The Search, Part 1: The job

Mark Ingram and UAB agreed to part ways on August 18, 2026, ending an 11-year tenure that reshaped the program's infrastructure and left behind both real wins and legitimate questions about what comes next.

Blazer men's basketball coach Andy Kennedy — UAB alum, two-time SEC Coach of the Year, the winningest coach in Ole Miss basketball history with a 411-231 career record — stepped in as interim athletic director the same day. He's still the UAB men's basketball coach. He's running both jobs while the university conducts a national search.

That search is going to define the next decade of UAB athletics. And if you've spent the last two days reading the fan forums and social media and seeing a mix of optimism over a fresh start tinged with questions over just who UAB might be able to attract, I'd encourage you to step back and look at the full picture.

This job is better than some people might think.

What the next AD inherits

Whatever your opinion of the Ingram era — and reasonable people can disagree — the next athletic director walks into a situation that is materially better than what Ingram inherited in 2015.

The Football Operations Center and Legacy Pavilion exist. That's $22.5 million, 100% donor-funded, opened in 2017 — a 46,000-square-foot facility that wasn't there when Ingram arrived. Legacy Credit Union paid $4.2 million for the naming rights. UAB has new basketball practice facilities, baseball and softball upgrades, a top-notch soccer stadium, a top-notch track and field facility and more. The $15.4 million Bartow Arena renovation has been approved by the UA System Board of Trustees.

And then there's Protective Stadium.

A $174 million downtown stadium that opened in 2021, holds 47,100, sits adjacent to the BJCC in the heart of Birmingham and is one of the best venues in the Group of 6. Protective Life is paying $1 million annually on a 15-year naming rights deal. The stadium is owned by the BJCC Authority, not UAB — Ingram was instrumental in forging that partnership, and the next AD needs to understand that relationship and grow it. But the fact remains: UAB plays football in a modern downtown stadium that most G6 programs would trade their entire capital budget for.

The buildings are built. The next AD doesn't need to build them. The next AD needs to fill them and hire good coaches and then help those coaches get good players to play in them.

Football is not what you've been told

Here's where any outside narrative needs correcting.

Bill Clark rebuilt a program that had been shut down. The university canceled football on December 2, 2014. Community fundraising raised $40 million-plus, and the first game back on September 2, 2017, drew 45,212 to Legion Field — 1,005 days between shutdown and kickoff.

Clark went 49-26 in six playing seasons. Two Conference USA championships. Three consecutive division titles. A 2-2 bowl record that includes beating No. 13 BYU 31-28 in the 2021 Independence Bowl. He proved the ceiling. You can win at UAB. Clark did.

Then Trent Dilfer arrived. The next 2.5 seasons — 9-21 overall, 0-15 on the road, fired one day after an embarrassingly horrid loss at Florida Atlantic — burned that progress to the ground in the public consciousness. Fans watched it happen in real time. The frustration is legitimate.

But Dilfer was an aberration, not the identity.

Alex Mortensen took over as interim head coach on October 12, 2025, and six days later UAB beat No. 22 Memphis 31-24 as a 23.5-point underdog — his first game in charge, sealed with a goal-line stand in the final seconds, described by some as the biggest upset of a ranked team in conference history. He was named the permanent head coach on December 5, 2025.

Mortensen spent nine years at Alabama under Nick Saban. Three national championship staffs. He was mentored by Lane Kiffin, Brian Daboll, Mike Locksley, Steve Sarkisian and Bill O'Brien. He was an offensive analyst, not a talking head. He learned football from the best program in the sport's modern history. Now 2026 is his first full season in charge.

The right AD gives Mortensen the revenue-sharing support, the NIL infrastructure and the operational resources to compete consistently. The old argument that you can't win football games at UAB was disproven by Clark and briefly resurrected by Dilfer. The next AD has the opportunity — and the responsibility — to bury that narrative for good.

Basketball doesn't need fixing

UAB's basketball tradition is one of the program's most valuable assets.

Hiring Gene Bartow from UCLA to start the program. Seventeen NCAA Tournament appearances. An Elite Eight in 1982, beating defending champion Indiana and No. 1 Virginia to get there. The 2004 Sweet Sixteen under Mike Anderson. A No. 14-seed upset of No. 3 Iowa State in 2015 that reminded the country UAB basketball has always punched heavy-handed above its weight class. Conference tournament championships across three leagues — Sun Belt, Conference USA and The American.

