This is from Steward Mandel (I posted it in the "will we beat UAB thread" - well worth the read):
UAB, back and better than ever
On Saturdays this time last season, while the rest of the nation’s football teams ran into amped-up stadiums and played for championships and bowl berths, the UAB Blazers would scrimmage at a soccer stadium and a hold a cookout afterward.
Head coach Bill Clark was “cautiously optimistic” about the level of talent he’d spent two years assembling, but “you just can’t simulate the urgency and intensity of a college football game without doing it,” he said.
As it turns out, UAB’s first football team in three years may be better than nearly all that came before it. With a 52-21 blowout of Rice on Saturday, the 6-3 Blazers became bowl-eligible for just the fifth time in the program’s 20 seasons at the FBS level. And unlike Clark’s first season in 2014, when UAB president Ray Watts controversially shut down the program (citing financial reasons) three days after the Blazers finished 6-6, the 2017 squad will definitely go bowling.
UAB’s only previous bowl trip was the 2004 Hawaii Bowl.
“We're not satisfied, and we’ve still got games left,” Clark told The All-American on Sunday, “but it was still a big accomplishment, to come from where we have.”
Suffice to say no coach has pulled off anything quite like the 49-year-old Alabama native, who stayed on as coach after donors convinced Watts to reinstate the program six months after shuttering it.
Just 15 players remain from his 2014 roster, three of whom left and then transferred back. There are 50 junior college transfers, seven FBS or FCS transfers, 18 redshirt freshmen and 10 true freshmen. One true frosh, running back Spencer Brown, ranks in the top 20 nationally with 1,049 rushing yards.
“I knew if we brought in the right guys we could at least compete,” Clark said. “We could sell playing time — you know you can come in and play immediately.
“Then I saw this past spring, hey, maybe we do have a chance. We went out in recruiting and got some guys that really bonded together.”
Just last week, UAB signed Clark to a contract extension that made him the fifth-highest-paid coach in the conference at $900,000. He’s already earned every penny.