Quest Almost Over In Bringing Back UAB Football

By ESPN

Bill Clark leans back in his chair and reflects on yet another milestone in his quest to bring back UAB football.

Two-and-a-half years after the program was shuttered by the university and two years after a contingent of alumni and businessmen fought to have it restored, its head coach sits in a brand-new office inside a brand-new 46,000 square-foot, $22 million facility. Just outside his balcony is a brand-new covered practice field. It's 7 o'clock on a recent Friday morning, the sun is rising and football is almost here. Twenty-nine practices until kickoff against Alabama A&M on Sept. 2.

"It's a big deal," Clark says on the eve of preseason camp. "It really is."

The 49-year-old coach is grinning from ear to ear as he speaks. But he does that a lot these days. You get the sense he has to pinch himself every now and then to remember this is all real, that they really did hold it all together for so long and are about to come out on the other side not just ready to play a game for the first time since 2014, but to compete and win.

Players have started reporting to campus, Clark says, and everyone is accounted for.

Well, almost everyone. There are a few names on the way, but one who will never arrive, one he can't forget.

It's in that instant when the conversation turns. Clark's face darkens. He would gladly give back this new office and all of his new toys just to change one decision he and so many others have come to regret.

Because for all the joy and optimism that exists today, the reality is that UAB football isn't coming back this season in one piece. It's missing the very player who once made its return not just feel real, but exciting. It's missing his infectious smile and his incessant dancing. It's missing his enthusiasm to work even when the nearest game was more than a year away.

Greg Bryant needed a second chance just as much as UAB did. But almost as soon as he felt his life starting to turn around, it was over, as he was shot and killed while in South Florida for Mother's Day.

In the beginning, before anyone knew what the return of UAB football would look like, Clark huddled in an old, musty single-story office with his staff. The countdown to kickoff clock was shut down near the vacated receptionist desk. Some of the halogen lights overhead flickered as they attempted construct a roster that had lost more than half its players.

Where to begin?

Clark had big plans, but no road map. He needed an infusion of talent, but he also knew his players couldn't be too young and compete. A team full of recent high school graduates would get manhandled, he thought. So it was off to the world of junior college football.

The names he heard his staff pitch felt vaguely familiar. Some he'd recruited prior to the shutdown at UAB, some he'd known since his days coaching high school, and some he'd seen only on TV.

Greg Bryant was the latter.

A coach called another coach who called another coach and suddenly Bryant's name was on Clark's desk. It took awhile for Clark to place him, but he got the picture soon enough: South Florida product who was a top-25 recruit coming out of high school. A rare mix of power and speed. ESPN's No. 2 tailback in the 2013 class, who played as a freshman at Notre Dame and rushed for 258 yards and three touchdowns as a sophomore. Grades, Clark soon found out, ultimately did Bryant in, landing him at a junior college near his home in Miami.

This kid, Clark thought, was in another league. He watched his film and said, "Wow, he's unbelievable!" He'd heard Florida State, Auburn and several other Power 5 schools were heavily interested in him.

Then, out of the blue, Clark's phone rang. It was Bryant, who told him, "Coach, I'm interested in y'all."

"It was a long shot, a long shot" Clark said. "If it was a Birmingham guy, you get it. But for a guy from Miami to get the whole process of who we are, where we're headed, what we're going to do ..."

He stopped himself, and added: "Guys will tell you they're coming and then, is it real?"

No one knew. The advantage UAB had over other schools was time. With no games that year, players were able to enroll, spend the year rehabbing and training and not lose any eligibility. In the case of Bryant, he could work on his grades.

"It was the perfect scenario," Clark said.

Still, they waited.

Clark had a coaches getaway at a hunting lodge in Mississippi that January before the semester began. There were a lot of new faces on staff, and he wanted to get everyone on the same page. With a fire roaring in the background, they answered the big questions facing the program: "Who are we? Where are we headed?"

And on the side, they made calls. Lots and lots of calls.

It was there, drawing the blueprint for the future of UAB football, that the final call came in. Bryant's paperwork was completed.

"It was a big deal," Clark said. "He was the bell cow of that class."