The Bartow Standard.

Among schools with at least 25 DI seasons, UAB ranks No. 27 among all programs in winning percentage. Among schools from non-power leagues, it ranks No. 8. Right there with schools like UNLV and Memphis.

Kennedy has certainly upheld that with conference titles in C-USA and the American and six straight 20-win seasons. Kennedy holds a contract through 2030-31. He is not a placeholder. He is one of the best basketball coaches in the Group of 6, with a resume that includes two SEC Coach of the Year awards and a career record that puts him among the winningest active coaches in the sport.

The next AD doesn't need to fix basketball. The next AD needs to protect it so that all that great history doesn't get lost to deeper pockets for a roster. That means understanding what Kennedy needs, staying out of his way when the program is rolling and building the revenue infrastructure that keeps it funded so that Kennedy can get the players to compete with Memphis and the rest of the American.

The institution behind the program

Fans underestimate what's behind the curtain.

UAB is an R1 research university — Carnegie Classification: Very High Research Spending and Doctorate Production. Total R&D expenditures: approximately $780 million. UAB Hospital has been ranked No. 1 in Alabama for 12 consecutive years by U.S. News. The UAB Health System is the heartbeat of Alabama's economy and one of the gems among public institutions in the country. UAB is the largest single employer in Alabama — approximately 28,000 direct employees — with an annual economic impact of $12.1 billion on the state, supporting 107,600 jobs.

U.S. News & World Report named UAB the nation's No. 1 Up & Coming University in 1992. The Times Higher Education World University Rankings ranked UAB the top young university in the United States and No. 10 worldwide in its 2018 and 2019 Young University Rankings.

The Birmingham metro is roughly 1.2 million people and generates more than 30% of Alabama's annual GDP. Regions Financial and Vulcan Materials are Fortune 500 headquarters. Protective Life, Encompass Health, Drummond, EBSCO, Brasfield & Gorrie and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Alabama are all based here.

A major research university in the state's economic engine with a corporate donor base that rivals programs with three times the athletic budget. The infrastructure exists. The corporate community exists. And the institutional backing has been real — the university has greenlit hundreds of millions in athletic growth and has not said no to a major project that arrived with a solid plan behind it.

But the cost of doing business in college athletics has changed. There are times when fiscal responsibility means investing more in what you've already built, rather than watching it erode. UAB Athletics sits at that threshold right now. The university benefits greatly from a strong athletic program. The window to protect its prior investment by upgrading it is now. What has been missing is the athletic department revenue engine that connects all these pieces to wins and growth — and perhaps the forgotten lessons of The Return: That a strong athletics department, competing as the university's front porch to the world, is one of its most valuable assets.

Three doors

The right candidate sees one of three paths in this job. Maybe all three.

The launch pad. UAB is a stepping stone. Build a resume, demonstrate results, generate revenue and use it as a ticket to a Power 4 athletic directorship where a 7-figure annual payday awaits. That's not cynical — that's how the industry works. The best launch-pad ADs leave institutions better than they found them. UAB can be that platform.

The legacy. Birmingham becomes home. UAB becomes yours. Build for 10 or 15 years and become synonymous with the program — fill the stadium, grow the brand, make UAB a permanent player in college athletics. That path is rarer. It's the more fulfilling version of this career.

The transformation. Turn UAB into a Power 4 program.

That last door isn't as far-fetched as the cynics want you to believe. UAB has been — and should be — a peer program of Cincinnati, UCF, Houston, TCU, SMU and now USF, Memphis and Tulane. The first three left for the Big 12 on July 1, 2023. They were UAB's conference peers. Some of them didn't have institutional assets better than what UAB has — the R1 classification, the medical school, the major metro, the new stadium, the basketball tradition.

The difference was never institutional capacity — and it wasn't for lack of investment. The university has backed UAB athletics when the plan was right. What separated the programs that made the leap was the sustained commitment to push further when the window opened and the right leadership at the right time.

Memphis and USF are the active proof of concept. They are building toward Power 4 candidacy right now. Watching them do it while UAB stands still is a choice — one the next AD either corrects or compounds.

