College Football Bahamas Bowl: Where is UAB?

The UAB Blazers are set to face off against the Miami RedHawks in the Bahamas Bowl. But, well, where is UAB?

If you’re unfamiliar with college football and you don’t know much about the South, it’s totally a fine thing to wonder where the UAB Blazers are from.

Heck, if we’re being totally honest here, even if you are familiar with college football and do know the South fairly well, it’s a pretty fair thing to wonder about why UAB’s teams are named after an old Chevy truck (that they definitely ruined when they brought it back to life with the latest generation).

So, what’s going on here? Where is UAB?

Where are the UAB Blazers from?

If you’re not already aware, UAB stands for the University of Alabama at Birmingham. And that should be a pretty clear indicator of where the Blazers call home.

Birmingham, Alabama, home to nearly 200,000 people within the city limits, is one of the largest cities within the state. It also happens to be home to UAB, which is a very notable part of the University of Alabama System.

Birmingham is located almost right smack in the midst of the state and is roughly an hour from Tuscaloosa, depending on how fast you drive, which is where the University of Alabama and Nick Saban’s Crimson Tide actually reside.

UAB was established largely because there was a pretty quickly growing population in Birmingham. The University of Alabama sought to provide educational opportunities to folks living there and thus, this university came to be in 1936. However, the institution’s roots actually reach all the way back to the pre-Civil War days.

Focusing a bit more on modern times and zooming ahead on the timeline, if you get to 1970’s, you’ll find that the Blazers came to be because of a school mascot vote because it sounded like a cool idea for the university to try and “blaze” a trail.

College sports are quirky sometimes.