I wish this was a joke, but I'm assuming it's not. If only people realized how few actual, paying fans went to UAB games perhaps they would have just shut up about it. The media was not going to truthfully report those sort of statistics though, they had no interest in them, I never even saw a national report detailing how many tickets the city of Birmingham was buying to keep UAB's weak ticket sales propped up.
Yes some rhetoric has been over the top, however that doesn't change three important things.
1: The City of Birmingham is the biggest outside supporter of UAB football, deliberately creating false demand so politicians within the city can have their own pet project, which in this case is a football team. They waste millions of taxpayer funds in the process.
2: The Alabama system subsidizes UAB football in the millions as well, siphoning away funds from state taxpayers, federal taxpayers, and yes Alabama fans going to Alabama games as well.
3: As has been noted, there was no real support for UAB football until there was no UAB football. There's no reason to believe it's genuine at all, it's political in nature, and it will go away in short order.
This entire thing is nothing but a lesson in politics, that's it. At the end of the day no one really cares how many millions are flushed down the drain, a small special interest group with a loud voice has a tendency to get what it wants, even if what it wants is millions of dollars belonging to other people.