, former LSU player Robert Davis, who had been Alabama's Mr. Football at Homewood High School. Ingram, Evans and Reese are all in the UAB Sports Hall of Fame.

The Post-Herald's Cary Estes, who traveled with the team for the entire trip, reported that "in terms of sheer ability, UAB was nearly the Jayhawks' equal for 30 minutes."

The halftime locker room confirmed it. Estes reported that defensive tackle Walt Maddox said what the whole team was thinking: "We're killing ourselves. They're not killing us." The Blazers weren't scared. They were mad at themselves for giving away scoring chances they had earned.

Hilyer agreed. "We should be on the board twice, and they should have only 10 points, maybe 17," he told the team.

It was nice to dream. But then reality hit.

Kansas returned the second-half kickoff 93 yards for a touchdown. Ashaundai Smith was in the end zone before UAB had run a single play of the third quarter.

The Jayhawks scored six more touchdowns before the game was over.

It wasn't as much of a collapse as it was depth catching up to the Blazers.

Sixty-four Kansas players got in the game. The fifth-team tailback, Eric Vann, finished as the leading rusher with 81 yards. Mark Sanders ran 11 yards for one touchdown with four Blazers hanging on his back. Dorian Brew returned a punt 81 yards for another score.

Even UAB's best plays were just a bit off. A fake punt saw Kevin Tatarek pass to Alan Willis from the UAB 29. Willis took it to the house, but the officials ruled he stepped out of bounds after 44 yards. No touchdown.

The pattern was the same every series. UAB would string together two or three good plays — a completion, a stop, a tackle for loss — and then a fumble, a penalty or a missed assignment would hand Kansas a short field or a free play. Kansas turned every one of them into points. The Blazers lost all four of their fumbles. Kansas lost none. UAB committed 11 penalties for 65 yards. From one play to the next, UAB was competitive more often than not. The scoreboard just punished every mistake at the maximum rate.

By the fourth quarter, Estes reported, cornerback Roger Waldon shook his head with a weak laugh: "We've got to keep them from scoring 100."

The final was Kansas 72, UAB 0, before a Band Day crowd of 33,517 at Memorial Stadium. It remains the worst loss in UAB history.

The Kansas City Star's Blair Kerkhoff put it plainly: "Kansas 72, Alabama-Birmingham 0 is what happens when a Division I-A team with four times the resources meets a Division I-AA program in its second year of life."

That was the Kansas version. Here's the UAB version: Whitcomb finished 22 of 31 for 220 yards. The Blazers threw for 304 yards, had 310 total and 14 first downs against a Big Eight defense.

Not bad for a program, that from the time the ink went to the contract, was there mostly for the paycheck.

"Let's face it, we needed the money," Hilyer said in the postgame interview. "Right now, I'm trying to figure out how much each point was worth. I'll spend it buying a lot of sleeping pills."

When the game was announced in January, Hilyer had told the Birmingham News' Clyde Bolton why. "We started thinking about how we could increase the scholarship base from 10 to 20 and pay the coaches a respectable salary," he said. "Well, let's say a salary. It's not respectable." He called the game "the players' contribution" to funding the program.

And make no mistake, the players were all for it. Perhaps none more than Cedrick Buchannon, the Blazers' playmaking receiver and kicker return. As the margin widened, Buchannon never lowered his head. While teammates snapped at each other and threw helmets in the third quarter, Buchannon never quit clapping his hands and yelling encouragement.

"This game was worth it," Buchannon said. "We want this program to be Division I-A. In due time we'll be up there. We're not there yet. But this was the first step. And it was a big one."

Redshirt freshman quarterback Kevin Drake, from Gardendale, saw something bigger than a loss.

"I think our first team could have played with their first team all afternoon," Drake told the Birmingham News. "But their second and third teams were better."

"We've not only got to learn to play with this type of people, we've got to be like these people."

Drake would become exactly that, moving to wide receiver by the time he was a senior on his way to a career in the NFL with the Cardinals, Bills, Broncos and Cowboys.

The next week, UAB returned to I-AA competition and lost 31-22 to 14th-ranked Western Kentucky. Then the Blazers reeled off six straight wins to close the season 7-4. That gave them a 28-12-2 record for their first four seasons of competition. In January, Watson Brown was hired as head coach to lead the program into Division I-A.

Kansas went 6-5 that season. The Jayhawks beat Houston, Michigan State, Oklahoma State and Missouri. They lost to Oklahoma 20-17 — in the same stadium where UAB moved the ball on them for a half.

Hilyer was asked if he would do it again.

"Yeah, I'd do it again, but I'd probably bring a fifth of vodka to the game," Hilyer said.

Two years later, the Blazers moved up to Division I-A. The first opponent was Auburn. People predicted they might lose 100-0. They held Auburn to three field goals in the first half, lost just 29-0 and made more than a few Tiger fans reach for the bottle deep into the fourth quarter.