The University of Tennessee is currently searching for its next Director of Athletics.
Dec. 2, 2014 was a day UAB president Ray Watts announced that the school would be shutting down its football program.
Following Watts’ announcement, UAB fans, alumni, students and supporters rallied to successfully save the program with an announced return taking place June 1, 2015.
One month before the announced return of football, Mark Ingram was hired as UAB’s director of athletics on May 1, leaving his position as executive senior associate athletics director at Temple.
Ingram’s history in athletics on the collegiate level began as a two-year starting long snapper at Tennessee from 1995-96, playing alongside Peyton Manning. Ingram later completed a master’s degree at UT in sports administration in 1997.
He joined UT’s athletics department in 1998, serving as an assistant director of development.
From 2002-06, Ingram was an assistant athletics director for development at the University of Missouri, and then served in the same role at the University of Georgia before returning to Tennessee in 2007 as senior associate athletics director.
During his time working in UT’s athletics department, Ingram helped with renovations across campus. His responsibilities were raising money and working on design that included getting Charlie Anderson on board to build the Anderson Training Center with a $48 million contribution.
UAB’s football return
UAB returned to competition during the 2017 season after not fielding a team for the 2015-16 campaigns.
Since the return, UAB has been invited to four bowl games and have won Conference USA twice.
Ingram previously discussed with Vols Wire the waiting game in fielding a team and UAB having to build a roster from scratch.
“The waiting game, putting the team back together — we spent a lot of time with a team of people with the NCAA including Oliver Luck at the time, Kevin Lennon and so many others who were very helpful to us in putting the roster back together, which is more complicated than it probably seems,” Ingram told Vols Wire. “One may think maybe to just go recruit this many players and this many next year, and so on and so on.
“In order to get back on the field by 2017, you had to put a roster together in about 18 months. You needed some older players so that you could have graduates, so it seems funny to recruit a kid so that he will leave you, but you needed some one and two year guys, and we did that. Hats off to the players themselves who came to us in that first semester in the the fall of 2015 and the winter of 2016. They knew we were not going to play until the fall of 2017.”
The NCAA granted waivers so that any UAB commit would not lose their eligibility, having their eligibility clock frozen while the program was dormant from competition.
While players were committing to UAB and patiently practicing and scrimmaging ahead of the 2017 season, money continued to be pledged and raised for the program.
The UAB Football Operations Facility and Legacy Pavilion, featuring 46,000 square feet of meeting spaces, weight rooms, cardio spaces, large hot and cold pools, cryogenic therapy areas, a player lounge and three practice fields was built and finished prior to the first game in 2017.
The facility cost $22.5 million, coming from donations after the shutdown and resurrection of the football program.
“For players to have the faith in us that they showed, and the patience to wait it out knowing what could be, and fortunately we held true to our word in terms of raising money to build a practice facility that would be world-class, which we have not only raised the money — but we built the facility and moved in a month before our first game in 2017,” Ingram said.
Ingram further discussed his career on the show “Tennessee Two-A-Days.”
The show can be listened to here or below.
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