UAB Athletic Director Mark Ingram: Outlook for new football stadium is good

UAB Athletic Director Mark Ingram told the Hoover Area Chamber of Commerce today he feels good about the potential for a new football stadium in the Uptown District next to the Birmingham-Jefferson Convention Complex.

An architect has been hired and done some preliminary work, and now there are several groups that need to come together — Birmingham, Jefferson County, the BJCC Authority and the private sector — to get the finances where they need to be, Ingram said at the luncheon at the Hoover Country Club.

But “I feel really good about where we are with the progress,” Ingram said.

Birmingham Mayor-elect Randall Woodfin has expressed support for the project, and “I feel good about it actually happening,” Ingram said. “I feel like we’re really, really close. … We just all need to make sure we can do what we think we can do.”

Meanwhile, on the football field, UAB is winning a lot and on its way to becoming eligible for a bowl game, Ingram said. The university has only been to a bowl game once, and “if we could get there in our first year back, that would be tremendous,” he said. “We’re in a better position today than most people thought we would be in. We’re right where we need to be.”

There are only two home games left this year, Nov. 4 against Rice and Nov. 25 against the University of Texas at El Paso, and UAB officials are hoping to continue to draw good crowds for those games.

Administrators intentionally tried to avoid scheduling UAB’s football games at the same time as Alabama and Auburn games because they want to attract those fans to UAB games as well, Ingram said.

“We don’t have any problem with people in this area who have no allegiance to our school,” he said. “What we want to do is provide entertainment for you — really good, quality entertainment where you can bring your family and have a good time.”

After a two-year hiatus, UAB is leading Conference USA in attendance at football games, with an average attendance of 30,631. A record 45,212 people came to the season opener against Alabama A&M, Ingram said.

Ingram, who specializes in fundraising, has led the Blazers in raising more than $44 million in cash and pledges for their athletics programs in the past two years, said Jerome Morgan Jr., president of the Hoover chamber.

The selling point hasn’t been so much about football, but more about what a strong athletics program can do for the Birmingham economy, Ingram said. Athletics programs help draw more students, he said. In the past two years, UAB’s enrollment has grown by 3,500 students, and every 1,000 students who enroll at UAB create a $50 million economic impact in Birmingham, he said. “A healthy UAB is good for all of us.”

Ingram was hired as UAB’s athletic director on May 1, 2015. One month later, the football, rifle and bowling teams that were eliminated in December 2014 were reinstated, and Ingram was charged with raising $17.2 million to reinstate the programs and stabilize the athletics budget, he said.

As odd as it sounds, losing football was the best thing that ever happened to the program, Ingram said. “People realized how important it was to the community,” he said.

The community rallied, and now 2½ years later, UAB has a new $22.5 million football center that includes a 46,000-square-foot building and two practice fields, one of which is covered, Ingram said. “It’s spectacular.”

Other accomplishments include:

• Building a new softball stadium last year that will serve as the home for the 2019 Conference USA softball championship.
• Renovating the athletic department’s academic facility
• Renovating the Olympic sports weight room, which serves all sports but football and basketball, and added a nutrition station
• Renovating the women’s basketball locker room and Green and Gold Room at Bartow Arena
• Reconstructing the infield at the baseball stadium
• Hosting the men’s and women’s Conference USA basketball championship and indoor track championship, as well as the first two NCAA beach volleyball championships in Gulf Shores

“We’re making great progress and trying to do things to make people proud,” Ingram said.

Focus on integrity

He has hired four new head coaches, with the top focus being on integrity, he said.

It’s easy to find people with good win-loss records, “but you’ve got to find somebody who is really a good person who is not going to cheat,” he said.

Those head coaches are not going to hire assistant coaches who will cheat, and the coaches in turn recruit players who are like-minded, Ingram said. That eliminates a lot of off-field problems, and those kind of players also tend to do better in the classroom, he said.

The 400 athletes in UAB’s athletic department now have the highest grade-point average they’ve ever had, with an average GPA of 3.14, Ingram said. Sixteen of the 17 teams have a 3.0 or better, and the school’s graduation rate for athletes has risen from 77 percent to 83 percent, he said. Additionally, UAB ranks 11^th nationally in community service hours for athletes, he said.

“If you start with high integrity and high levels of character, you can really win,” Ingram said.

The women’s soccer team last year won only four games, but this year a new coach, Erica Demers, has led her team to 10 wins this year, with four to five games left in the season, Ingram said.

“It’s the same team, but it’s a completely different mindset, a positive attitude and way of doing things,” Ingram said. “She’s inspired those young women to go and do what they’re capable of doing. It’s awesome to watch that happen.”