The diehard fan, the Bones and the 911 call

David Petitt was standing outside Bartow Arena on the night of Feb. 5 with a box under his arm, waiting for the Memphis team bus. UAB had just lost 90-80 at home. The Blazers’ biggest rival had come into their building and beaten them by double digits. Petitt had watched all of it. He was still there.

When Penny Hardaway walked out, Petitt says, the Memphis coach looked at him and asked if he was waiting around for an autograph.

“No,” Petitt said. “I’m here to give you something.”

He opened the box. Inside was a trophy he’d built on a 3D printer — a replica of the Battle for the Bones bronze rack of ribs, the rivalry trophy UAB and Memphis fight over every year in football. Petitt had designed it, paid for it and named it himself: the Gene Bartow Battle for the Bones. Hardaway had no idea what he was looking at, Petitt says. He had to explain.

He handed it over anyway. Winner gets the Bones. Memphis won. The Bones go to Memphis.

That’s how a UAB fan — on his own dime, with no support from either school — decided to build a basketball rivalry tradition for two programs that share more history than almost any other pair in the Group of 6 but can’t always agree on whether they’re rivals at all. In a conference full of reluctant dance partners, Petitt is doing the work the institutions won’t. And what happened 17 days later might be the best rivalry story the G6 has produced this year.

On Feb. 22, UAB went to Memphis and won 78-67 at FedEx Forum — the Blazers’ first win there since 1999.

Petitt went courtside to collect his trophy.

Hardaway blew him off, Petitt says. A Memphis staffer came out and suggested they make it best two out of three. Petitt said no — they might not meet in the American Conference tournament set for Birmingham in March, and besides, the trophy was his. He’d built it. He needed it back for the bronze casting.

What followed, according to Petitt, was a standoff inside FedEx Forum.

“We went back-and-forth for almost an hour before I said that I would not be leaving Memphis without the trophy since it belonged to me,” Petitt told Diehard Sports Network. “And that if they decided they wanted to own it that they could purchase it from me for $5,000. They kind of laughed at that and I said that I was serious that I wanted my trophy back.”

Memphis kept stalling, he says. Petitt escalated.

“They continued to delay me and so I said well here’s your options — either return my trophy, pay me $5,000, or I use my phone and dial 911 and get a police report for stolen property,” Petitt said. Then he says he actually dialed 911 and held his finger above the send button.

The Memphis staffer went into the locker room, Petitt says, and came out with the trophy.

Petitt didn’t go straight home. He took the Bones to Beale Street — photos at A. Schwab’s, photos perched on the Memphis Tiger statue, photos with Tigers fans who recognized the trophy even though school administrators on both sides have been lukewarm to the whole idea. Then he drove it back to Birmingham.

The football version of this trophy exists because someone at UAB did exactly what Petitt is doing now — forced it into existence before anyone asked for it. In 2006, Sam Miller, then UAB’s associate athletic director for marketing, had artist Heather Spencer Holmes cast a giant rack of ribs in bronze at Sloss Furnaces. Memphis declined to participate. UAB paraded the 100-pound trophy around Legion Field and had ROTC guard it. “We kind of ran before we walked with this,” Miller told UAB. “But Memphis declined to participate, although they were polite about it. So we just did it anyway.”

That trophy became one of the most talked-about in college football. The Washington Post called the series’ return after realignment the one good thing to come out of conference reshuffling.

Petitt wants the basketball version to carry the same weight — and then some. He’s hoping to raise $15,000 to commission a real bronze casting. He wants both schools to adopt it as the official series trophy, with each winner taking it home. For games in Birmingham, he proposes a portion of proceeds would go to the Coach Gene Bartow Fund for Cancer Research, an endowment at UAB’s O’Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center established in 2009 following Bartow’s own battle with stomach cancer. The fund is already tied to basketball through the annual Bartow Classic. For games in Memphis, he suggests a portion of game proceeds could go to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

“This game should be a sellout in both cities,” Petitt says.

A real bronze trophy named after the coach who built both programs, funding cancer research in both cities, with the winner taking it home every game. Nobody at either school asked for this. The best traditions rarely start with a committee. They start with someone stubborn enough to dial 911 when the other side won’t give it back.

For now, Petitt says the Bones sit in Andy Kennedy’s office. He hopes they never leave.

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