If there is truly a silver lining to every gray cloud, UAB's was this: In the midst of all the headlines about the program being shut down, it became a household name. When football was reinstated, Clark rarely had to explain the situation, whether he was talking to a recruit in South Florida or Southern California.

Then Bryant's commitment happened and it created momentum.

All the time, Clark said he'd have people ask, "Y'all got Greg Bryant?" Even coaches on his staff couldn't believe it, saying, "He's coming here?"

"It validated us," Clark said. "I'm not a star guy, but UAB has never had a four-star and this is a five-star. My son knew him better than I did. These kids had watched him in the Under Armour Game. They knew."

Safety Chris Morgan, who hosted Bryant on his official visit, was the first to know that his commitment was coming and watched as the floodgates opened afterward.

"To have a big-name player, it made other guys say, 'OK, they're building something special,'" Morgan said. "Him coming here did a lot for that class."

Marc Jonassaint, a safety from South Florida, made no bones about it: He doesn't come to UAB if Bryant isn't on board. He wouldn't even have known who they were, he said.

"When UAB offered me, I looked at the class and went, 'Wow, you got Greg? You got all these other recruits? Sign me up. I need it.'" Jonassaint said.

More than any new facility or fancy billboard, the signing of Bryant -- and his prospective teammates -- showed the world that UAB football was real.

A boy wanted to see his mom, and no one could tell him no. Not his dad. Not his coach. No one.

They tried to convince him that going home was a bad idea. Dad talked to Coach and they agreed: He has worked so hard to get his GPA up to a 2.75 and things were going great in Birmingham, so why risk it by returning to Miami?

But it was Mother's Day and Bryant had some time off between semesters. And even though he'd made a deal with Morgan that he'd stay on campus, relax and get ready for workouts, he found a flight home anyway.

Morgan shook his head when he saw a Snapchat Bryant posted of him kissing his mother a few days later. That was the GB he knew, always trying to make people happy.

Hours later, Bryant was shot. His body was found by police in a car on Interstate 95. At the hospital, he was declared brain-dead and later passed away.

He was 21 years old.

"That was an awful day," Clark said, searching for and understandably failing to find the right words.

Bryant wasn't at UAB long -- a little more than a semester, in fact -- but even a year after his death, his presence lingers. His jacket continues to hang on the same chair where he left it at Morgan's apartment. His jeans are still at Jonassaint's place, too. Neither can bear to get rid of them.

"I've never met someone as happy as him," Jonassaint said. "He's smiling all the time, goofy. I can't see him doing anything wrong."

Players reflexively talk about Bryant in the present tense, laughing about how funny he could be and then turning serious when describing what a talent he was. When veteran linebacker Shaq Jones first went head-to-head with him in the Oklahoma drill, he wanted to give the star from Notre Dame a good lick. Only he whiffed completely and Bryant scored a touchdown.

"He said, 'Yeah, that's going to be all year long!'" Jones said, smiling. "It was just the competition that we had with him. He made everyone raise their level."

With a fresh start and a more mature approach to the classroom, teammates saw a player destined for stardom. Jonassaint believed Bryant was going to be a one-and-done, heading straight for the NFL after one season.

Together, Jonassaint said they'd talk about how they would be "the new UAB."

"He wanted to break all the records, he wanted to be the best to ever come out of here," Morgan said. "We talked about it all the time: Put UAB on the map. Be the ones who bring UAB to places it had never been before."

But now, Morgan, Jonassaint and the rest of the team have to move forward without him. They have to put UAB on the map without him.

After Bryant's death, Morgan got a tattoo on his right forearm that has angel wings surrounding big block letters that spell out, "GB4E."

"Every time I come up here, I never take it for granted," Morgan said. "Even the days I'm tired, you don't feel like getting up and going to class or getting up and going to workouts and you stop feeling, I just think about Greg. I got this tattoo. It's a reminder how quickly it can be taken away."

USF QB Thrives In Times Of Tragedy

The time had come for Quinton Flowers to say his final goodbyes to his mother.