If and when — and it's far more likely to be when — there is more movement in the Power 4, some current peers are likely to get the call to join the ACC or Big 12. Such a move would be transformative for any university answering the phone. UAB should be doing everything possible to make sure it is on the dial list.

The landscape has changed

One more thing the search committee needs to weigh: the AD job in 2026 bears little resemblance to the one Ingram accepted in 2015.

The House v. NCAA settlement, approved June 6, 2025, rewrote the economics of college athletics. Schools may now share up to $20.5 million annually with athletes, a figure that increases 4% per year for a decade. Football rosters are capped at 105. A $2.8 billion back-pay obligation to athletes stretches over 10 years.

For Group of 6 programs, the math is direct: the same pressure to share revenue, significantly less revenue to share. Every G6 athletic director is now operating under financial constraints designed by and for the biggest programs in the sport. The departments that figure it out will be led by ADs who know how to generate revenue aggressively in markets that don't hand it to them. UAB is committed to that on a modest level — and yes, the university kicked in considerably this year — but it should not stop there.

That is UAB's challenge. It is also UAB's opening. The market is here. The corporate base is here. The institutional weight is here. What has been missing is the AD with the vision and the operational ability to unlock it — to unite all the stakeholders around a vision of UAB Athletics as more than "just good enough."

The honest part

The next AD also inherits fires.

The Ingram era left behind infrastructure and genuine progress. It also left behind trust that needs rebuilding — between the athletic department and donors who funded The Return, between the department and the university, between the program and a fan base that watched momentum stall after Clark retired, between the student-athletes who put on the Green and Gold and the administrators whose job it is to provide the support systems to thrive on and off the court or field.

That trust is the first thing the next AD repairs. Before the first fundraising call. Before the first strategic plan.

And then there is the operational reality of running a department where revenue sharing with student-athletes is a real line item — not a booster-funded experiment, not a theoretical exercise. The House settlement made it permanent. The next AD needs to look hard at where every dollar in this department is going and decide what gets redeployed. Some roles will need to change. Some structures built for a different era don't fit the economics of 2026.

The right AD gets creative. Lean into technology where it creates efficiency. Automate what can be automated. And then take those savings and reinvest them where the human touch matters most — coaching, recruiting, donor relationships, fan experience. The departments that find that balance will have an edge over the ones still running a 2026 operation on a 2015 org chart.

What the right candidate looks like

Evangelist. First and above all else. The right AD sees what UAB can be and sells that vision until everyone in the room catches it like they are in the front row of the church revival. Abundance mentality, not scarcity. You don't walk in talking about what UAB can't do. You walk in and make donors, coaches, administrators and fans believe what the diehards already know. Because you believe it most of all.

The buildings are built. Fill them and fund them. And then go further.

The right candidate does not play to average. Does not settle for "well, your budget is in the middle of the pack, so run along now and say thank you in the press release." GO FOR IT. FREAKIN' GO FOR IT. This is the time. NOW. Not tomorrow, not in a few years, not maybe someday.

NOW.

Memphis isn't waiting. Tulane isn't waiting. USF isn't waiting. UCF, Houston and Cincinnati didn't wait. Look at where they are now. The next AD may have to play politics to get that done — but he or she must make the case and make the ask.

Football vision. Make sure Mortensen has what he needs to call the right plays.

Basketball vision. Kennedy isn't building something — he's trying to elevate it. Protect that. Fill that fancy remodeled arena. Market this program, for Bartow's sake. It's almost like people outside Birmingham appreciate UAB's basketball tradition more than the people five minutes from the building.

Birmingham relationships. Corporate, civic and community. The donor base exists. The corporate partners exist. The next AD either knows them already or learns them fast. Go look at what they are doing in Memphis, Tampa and the Dallas Metroplex. Birmingham has a stake in UAB Athletics thriving in this new era.

Builder mentality. This is still a growth job, not a maintenance job. The AD who walks in thinking the hard work is done will fail. But it's also not a fixer-upper. There is plenty to work with on the Southside. The AD who sees a runway with room to fly will thrive.

A Power 4 job — or a legacy in Birmingham. Or both.

Next: Part 2 — The profile. How AD searches actually work, what the Ingram hire tells us about UAB's candidate pool and why the names fans want aren't always the names that make sense.