Choose one: Male or female.

Choose one: Alabama or Auburn.

In the state of Alabama, there is no neutral ground. Just as each citizen must be assigned a gender, he or she must be assigned a college affiliation.

So where does that leave a Alabama-Birmingham fan?

"They're the extraneous fans,'' said Steve Chiotakis of Birmingham. "They're the ones who didn't find a home at Auburn or Alabama.''

Chiotakis works for Birmingham's public radio station and as such, is an employ of UAB. That's the University of Alabama at Birmingham, as distinguished from UAT, the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa.

UAB opens its football season at Neyland Stadium on Saturday against third-ranked UTK. UTK plays at UAT in October.

Enough silliness. UTK and UAT require no initialization. Tennessee. Alabama. You know them. So does the guy in Spokane, if not Sri Lanka.

As brand names go, UAB has a ways to go.

"They've always felt like the green-headed stepchild of the University of Alabama system,'' said Chiotakis.

Talk to UAB fans and the term "stepchild" comes up sooner or later.

"A lot of Alabama people would like to pave us over,'' said Gary Sanders.

Sanders is the Blazers' play-by-play radio voice. Raised in Chattanooga and educated at UT, Sanders got his start in 1958, calling a Rule-Fulton game at Evans-Collins Field.

After a couple of years doing UT basketball, he spent 11 years as Auburn's play-by-play man.

He's broadcast 26 years of UAB basketball, which is to say all of it. He's described every one of UAB's 154 football games.

The school was founded in 1944 as a medical branch of the university in Tuscaloosa. In 1969, it became an autonomous campus, although still under the University of Alabama system's guidance.

The Blazers started basketball in the late 1970s, making a splash by hiring Gene Bartow from UCLA as coach and athletic director. Football was launched in 1991 as a Division III sport.

"Give Gene Bartow a lot of credit,'' said Sanders. "Here's a basketball guy who realized if you didn't have football in the state of Alabama, you'd disappear from the sports pages for eight months out of the year.''

The Blazers moved to Division I-A only in 1996.

They play at Legion Field, abandoned by both Alabama and Auburn. Last year's average attendance of 20,802 was the second highest in the program's brief history.

Many UAB fans are, in truth, also fans of either Auburn or Alabama (but never both).

Don Hire settled in Birmingham after attending college at Memphis State.

"UAB is the unwanted stepchild, like Memphis State is the unwanted stepchild in Tennessee,'' Hire said.

Hire first pledged allegiance to Auburn, sensing it was then a stepchild to the Crimson Tide.

Then UAB came along, a new stepchild.

"For one reason or another,'' Hire said, "Auburn has been more supportive of UAB. I won't say Auburn is an ally, but they're more of an ally than Alabama.''

Auburn has played UAB in football once and in basketball 17 times. It took the NIT to pair up UAB and Alabama in hoops (UAB won). As for football, the Crimson Tide would blow up Bryant-Denny Stadium before scheduling UAB.

Hire is an Auburn season-ticket holder. A best-case scenario is attending an Auburn home game and a UAB home game the same day.

"It's been fun to watch a program start from the point where it didn't have anything,'' he said, "no basketballs, no track shoes, nothing.

"When they first started going to games, the fans had to learn the tailgate experience.''

Chiotakis is a life-long Alabama fan. However, he currently prefers Blazer games.

"It's more fun,'' he said. "Their style of football is run-and-shoot rather than the old conservative run-it-up-the-middle offense that Alabama loves to play.''

Sanders, the old Auburn announcer, is, naturally, no Alabama fan.

"I own one red shirt,'' he said, "and it says 'Iowa State.'

"They've thrown a lot of roadblocks in our way. They're so concerned we might accidentally get a player they want.''

As for Saturday, Sanders thinks the Blazers will make it interesting.

And he chuckles at the prospect of Alabama folks being caught in a dilemma.

"Saturday may be the one time those guys may have to pull for UAB,'' he said. "It's gotten to the point where they almost hate UT more than us.''