Blazing a Different Trail

Abstract: The University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) caused a media uproar locally and nationally in December 2014 when it announced it was dropping its football team, along with bowling and rifle squads. Amid protests by students, fans, and supporters—as well as near-universal negative coverage—the university’ s president announced a reconsideration of the decision in January 2015. The following June, it announced it would bring the team back in 2017. A content analysis of 667 print, broadcast, and online media coverage of the saga revealed that local and national outlets used competing frames as the story developed, and UAB’ s attempts to tell its own story was drowned out by skeptical press coverage.

Welch Suggs

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