Nolita "Nancy" Mans didn't let on to Flowers or his brothers that cancer was slowly killing her until it became too obvious to hide. At the end, cancer stole everything, including her eyesight. A grief-stricken Flowers walked into her hospital room, held his mother's hand and told her, "This is your youngest son."

"I love you," she said through tears. She then asked Flowers to call his high school football coach. Antonio Brown raced to the hospital.

"Please take care of my baby," she told him. "Make sure he goes to college."

She closed her eyes.

"That was the last thing she told him," Flowers said recently, wiping away tears.

Flowers had lost his father, Nathaniel Sr., years earlier in a drive-by shooting when Quinton was 7. Now reality hit: At age 17, he was an orphan.

More tragedy was to come. Nearly three years later, on the cusp of his first career collegiate start at South Florida, his oldest brother was shot and killed in Miami.

All this tragedy, this is what Flowers bears every minute of every day. There are times when he calls home and breaks down. There are times when nobody understands what's behind his smile.

What he wants people to see is the dynamic dual-threat quarterback he has become. He is already one of the most prolific players in USF history, having passed for more than 2,000 yards and rushed for more than 1,000 in 2016. No other collegiate signal caller in the state of Florida has ever done that -- no, not even Tim Tebow. But Flowers has much, much more to accomplish, and he wants people to know why he keeps on going.

Flowers' father was grilling and watching a Miami Dolphins game when he was shot in a drive-by shooting outside their home. The bullet was meant for someone else. Too young to remember much about his dad or the shooting, Flowers recalls his mother worrying about how she would support her family.

Nancy Mans went back to high school and got her GED. She took a job working in the cafeteria at her children's elementary school.

Her brother, Nick Mans, provided extra assistance and became an everyday presence in the kids' lives. As Quinton and Nathaniel Jr. started getting into football, Uncle Nick made sure to attend every game they played. Quinton began to blossom as a quarterback and chose to attend Miami Jackson High, where he wanted to help turn the program around and play for Brown.

As Quinton began his high school career, his mother got sick. Nancy confided in her only daughter, Shanay, and laid out all the responsibilities she would have to take on as head of the household.

"Before she went into the hospital, she told me, 'Shanay, if anything ever happens to me, I need for you to get up and work. Make sure you take care of your brothers, your kids. Whatever you do, don't leave them behind,'" Shanay recalled. "I said, 'Ma, don't talk like that.' But she told me, 'You being the only girl, you're being more responsible than your brothers, you'll understand more. Don't worry about me. Don't cry. I did all I could do for you all. Just make sure they finish school. Make sure Quinton finishes school.'"

Nancy was especially protective of Quinton, her youngest child. She understood that he could have a future playing collegiately but was adamant that he earn good grades above all else. During the months she was hospitalized, she missed Quinton playing football. Nick would come to the hospital and show her videos from the games, and Nancy would cry.

After their mother died, Shanay tried to keep the household together and take care of her younger brothers. She also had two young children of her own and struggled to find consistent work, pay the bills and provide everything they needed. Nick stepped in to help, but the situation grew tense.

One night, Quinton lashed out at his sister and stormed out of their house. "That was the first time we ever fought," Shanay said. "I saw in his face he was angry. I had never seen him upset or mad about anything until then. He was tired of everything going on in life."

Quinton turned to Brown. "Coach, I'm done," Quinton told him. "I don't want to play football anymore. I don't have the same feeling that I used to."

Quinton recalls Brown asking him, "If your mom was still here, would you play?"

"Yeah," Quinton said.

"Don't think she's not watching you," Brown said. "Don't think she's not seeing everything you're doing."

Quinton understood. "I don't want to be a guy that ends up in the street and tells little kids that looked up to me, 'Oh, I was one of them dudes that did this, that broke high school records,'" he said. "I want guys to look up to me and say, 'I want to do what he did, make a change, be different.'"

Through all the tragedy, Quinton had two things going for him: a large, supportive family and football. Like Brown, those closest to him urged him to put his faith into fulfilling his mother's dying wish.

