BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — On a day when Donald Trump's infinite election convoy was shutting down the streets of Birmingham, Bill Clark strolled through the front doors of the Sheraton Hotel without anyone seeming to notice.
Wearing blue jeans, a sport coat and a neighborly Alabama smile, Clark was not outfitted like a football coach. He looked more like a company's go-to salesman—the kind of asset that closes a deal long before shaking a single hand.
In many ways, at least for the time being, this has become his new reality.
On one of the final college football Saturdays of the season, the head coach of UAB football—the program that was told to die, only to spring back to life before most knew it had ever left—looked strangely content with his unorthodox standing.