You can discuss how good the job actually is. You can deliberate on the state of the program, the state of the conference and the state of the state, but there's one point about the UAB basketball head coaching position that's not really open for debate. There's a coach out there that's as close to a slam dunk as possible at a job where success is no layup. There's a coach that knows the game and knows the territory. You know him, and most importantly, so does UAB. He is Andy

It's a fun fact, an odd fact and an unbelievable fact all rolled into one. More on the unbelievable fact in a minute, but first, the fun and odd fact: Gene Bartow and his son Murry Bartow share a birthday. It's today, August 18th. Happy Birthday to them. UAB and Birmingham have been fortunate to be blessed by the presence of both men, their families and their rock, Gene's wife and Murry's mother, Ruth. Gene, the father of UAB Athletics, would've been 89 years old today had he

Shhh. Listen. Do you hear it? That sound echoing from Connecticut all the way to Birmingham? It's opportunity. It's knocking for UAB. Just when you thought conference realignment wasn't going to be reawakened for a few years until the next major round of television negotiations, boom. Here comes the news that UConn is about to leave the American Athletic Conference to return to the Big East. The Big East doesn't play football - neither does UConn, at least not well - but it s

Football is different in Alabama, and not just because we win more than you do. When we secure a particularly compelling victory or witness an especially iconic moment, we want to hold onto that memory, savor it and take pride in it for the rest of our days. Maybe even hang it on the wall to remind us of the best of us. So we don't just paint the town red for a night. We make an actual painting of the occasion. In crimson and white. Or blue and orange. And now in green and go

What's in a name? In this case, the bottom line is $15 million, or $1 million a year for 15 years, but the message matters far beyond the money. Protective Life Corporation lending its name to Protective Stadium through a long-term sponsorship agreement with the Birmingham-Jefferson Convention Complex is more than a marketing deal. Protective didn't just give the new $174-million open-air multi-use stadium at Uptown a name. It gave us a lesson in how to protect this house. "T