To get to college, he needed a football scholarship. To accept a football scholarship, Flowers needed a guarantee that he would be allowed to stay at quarterback, the last position his mother saw him play.

Offers poured in. Only one coach made Flowers that guarantee: Willie Taggart at USF.

So Quinton packed up and headed to Tampa.

The emotional weight Flowers carries with him, plus frustration from not playing right away, led him to question whether he had made the right decision.

He thought seriously about transferring and found it hard to stay positive.

In November of his freshman season, Taggart told Flowers to get ready: He would get the start at SMU. He called Nathaniel Jr., buzzing with the good news, but when he stopped talking, there was silence on the other end.

"What happened, what's wrong with you?" Quinton asked.

Nathaniel Jr. paused. It was quiet.

"Hello?" Quinton asked into the silence.

Nathaniel Jr. broke down. Quinton learned that his oldest brother, Bradley Holt, had been shot while trying to protect a group of children in their Miami neighborhood from an erratic driver. When Quinton hung up the phone, he took the long way back to his room, crying and praying for answers.

Holt died two days before the SMU game. Quinton got on the airplane with his team, determined to play for Holt. Teammate Deatrick Nichols, his best friend from childhood, saw an emotional Quinton and pulled him aside on the field.

"I had to give him a little bit of tough love that day and just tell him, 'I know you just took a big loss of a family member, but the other team really doesn't care about that, so you have to breathe in and breathe out and play the game as hard as you can,'" Nichols recalled. "'No one is going to feel sorry for you right now because they see you at a weak moment. They'll try to make it worse for you.' We came out with a win that game, and he played very well. That made me very happy for him."

Quinton made a brief visit home to Miami for the viewing. He put a green and gray USF beanie cap inside the casket, an item Quinton said Holt always wanted from him. Then he left to prepare for the next game against Memphis.

"The people who killed my brother, they were not found at that time, so I felt like if I stayed down there, I'm with my family, and you never know what could happen," Quinton said. "I could have been next. That's another life that's gone, and my whole team would be in a situation to where they'd be hurt, so I didn't want to put my team in that predicament."

In Tampa, Flowers started to settle in and get more comfortable. As a sophomore, he earned the starting job in fall camp and won team MVP honors. Momentum started to build for him going into last season, and he lived up to the advance billing.

Flowers won American Athletic Conference Offensive Player of the Year honors, becoming the first 2,000-yard passer and 1,000-yard rusher in USF and state of Florida history and setting school single-season records for total offense (4,337), total touchdowns (42), rushing yards (1,530), rushing touchdowns (18) and passing touchdowns (24).

Taggart left USF for Oregon, but new coach Charlie Strong came in with an inside edge: He recruited Flowers in high school. New offensive coordinator Sterlin Gilbert spent the entire offseason working with Flowers on his throwing motion, looking to refine him first as a passer.

"You know his story, and you see his smile and see him working, you can't have a bad day," Gilbert said. "I can't have a bad day. This kid has had a lot of unfortunate things happen to him in his life, and he shows up every day, and he works, and he's rolling. There are a few kids through your coaching career that not only you get to influence, but they impact you every day. He's one of them."

Flowers came to USF not only to play quarterback but also to build a struggling program. There is more to be done beyond building his stats. He wants to ultimately say that he played a key role in bringing USF to places it had never been, and that could happen if the favored Bulls end up in a New Year's Six bowl game.

"Some kids can't take what he's been through," Nick Mans said. "Lose a mom, lose a dad and lose a brother. To keep the poise and keep being himself ... I don't know if I could take it. I just told him, 'Keep your head up, keep a smile on your face, keep God first, and everything will iron out well.'"

Mans, known affectionately around the team as "Unck," plans to be at every home game. So will Nathaniel Jr., Shanay, their kids and Quinton's first child, a daughter born last year. The family usually rents a bus and 25-30 members pile in for the four-hour ride to Tampa.

Before each game, Quinton will listen closely, the way he always does. He says he can hear his mother calling out with the special nickname she used just for him.

"Boobie, keep going! Keep pushing!"

He will go down to the end zone, cross his heart three times and blow three kisses in the air.

"For my three angels."