Win, lose or settle, UAB athletics will live on.

That's what Richard Scrushy, one of the few UAB alums on the University of Alabama System's board of trustees, says when asked if the messy Brittany Benefield lawsuits could be the end of Blazer sports. Scrushy said neither the cases, nor the negative publicity accompanying them, will get in the way of UAB sports. "We never said we were going to close it," Scrushy says.

Speculation that the school's athletic future was on shaky ground stemmed from published reports in mid-April that said if the school's athletic department didn't turn a profit and become self-sufficient by 2004 it was going to go under. "I don't know where the reporters got that stuff from," says Scrushy. "We never said that. We're in good shape. We just had to light a fire underneath the new AD (Herman Frazier)."

Much of the speculation, UAB supporters say, also comes from the perception that the Board -- made up of mostly Tuscaloosa grads -- was looking for a reason to pull the plug on Blazer football, especially now that it has become a legit player on the 1-A landscape.

Other members of the board failed to return calls.

According to the Birmingham News, UAB football lost $2.5 million in the 2001 fiscal year, while the Blazers women's sports programs lost $2.8 million. Men's basketball lost more than $300,000.

Bruce Feldman covers college football for ESPN The Magazine. E-mail him at bruce.feldman@espnmag.com.