#thereturn

September 3, 2020·13 min

1. UAB Memories centers on UAB football, the 2014 disbandment, and the June 1, 2015 return announcement that followed a two-and-a-half-year shutdown. 2. Will Shingleton hosts the episode, Tristan Henderson appears as a former player turned assistant tight end coach, and Maggie Tucker is a staff member whose job changed when football ended and returned. 3. The episode's core idea is that UAB football went from "bowl eligible" and shut down to a championship program, with fans, staff, and players pushing the comeback. 4. Tristan Henderson says Coach Bill Clark opened with "I hate liars" and "I hate losing," and that message helped set a 6-6 season in motion. 5. After UAB beat a rival and became bowl eligible, Tristan says the team heard they were "going to have a meeting," and President Watts addressed the players in the room. 6. Maggie Tucker says she called her brother at Mississippi State when she heard the rumors, because she thought, "There's no way" UAB would disband football after its first successful season in a decade. 7. She also says Mike Jones called her back after the June 1, 2015 announcement, and her first day back featured "30 guys" instead of the "120 guys" she had been used to seeing. 8. Tristan says the 2017 home opener against Alabama A&M drew "40 something thousand" fans, which he contrasts with a 2013 Rice game where he could point out his wife from the opposite sideline. 9. The 2018 season brought "nine wins" in the regular season and a Conference USA championship game against Middle Tennessee, where Tristan says he started "throwing water bottles" after the final snap. 10. Fans of UAB football, comeback stories, and college sports program rebuilds.

As heard by us

A UAB football comeback told through the people left to absorb what came next after the program was disbanded.

UAB football's return is framed less as a comeback story than as a human reckoning. Tristan Henderson, a 2014 graduate who is now the assistant tight end coach, remembers the shock that followed the Blazers' first bowl-eligible season in a decade under Bill Clark.

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Why you'd press play

Press play when you want UAB football's return told from inside the uncertainty, with the people who had to ask what came next.

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