BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — The UAB football team is getting some major support from the Birmingham business community.
Alabama Power Company and Protective Life, both based in Birmingham, have each committed $500,000 to go toward the UAB Athletic Foundation’s $15 million goal for a proposed Football Operations Building. The facility will house offices, team meeting and film rooms, training facilities, locker rooms, and weight rooms.
The proposed Operations Building was given the green light by the UA System Board of Trustees in February. UAB Athletic Director Mark Ingram hopes to start building the facility this summer so that it will be completed by the time UAB football returns in the fall of 2017.
Protective Life was the first major corporation to donate such a large sum to the facility, donating their $500,000 last month. The Birmingham business community has shown great solidarity toward UAB over the past year.
“When the future of UAB Football was in question, the Birmingham business community, recognizing the importance of UAB athletics to the renewal of Birmingham, stepped up and provided the funding needed to keep the program alive”, said Protective Life CEO and University of Alabama System Trustee Johnny Johns. “But the job isn’t finished. UAB Football cannot reach its potential without quality facilities for coaches and players. That is why community support for the Football Operations Building project is so important. We hope our gift will encourage others to do what is necessary to ensure that UAB football can be successful and sustainable in the future.”
This week, the Alabama Power Foundation joined Protective Life in donating $500,000 of their own. Together, these two companies have knocked out $1 million of the facility’s $15 million goal. The UAB Athletic Foundation has lined up a few other major gifts that will make the football facility that much closer to reality.
“We join with the many organizations getting behind this project because it has broad implications in expanding UAB’s growing economic and cultural contributions to our region,” said Myla Calhoun, Alabama Power’s vice president for Charitable Giving. “UAB has been central to Birmingham’s resurgence, and UAB Athletics is seizing an opportunity to build excellence across its programs that will be felt in very positive ways across our city.”
UAB has had a tumultuous year, but the Birmingham business community has rallied around the school and is now investing heavily in its future. Athletic Director Mark Ingram is grateful for the support the school has received and what it can mean for the future of UAB football.
“We are all very excited about the broad interest this project has generated in a relatively short time,” he said. “And we will be announcing many other exciting gifts in the coming days and weeks. It is clear that leaders in Birmingham believe in the importance of UAB and UAB Football.”
UAB’s football program was shut down at the beginning of December last year, making the university the first Division 1A athletics program since 1995 to abandon the sport. After six emotional months of anger, calling for Ray Watts’ removal, and #FreeUAB, the football program was reinstated.
The proposed Football Operations Building will help bring the UAB football program to greater heights when it returns in 2017. Head coach Bill Clark, who recently signed a top Conference USA recruiting class, says the importance of this new facility cannot be exaggerated.
“We already have excitement in and around the program and are working hard toward 2017,” Clark said. “Watching shovels hit the dirt and steel come out of the ground will boost the energy even more — in our recruiting, on the practice field, in the meeting room and in the weight room. Our return is very real, and this facility is a tangible symbol that we are coming back to be stronger than ever.”
