Former Rebels AD Livengood helped author report that brought back UAB football

By Taylor Bern

Thursday, June 11, 2015 | 2 a.m.

Jim Livengood is staying busy two years after the Rebels helped him out the door, and recently that included a study on UAB Athletics that could possibly help other non-Power 5 conference teams such as UNLV.

The former athletic director at UNLV, and before that Arizona and Washington State, was part of a consulting group that filed the final report on the impact of UAB either bringing back three sports — football, bowling, rifle — it cut in December or leaving them in the trash bin.

On June 1, a few weeks after the report was sent to UAB’s task force, UAB President Ray Watts announced the sports would return, in large part because of the financial support the community of Birmingham pledged after the football team was taken away.

The bizarre turnabout turned out to be an effective fundraising campaign. When asked if UNLV would be better off trying that tactic, Livengood laughed.

“There would be a number of people, and I’m not advocating this, who would immediately jump to the forefront and would be so petrified of losing it,” Livengood said. “Maybe that would help, with people realizing, ‘Hey, let’s do something now while we have it rather than resurrect it.’ ”

Livengood said there are other lessons to take away from UAB’s situation that apply to universities with fledgling football programs. One of them is the idea that even teams and conferences outside of the Power 5 — the ACC, Pac-12, SEC, Big Ten and Big 12 — will benefit financially from the College Football Playoff.

“The playoff money that’s trickling down and moving to these other five conferences too is so big and it’s going to get more and more,” Livengood said, adding that UNLV could end up seeing $1 million without ever playing in the playoff because of the revenue distribution.

Former San Diego State Athletic Director Jeff Schemmel, the president of College Sports Solutions, worked with a group of five consultants including Livengood to present UAB’s task force with a cost/benefit analysis of their self-inflicted situation. The group said both options were “viable” and it ultimately came down to deciding “what does UAB want to be in intercollegiate athletics, in whose company does it want to stand, and what is the best fit to match the mission and vision of the University?”

They refuted some of the numbers from CarrSports Consulting, the group that filed the original report cited heavily in Watts’ decision to terminate the programs, stating that bringing back football for 2016 would cost UAB about $6 million less than CarrSports’ projection. College Sports Solutions also projected a five-year net loss of $4.2 million by keeping the cuts while CarrSports projected a $2 million gain over the same time period, not factoring in penalties for canceled games and missed revenue streams.

After UAB announced it was dropping the programs — a decision rife with political battling inside the board of trustees, which presides over both UAB and Alabama — groups in Birmingham got together and pledged to raise the $17.2 million subsidy Watts said the program would need. There’s also been a lot of fundraising for the roughly $13 million the university said it needs for a new practice facility.

Although College Sports Solutions’ job was to provide an unbiased look at both options UAB was considering, Livengood has always been behind universities keeping and supporting their football programs for the growth potential it provides. So after holding back his opinion throughout the research, the former athletic director said UAB made a good move, even if it did it in entirely unconventional fashion.

“They made exactly the right decision because they have the support,” Livengood said. “They raised a ton of money, but more importantly they got a lot of people involved who weren’t involved before because they were so scared by losing it.”

Taylor Bern can be reached at 702-948-7844 or [email protected]. Follow Taylor on Twitter at twitter.com/taylorbern.