After the 2014-15 season, the football program at the University of Alabama Birmingham was shut down after the president of the school declared it, “simply not sustainable.” Players were crying, fans were upset, and coach Bill Clark was left without a job. In Clark’s first year at UAB in 2014, UAB finished 6-6 to become bowl eligible for the first time since 2004, their only other one in program history. In the two years prior to Clark’s arrival, they compiled a record of 5-19. Clark obviously was putting this thing in the right direction before the program was pulled out from underneath him.

On June 1, 2015, the Blazers were resurrected. With the help of private support, an estimated $27 million was raised, enough to make the football program functional again. It was announced that football would be reinstated at UAB starting in 2017 and they would be eligible for both the CUSA Championship and a bowl game.

Before the game this past weekend, UAB gave Bill Clark a five-year extension to his contract, providing stability to a program who could certainly use it. Under Clark for the foreseeable future, this program looks to be in good hands.

With Clark staying loyal to the program, this year’s Blazers have far exceeded everyone’s expectations. They are now sitting at 6-3, in second place in the CUSA West, and will be bowl eligible for just the third time in school history. They have become a favorite team of the Campus Cover podcast due to their off the field stories as well. While attendance used to hover around 10,000 fans and be a major problem, the Blazers are now averaging over 30,000 fans a game, good for first in the CUSA. Unfortunately, it’s unlikely that the Blazers would be able to catch North Texas for the division title, who holds the tiebreakers over them.

It’s not just on the field that UAB is making an impact in the community. For their homecoming football game, UAB partnered with Children’s Harbor Family Center, the local children’s hospital in Birmingham, to put the names of patients on the back of their uniforms. The team makes regular trips to the hospital and though this would be a good idea to lift the spirits of the children. How could you not love that?

It seems as if cutting the program at UAB awoke a sleeping giant. This will just be the start for Bill Clark and the Blazers, as they will now embark on years of CUSA domination. Maybe, just maybe, you will be able to catch Student Union at whatever bowl game UAB ends up at.