UAB officially joins the American Athletic Conference this Saturday. To celebrate, Birmingham mayor Randall Woodfin declared it UAB Day.

Here’s an idea. If the City of Birmingham wanted to take those well wishes a step further, then maybe it could create incentives for businesses to pay athletes through NIL deals. Multiple public entities came together to build Protective Stadium for UAB football. Thanks to the shifting financial landscape of collegiate athletics, there are now opportunities for everyone to collectively help pay the players, too.

That includes municipalities, coalitions, cohorts, collectives and maybe, also, public civic center boards with enormous amounts of cash reserves.

City-aided college sports? Let’s not act like it’s some kind of revolutionary idea. Helping pay players would just be the next step for UAB and Birmingham is an ongoing relationship that includes scholarships to UAB for students of Birmingham City Schools. The city already does plenty for UAB athletics, but making it easier for the Blazers to remain competitive in a new era of college sports could only help Birmingham’s own interests.

Before bristling at the idea, first consider UAB’s competition in its new conference. Memphis basketball is never going to have any problems finding money for its players. SMU football is raising so much cash through its NIL collective that the Mustangs might be on their way out of the AAC just as UAB is stepping in.

SMU is in discussions with the Pac-12. Before the NIL era, a Dallas-based private school with a football team once given the death penalty for paying players wouldn’t have been on the Pac-12′s radar. Now? SMU’s donor base is a national leader in raising money to pay players, and fans want to see SMU’s sharply designed “Dallas” jerseys go up against teams like Oregon, Arizona and Washington.

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What is UAB’s identity as it begins a new era in the American Athletic Conference? I guess that’s the biggest question of all.

Birmingham is the city that couldn’t be killed, and UAB football is the team that came back from the dead. That’s a fun story. Birmingham has positioned itself as a national leader in civil rights, and UAB is one of the most diverse public universities in the country. That’s an inspiring message. UAB’s medical and research district is like a city inside a city, and the undergraduate footprint continues to expand, grow and evolve. It’s a university that represents a new kind of power.

That’s something to appreciate and promote nationally.

UAB is walking into the AAC with resolute brilliance and a renegade’s swagger. There’s a new football stadium and plans for upgrading the basketball arena. Bring on Memphis. Bring back the Battle for the Bones. Let’s be honest for a moment, though. First, UAB needs to bring in new fans for these teams to reach their full potential.

UAB athletics lost its momentum when its traditional peers in Conference USA defected for the AAC between 2013 and 2014. Why UAB was left behind no longer matters. It’s ancient history and no one cares. UAB is a completely different place than it was five years ago, never mind over 10. UAB Day? That’s every day in Birmingham, and the football and basketball teams should be the physical representations of that collective pride.

Birmingham is a city of fighters and strivers. That’s a good combination for success.

Major college sports are changing faster than a teenager’s friends after their first month of high school. These are no longer amateur endeavors. They represent big business for their stakeholders. In Birmingham, with the Blazers moving up to the AAC, everyone is a stakeholder of UAB football and basketball whether they grew up fans or not.

Birmingham worked with Alabama and Auburn for years and that partnership helped facilitate the greatest rivalry in college sports, the Iron Bowl. Birmingham’s work with Alabama A&M and Alabama State created the nation’s largest HBCU classic. Most recently, Birmingham landed the USFL thanks to teamwork between the public and private sectors. The partnership between the USFL and Birmingham has created positive national exposure for the city, and the local team has been a boon for the local economy, too. The Birmingham Stallions won the league in Year One, and just celebrated a great crowd last week on national TV for the Stallions’ first home playoff game.

On Saturday, on “UAB Day” in Birmingham, the Stallions are playing in the USFL championship game in Canton, Ohio, against the Pittsburgh Maulers. Kickoff is at 7 p.m. and the game will be on NBC and Peacock.

For Birmingham, UAB competing at the highest level of college football could mean bringing the College Football Playoff to the city. The CFP is expanding to 12 teams in 2024, and seeds five through eight will host first-round playoff games. In his first day on the job, UAB coach Trent Dilfer said his goal was to take Birmingham to the College Football Playoff. I agree that there’s a new path available for the Blazers to reach the playoffs, but that road will not be paved cheaply.

UAB was criticized by some for hiring Dilfer. Not me. I liked the bold move by UAB athletics director Mark Ingram from the beginning. Dilfer is outspoken and innovative. He’s creating headlines and manufacturing intrigue. His upward trajectory with UAB can be a national story.

The buzz around Deion Sanders at Colorado was immediate. Dilfer represents a wild card for Birmingham, too. He’s a public figure with a polarizing voice. That’s perfect and exactly what UAB needs. UAB basketball coach Andy Kennedy was baptized by the spirit of Gene Bartow, and Dilfer is showing signs of that Bartow-like edge, too.

Bartow was always thinking two steps ahead. How would he celebrate UAB Day? Probably by getting Birmingham’s mayor and UAB’s president on the line with the Big 12.

Joseph Goodman is the lead sports columnist for the Alabama Media Group, and author of “We Want Bama”, a book about togetherness, hope and rum. You can find him on Twitter @JoeGoodmanJr.