The UAB athletic department has come a long way since an impromptu meeting in an old dentist office almost five years ago.

There the football program, along with rifle and bowling, was shutdown but reinstated six months later to the applause of alumni and former athletes.

Mark Ingram, hired May 1, 2015, as UAB’s Director of Athletics, has overseen a renaissance of the Blazers’ athletic programs and continues to build upon a successful four-year career in Birmingham.

AL.com recently caught up with Ingram to talk about construction progress for the new downtown football stadium, where things stand within Conference USA and much more.

AL.com: The AAC recently dropped to 11 members with UConn heading back to the Big East. Obviously, as charter members of Conference USA, you’re happy with your current situation, as well as it being inappropriate to speculate on any possible moves. However, the AAC brands itself as a “Power Six” conference in an effort to reach a national audience. How do you feel CUSA is building its brand, considering the geographic expanse of the league and the rise of successful athletic programs in this modern age of college athletics, specifically your own?

Ingram: "I think continuity has been really good for Conference USA. Since the addition of Charlotte and Old Dominion, and others, bringing them in and now they’ve been in the league for a few years, you see rivalries starting to build amongst those teams. And the longer they’re in, the better they’re going to get.

"Old Dominion won the basketball regular season and tournament championship last year, and they have a great history in women’s basketball – if you go way back, call it 20 years ago, they were one of the best in the country type of programs, similar to Louisiana Tech. So I think continuity has been good for the league.

“If you look at Conference USA, we’re a fantastic basketball league, we’re a fantastic baseball league, we’re a fantastic football league and we continue to grow in other sports. We’re a national contender in men’s golf. The American and others may try to brand themselves as some other conference, but our results speak for themselves. Take a look at the bowl games the last two years and how we’ve done in bowl games.”

AL.com: Relative to the UAB program, one of the major factors in building that national brand is facilities. The Ops Center is on-par with some of the best programs in the nation and the new stadium is as real as it can get with streets closing and land being cleared. What’s the timetable for actual construction beyond utilities and foundation?

Ingram: "As best I can tell, maybe by December you’ll start to really some steel coming out of the ground. I actually drove by today, it’s all I can do to only drive by once a week. I drive by once a week and I try not to go more than once a week because there is progress being made but sometimes when you’re just pushing dirt around it’s hard to really see a whole lot one day to the next.

"So, if I hold off and only do it once a week, I can usually see some significant change. But I think probably by December you’ll really see some concrete and steel coming out of the ground down there. To this point, everything is on schedule for the 2021 season.:

AL.com: Fans are really excited about it. Some on Twitter have even suggested a live komodo dragon exhibit? What are your feelings on that and is it within your power to make it happen?

Ingram: "Funny story. I came here from Temple University and they are the Owls. And we partnered with a zoo in Philadelphia to get a live owl at our games. The owl’s name was Stella, and she was really stout and a beautiful animal, and fortunately well-trained. You could take your picture next to Stella, fans loved it, and we brought her to football and basketball games and she just sat on a perch with her handler. It was really a neat deal.

"So, I thought the same thing coming here. How cool would it be to get a komodo dragon? As luck would have it, within my first couple of weeks, someone from the Birmingham Zoo was here for a meeting. Introduced, and I said, ‘Oh my gosh, I can’t believe you’re here. I’ve got this idea I want to share with you. What do you think having a komodo dragon?”’

"And they looked at me like I was crazy.

"They said, ‘You understand this is basically like an alligator?’ I said, ‘No, I didn’t. I thought it was more like a large iguana.’ They said, ‘No, it’s a meat-eating carnivore and it’d be like having an alligator here.’

"I said, ‘Oh, OK, well maybe you could bring it, it could be in a cage? Because LSU and Memphis, there’s a lot of people who have tigers like that.’

"They said, ‘Well, what about the spit?’

"I said, ‘I don’t understand.’

"They said, ‘They spit at their prey and the spit causes paralyses. So, you know, they can go and eat it.’ I said, ‘So this is a bad idea is what you’re saying?’

“Children getting spit on and paralyzed, and eaten, potentially, by the komodo dragon. I thought it seemed like a great idea, but apparently it’s not as good of an idea as I once thought.”

AL.com: From your perspective, as a former player and athletic director, what have you seen from this year’s UAB team and what are your expectations?

Ingram: "My expectations are high because I’ve watched the players at practice, both in the spring and fall camp, and they are incredibly talented. Yes, we lost a lot of seniors and a lot of starters, but we have some really good key pieces back from last year’s team and some of the young talent, I think, is incredible.

"When you look at the first game, some people maybe, critically, would say that we didn’t win by as much of a margin as we would have liked. If you eliminate turnovers from the game, we probably extend that lead significantly more that what it was. While turnovers are a part of football, you got to eliminate those and everybody would say that, what we were not doing was running around looking confused.

"We didn’t have guys running on and off the field not sure where to be. Just eliminate turnovers and a few mental errors, and that game is very different.

“I’m still very excited and I still have a lot of promise for what the future is for this football team. I’m excited about what they can do.”

