As the UAB athletics department enters a new era, it marks quite the eight-year journey for athletic director Mark Ingram.

Ingram oversaw the revival of the football program and its unprecedented success, the construction of new athletic facilities throughout campus, including Protective Stadium and a new men’s and women’s basketball facility, and guided the department into the American Athletic Conference.

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AL.com recently caught up with Ingram to talk about UAB’s entrance into the AAC, NIL transformation and much more.

(Note: The following Q&A has been lightly edited for content and clarity.)

AL.com: As the NIL era evolves and operating budgets are expected to expand with new AAC-infused revenue, what is UAB doing to keep pace with the changing environment of college athletics?

Mark Ingram: We have several NIL deals, authentic NIL deals, for our kids and we are close to setting up a pay-for-play collective. We had one formed by a couple of local guys and a former player helped start one, which we really appreciate because they saw a need and they acted upon that need. The rules have been really loose but there have been some created and there’s been some better understanding of what’s permissible and what’s not. We’ve been able to work collaboratively to refine some things as it’s structured, not things that really affect the public or that the public would know, but internal things that are important from an audit perspective and so forth.

We’re about to relaunch the pay-for-play collective, so we’ll have some announcements on that, but we’re evolving like everybody else and there’s not a coach out there that isn’t frustrated with it. I was talking to a football recruiter on a different staff, who has been considered one of the best recruiters in the country during his career, and he summed it up well. It used to be about relationships, which he is very good at, and building trust with players, their families and their high school coaches. And that trust was built in both directions. They had trust in one another and the player would choose the university based on that trust level and the developing relationship with the other coaches and the institution.

Now, they will simply find a player. We’d like you to play for us and we’re going to give you $100,000. There’s no relationship and the player will say, “Well, I appreciate that,” and a day or two later, “This coach down the road said he gave us 105,000.” Okay, we’ll give you 110. This other school comes in and says they’ll give 120. Okay, we’ll give you 150. It’s just a bidding war until finally, you realize you either aren’t going to win or you decide to just move on.

When the student-athlete chooses you for that reason, and not because of a relationship and not because of trust, when anything goes wrong or not when their experience is tied up neatly in a little red bow, they don’t play as quickly as they would like or role-play as much as they would like early on, then here we go. There’s no trust and relationship with the coaches or the university. They chose their university for the wrong reason. They took the place that paid them the most and that’s not the right reason to pick your school and that’s where we are right now.

It’s a miserable experience for the coaches, which is not NIL that we’re talking about, it just falls under this false umbrella of NIL. The pay-for-play collectives are just that and nobody denies it. Nobody tries to hide behind it. It’s bizarre times and, hopefully, people can get their arms around that.

Everybody in athletics knew what it would be and they couldn’t get lawmakers to listen. Lawmakers thought it was a good old-boy system that we just didn’t want to change or evolve, and they wanted to take care of what they would classify as, not poor in terms of economics, but abused in a way. They were going to protect these student-athletes that are taken advantage of and that’s so far from the truth. That narrative got spun out of control to seem like I’m over here at my desk with a pile of cash like Boss Hog, with my feet up and smoking cigars, because I just don’t know what to do with all this money. That’s the narrative that was created and we couldn’t stop that.

For the hundreds of thousands of student-athletes that just want to play, it’s unfortunate that it’s come to this for the one percent of the athletes out there. We’re trying to protect this model for them but our rules are being made for this one percent, which is odd because that’s not the way we pass laws in our country, right? We pass laws that protect the greater good. There’s always a downside for somebody, no matter what the law is, but you do what’s best for the majority.

AL: Trent Dilfer made some emphatic statements about pre-transfer portal tampering in the last couple of weeks. What’s your perspective on his being so forthright and challenging a system with seemingly no regulation since the application of NIL?

MI: Well, I think that you know he’s seen messages, from other coaches on other staffs, to our players who are not in the portal. Our players have shown them to him and he’s confident enough in himself as a person, as a coach and as a man to say somebody’s got to do something about this. The NCAA model was founded on integrity and the fact that, if we saw something wrong, we would self-report it. It takes a lot of honor and integrity to self-report.

If there’s an athletic department, athletic director, athletic coach, whomever – if they’re bragging about having zero violations, that means they didn’t report any violations. That doesn’t mean they didn’t have any, but that they’re not really paying attention. You and I might have a violation walking to the door when we’re finished.

