HOOVER -- It's hard to tell how good of a football coach the Garrick McGee is going to be. After all, his team has yet to play a game. But one thing is for sure. The man knows how to generate excitement. That was evident by the nearly 3,000 fans who showed for Blazer Fan Day at the Riverchase Galleria.

It was the biggest crowd for such a UAB event in recent memory, and perhaps the biggest in Blazer football history. "There is definitely some electricity in the air," said UAB athletics director Brian Mackin. "It's a type of excitement that we haven't had in a long time."

Even coach McGee was impressed with the crowd and "having people come out from the community to meet our players."

The players were all smiles too. Quarterback Jonathan Perry said "It's awesome," adding that fan day gave the team "a chance to meet a lot of fans that we normally couldn't see."

Linebacker Greg Irvin agreed, saying the event "lets us have some contact with the fans."

While the precise size of the crowd was hard to estimate, there seemed no doubt that it was bigger than in recent memory. For one thing, the two-hour time block wasn't long enough.

The players' autograph session was scheduled to run from 11:00 am to 1 pm. That simply wasn't enough time to handle the line of fans waiting for signatures. At 1:00, some fans were still in line waiting to get their first signature of the day.

Don't know about some of you, but I've been here 14 years and never seen that before.


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