AL.com: Looking at the schedule, one game in particular that jumps out, on a personal level for you, is Tennessee. You’re a graduate, a former administrator and also played for the football team. What are your feelings on going back to Neyland Stadium as UAB’s athletic director?

Ingram: "I’ve had the privilege of working at Missouri, Tennessee, Georgia and Temple, and I wish all of them well. I want all of them to do well, unless they’re playing us. My feelings going into the game are that I hope they win every game between now and then, hope it’s a great game when we get there, and obviously I’ll be pulling for the Blazers. I want us to win every time we get on the field, no matter who we’re playing, and I would expect no different from them.

“We’re excited to go up there. Our fans are excited. One of the reasons that we schedule them is it’s a distance that is reasonable for fans. Not every team is close enough to drive to from Birmingham, but they are one. We got Georgia coming up in the future, actually twice, and I’m excited for our fans to be able to go to places like that in a reasonable proximity.”

AL.com: Adding to that, how cool will it be when you go to shake the other athletic director’s hand and it is your former coach, Phillip Fulmer?

Ingram: "He gave me an opportunity to play there, which I am forever in his debt, and I also was a graduate assistant for him as soon as I finished playing. I worked right outside of his office for a year and a half or so. I’m very fond of him, not just because he was my coach but he gave the opportunity to play and to start my college career in athletics as an employee.

“I’ve seen him and we’ve talked since he got the job. I’m happy for him and he seems to be having a lot of fun and happy to be back in the department. There’s not anybody that probably loves that place more than he does. I’m excited and that’ll be a privilege for me to give him a big hug at the game and wish him luck.”

AL.com: You have the new stadium coming, the Football Operations Center is a beacon for the football program and the beach volleyball court was finished as of the last year. What do you have your eyes on for the future?

Ingram: "Just about 100 other things. You’ll see us seek board approval for a third phase of a project, which is a clubhouse for baseball and softball, that’s offices and locker rooms. Then in either November or February, we’ll take the first phase of a basketball practice facility project to the board, so we’re organizing ourselves for that. Those are the two front-burner items in addition to the stadium.

“This fall, we’re going to redo the scoreboards at baseball and softball, and we’ll add a scoreboard to beach volleyball. We’re going to change the big UAB sign at the corner of University and 65, that’s going to become a digital billboard-style marque where we can advertise our contests. Between the scoreboard project, we’re going to replace the outfield walls at baseball and softball, and then hopefully start the clubhouse and basketball practice facility somewhere in the next calendar year.”

AL.com: Speaking of facilities, the old football offices were demolished in August. How do you feel about that, relative to the history of that building?

Ingram: "When we built the new practice facility, I initially loved having the old buildings. When you gave tours to people of the new building, there’s a great spot from Coach Clark’s office where you can step out on the balcony, look at the old buildings, and say, ‘OK, you’ve seen the whole building, downstairs and upstairs,’ and then you point across to the old building, ‘That’s where we came from.’

"It’s a startling difference, it really made anybody’s jaw drop at how much better the new facility was. It already showed great but when you could put it in context, it was just an amazing difference.

"That was fun for a while. Now I’m glad the old buildings are gone because it’s also part of the progress. It’s addition by subtraction. I don’t know how many buildings UAB has knocked down this year, but it’s probably 10 or 12, it wouldn’t shock me if that was the number.

“UAB has found small properties like those buildings, that are old and were taking up not just space, but still had a utility bill associated with keeping those things open and functioning. So there’s value for the university to knock those things down to be more efficient from an energy perspective, and all over campus there’s buildings like that that have been demolished and redone.”

AL.com: With as many buildings going up and all these new projects, there seems to be consensus among local politicians, coaches and residents that ‘UAB is Birmingham and Birmingham is UAB.’ That’s becoming more of a physical reality with the reclamation of the city into the UAB campus through varying projects, do you see that trend continuing?

Ingram: "We want to be the very best at everything that we do. If we’re going to compete in a sport, I want to be the best at it. That’s the path we’re on. My sadness, I guess, my only regret is that we’re not able to do everything at once. From a fundraising standpoint, we only have the capacity to raise so much so quickly and you take it project by project.

“We’re ticking them off the list one at a time and we continue to do that and plan on doing that. That’s what we’re going to do until we feel like we’re in position to be a championship caliber program at every sport.”

AL.com: Do you see UAB becoming, not so much the face of, but a leader in Conference USA, relative to raising the profile of the league?

Ingram: "As a charter member of the conference, I would say we’re already there. But I don’t just think it, I know that if we provide the resources to our coaches that will allow them to win, we can be the best at everything. We have to put some pieces in place that allow them to do that. Some of our facilities, take football for example, are phenomenal. Some of them, I don’t want to point fingers, but some of them are not.

“We’re in a highly-competitive industry where student-athletes, who have options, look at your facilities and they decide if they want to spend the next four years in the penthouse or the outhouse. I can tell you where I’d rather be and they want to feel the facilities, not just the coaches, give them the chance to be the very best version of themselves that they can be.”