You do things by mistake all the time. You accidentally call a person at a moment you weren’t supposed to, you didn’t realize my coach, my other assistant called him. It was just an accident and you report it. Things happen. You could be at a high school at a time when you can see the coach, but not the kid. You’re leaving, classes break, and you pass by them. Didn’t talk to them but did see them. We used to self-report that and it was built on that.

Now, everyone’s afraid to self-report. Why would I self-report? Why would I put myself in jeopardy? Why would I claim a violation when no one else knows? Well, it’s because you do things with honor and integrity. We also used to rely on one another — I saw you do that thing and we’re not supposed to do that thing. Turn yourself in or I’m going to.

It worked until it didn’t and now it is a free-for-all. Every person for themselves. It’s a shame and Trent Dilfer is pointing out the obvious, which is to stop texting my kids. I don’t think he’s called the NCAA on anybody but he’s called the head coaches of those schools and said, “I saw this, it came from this person, and now they’re coming to your school. They’ve got paid from you, your collective, and they’re coming there, or they tried to.

In all cases, as you’d imagine, their head coach says they didn’t know, apologizes and looks into it. I believe that to be true. Things happen at a granular level. There are a lot of people on the staff who have the ability to send direct messages to kids through social media. If they see a weak spot on their roster or a starter got hurt, they’ll find a really good player out there they can get. There are people on some of these larger staffs and their job is solely to scout the portal. Who’s out there on somebody else’s roster? Get them in the boardroom and get them here. That’s a sad state of affairs.

AL: There were unfounded reports last Tuesday night (June 27) about Andy Kennedy being named the West Virginia head coach. He tweeted out a midnight response to dispel rumors and confirmed the same to AL.com the next day. What are your thoughts on Kennedy’s future and do you expect West Virginia, among others, to make an official run at him next season?

MI: Listen, I don’t hire people that I don’t want to be successful. Everybody we hire, we do so because we think they’re going to be successful when they have other opportunities because of the result of their success. I’m happy for them. They’ve done the job we hired them to do. That job was noticed by somebody else, they move on, and so that’s the natural order of things. That means we did a good job of identifying good talent. We supported them, they did well, which we wanted them to do, and then they moved on.

If somebody has an opportunity to improve their financial situation, or whatever it might be, for themselves and their family, I’m happy for them. We don’t sit around and sulk about it. I try to be very open with my coaches and I’ve asked them to do the same with me. There’s not a coach that I’ve ever had that had another opportunity, who when they called me, I yelled at them. I don’t yell at anybody. Now, there have been times when I’ve said, “Come on, man, I don’t think that’s a better opportunity. This is just as good or this is better.”

And so, West Virginia should want Andy Kennedy. As should many other people. I think Andy’s great, that’s why we hired him. It makes sense to me. He’s ranked fifth amongst all coaches in the last three years in wins. He is pretty good.

If they call him, I think he ought to talk to him. Sometimes, we act like they’re not loyal and I disagree with that. I totally disagree with that. Human nature is to sit around and wonder and worry. Should I have taken that call? I don’t want you to not take that call unless it’s a place you just flat-out don’t want to live there. It’s terrible when people wonder their whole life if they should have taken that opportunity.

Andy and I talked a couple of times about the discussion out there and the possibility out there and I thought it was really healthy. I think he would say the same thing. We’ll see what happens. When that was first reported on television, unfortunately, which is sad, from a tweet, they had not spoken at all.

Anyway, he has a great agent, who in the past, has called me at the end of the season and said, “X University reached out about him, I think he’s 10th on their list, but I just wanted you to know they did call.” They had not called me and I had full trust in the fact that that was true.

And if they had been contacted, or if Andy had been contacted, I would have known about it and so I’m incredibly comfortable with how it all went down. I hated it for Andy’s sake in that, he’s got all these guys and a bunch of them are brand new and just got here. Think of what’s going through their head and, as a strange coincidence, he was visiting family in Mississippi and then at a wedding down at the beach. He was gone for a few days while it was unfolding, he was physically not here, which only makes your mind wander as to where he must be. Well, it was perfectly legitimate reasons and it had nothing to do with that.

AL: What were the impressions of AJ (Daugherty) in his first season leading the softball program? As well as his scheduling philosophy in playing two weekend series against SEC opponents?

MI: AJ did a fantastic job in his first year. He inherited a completely new roster, excluding a couple of great pieces, and not a lot of time to recruit. During the season, if you go back and look at who we lost to early, and then who we started to compete with late, what it shows is it just took time for everybody to buy into his style, his methodology and how he does things. Once they all got that, it really revealed itself with a lot of wins. You’re playing tough teams (Florida and Arkansas), but you play those tough teams and helps your kids see what great really looks like. What’s the gap between us and them? How big is the gap? Or maybe it’s not that big at all, you know? Even in a loss — I’m not about moral victories — there are lessons to be learned. That’s really positive for your team if they can see the value in those close losses.

AL: Baseball took a step back this past season, following a successful first year under Casey Dunn, but a majority of the program’s problems cannot be attributed to the staff or student-athletes. What do you need to do to get amenities up to par with peer institutions?

MI: We’ve got to provide more for baseball. We have a situation that is really difficult for baseball in terms of our stadium. We got some other really good pieces we put in on the field and that’s fantastic. That was a good first step as we continue to evolve and improve our baseball facilities. So it’s not all on Casey, it’s on me. It’s on our fundraising team and our ability to grow, develop and build a quality facility that he (Dunn) can work in and attract great athletes to work in.

AL: The women’s tennis team had a lot of success as well this past year. Do you see continued success in Olympic sports?

MI: We finished third in women’s soccer and our culture has emerged as a result of Erica Demers’ great success. She’s now the head coach at Cincinnati and I’m proud and excited for her. We’ve got a new coach, Lisa Mann, and because of the success we’ve had here, we were able to attract a coach who has more head coach experience than any person who’s ever coached women’s soccer at UAB. We built that fantastic stadium over there, PNC field, and have a great climate and set up here.

AL: What are your expectations for this athletic department as it transitions out of CUSA and into the American Athletic Conference?

MI: We’re a lot more like those teams than what we’re given credit for. People think there may be a gap in talent, maybe, but it’s not a big one. And there may not be one at all.

I believe in our coaches. They’re all new in football and I believe in them. I believe in the kids that they have, that they inherited and that they brought on board. What I don’t know is not having played, let’s say South Florida. I only know what I saw on TV and, quite frankly, I don’t know what they have back. It’s hard to know how good they are or not.

Tulane had a fantastic year last year. I think they have a lot of those players back so you would think they’re going to be great. But how different are they from us, if they’re on a scale of one to 10? Are they an eight and we’re four? Are they an eight and we’re a seven and a half? Or are we both eights? That’s what I don’t know yet because there are so many variables, particularly on our side, that I’m just not aware of.

I watch football and feel we’re closer than some give us credit for, but having a new staff and those things probably will have us picked low in the league. I hope so because I prefer to be the underdog and finish at the top. But at this point in the year, all that does is add fuel to the fire.

AL: You were at Temple before coming to UAB and welcome the Owls into Protective Stadium this season. How do feel about reuniting with old friends and sparking new – and friendly – rivalries in the American?

MI: That’ll be fun man, I still have a lot of friends who work there. A lot of their friends, that were fans, I made friends with when I worked there. My oldest child is going to be a senior at Navy and we play at Navy on Veteran’s Day. That’ll be a special game for my family and any of our fans that go will see how much pageantry there is around the Navy games.

I know the athletic director at Temple, Arthur Johnson, we used to work together at Georgia, and the athletic director at East Carolina, John Gilbert, we worked together at Tennessee. The athletic director at Memphis, Laird Veatch, we worked together at Missouri and were neighbors — our wives had children on the same day together, 10 hours apart. The AD at SMU, his dad and I used to work together. There’s a lot of personal connectivity between me and a lot of those guys. The longer you’re in this business, the more people you know and the more relationships you have and connect with. We had our spring meetings, I guess it’s been about a month ago now, and it was good to see everybody in person. That’s important, it’s about camaraderie.

When you don’t know somebody on a personal level, you get into a game, particularly a football game, and there’s a late hit on the quarterback — you don’t know me and I don’t know you and you instinctively defend your players and coaches. But they’re all good kids, they’re all playing hard and trying to win. When you have a personal relationship, you know a coach is a good person and they never teach that. It helps the sportsmanship side of it in a major way, which I think is important. It’s easily lost on us but the sportsmanship in our game is critically important.