The Search, epilogue: the dream list

Ingram departure | Fan reaction | Part 1: The Job | Part 2: The Profile | Part 3: The Obvious Names | Part 4: The Birmingham Connections | Part 5: The Basketball Background | Part 6: The Builders | Part 7: The Outside-the-Box Hire | Bill Clark interest

Epilogue to a 7-part series on the UAB athletic director search.

Someone hung a banner on the walkover bridge at University Boulevard near Bartow Arena. It reads: "AD BILL CLARK!"

The fan base has an opinion. So do I. But first, the short list.

Over seven installments, we laid out the job, how searches work, and then profiled more than 30 people across five prospect pools — the obvious names, the Birmingham connections, the basketball-background ADs, the builders and the outside-the-box hires. We talked about what qualifications matter and why the answer in 2026 is different from the answer in 2015 or 2005.

Now it is time to order off the menu.

What follows is my opinion. I am not predicting who UAB will hire, endorsing a single name or claiming inside knowledge of who has applied or been contacted. This is one person’s assessment — informed by decades of covering college athletics — of who fits what this job demands right now.

The emphasis is on right now. This is not a list of the best resumes in college athletics administration. It is a list of the people whose skills, experience and disposition match what UAB needs at this specific moment in its history and in the history of the NCAA. This list would look completely different in 2005 or 2015. The disruption that House v. NCAA, the transfer portal, NIL and conference realignment have unleashed demands a different kind of leader than the one the traditional pipeline was designed to produce.

What I am looking for:

Leadership — not resume line items. Vision for where we are going and how we get there. Passion specifically for this unique moment at UAB, not generic career ambition. And a willingness to build something new rather than replicate something old.

I am not looking for an AD factory product. I am not looking for someone whose primary credential is buildings built and dollars raised — unless it was vision and leadership that drove it. UAB is not Tennessee or Missouri. This program does not need a conventional AD running a conventional playbook. It needs someone who lights a fire under this place — who articulates the destination, maps the path and wins fans and boosters on the strength of the vision itself.

I think interim AD Andy Kennedy is going to do a fantastic job moving the program forward, for however long he sits in the seat. And if he wants the job, I think he'd do big things. But he has a basketball team to coach, and I truly think his first preference would be an AD coming on board to help him build the basketball program he thinks is possible here. I think Andy believes that, with the right support, he can make a Final Four run before he decides to hang it up. So let's proceed in that direction.

Five names. Here they are.

Milton Overton

We profiled Overton in Part 4.

UAB’s next athletic director has to hire coaches. Full stop, that is probably the No. 1 part of the job. The buildings are built. The conference move is done, though the next AD must always be alert and proactive in that area. What remains is identifying the right coach, landing the right coach and then getting out of the way. Overton’s track record there is among the best in the Group of 6. Worst to first in football in one season. What KSU called the fastest turnaround from a one-win basketball season to March Madness in NCAA history. And when that coach left, Overton landed the replacement without missing a beat. Call it luck if you want. I call it judgment.

The UA System fit matters, too. Overton spent six years inside it at the University of Alabama. He understands the board, the politics and the competitive dynamics of operating in Alabama and Auburn’s shadow — because he has already navigated them. Then he went to Kennesaw State and built a Group of 6 program in a major metro surrounded by SEC powerhouses. Sound familiar?

The American is a step up from Conference USA.

Jamie Boggs

We profiled Boggs in Part 5.

UAB needs energy. The kind that fills a building and makes fans feel something when they walk through the door. Anyone who has watched Grand Canyon’s arena on a late-night ESPN broadcast has seen what Boggs has built — an atmosphere that makes people want to be there. Bartow Arena needs that. So does Protective Stadium.

She also built a Division I program from the ground up. GCU had an athletic tradition — 8 NAIA national titles and two decades at the Division II level — but the D-I infrastructure did not exist when Boggs arrived. She constructed it: compliance, governance, coaching hires, facilities, the entire framework from Division II through the WAC and into the Mountain West. That is a disposition, not a resume line. Boggs is a builder by nature, and UAB does not need a caretaker.

GCU does not play football. But she does have experience with it in secondary roles at Duke and Georgia State. For someone who has built everything else at the Division I level and wants to test herself as an AD with a full complement of sports in a conference that plays FBS football, UAB is a job that completes the portfolio.

Rocko DeLuca

We profiled DeLuca in Part 6.

His stated philosophy tells you everything: “I’ve really tried to take jobs where there’s an opportunity to make an impact.” He sees the gap between where a program is and where it could be and gets energized by closing it. He did not go to UC Davis because it was prestigious. He went because there was something to build — and he built it. The question is whether he wants to do it again on a bigger stage.

UAB is that stage. The American Athletic Conference. An FBS program with a downtown stadium, a basketball tradition, a fan base ready to re-engage and a city that wants to rally behind it. Everything DeLuca built at Davis — budget growth, stakeholder engagement, postseason success, conference transition — applies here with more resources and more visibility.

The NACDA AD of the Year does not need UAB. But UAB could sure use his mentality.

Walt Maddox

We profiled Maddox in Part 7.

Start with the single most important political relationship in UAB athletics: the University of Alabama System Board of Trustees. Every UAB athletic director has to navigate that board. Maddox already does — every day, as mayor of the city where the board’s flagship institution sits. Those relationships already exist. That alone makes him unlike anyone else on any list.

Then consider the UAB loyalty. He played on the first NCAA football team this school ever fielded. He earned both of his degrees here. He fought behind the scenes to restore the football program after the 2014 shutdown. For Maddox, this is personal.

And then there is the crisis leadership. The 2011 tornado rebuild — $140 million across 40 projects, $1.1 billion in investment, bipartisan praise in a state that does not hand it out easily. An AD who can lead through the current disruption in college athletics needs to have managed through chaos before. Maddox has.

The objection is that he has never run an athletic department. My answer is that this is not a conventional moment. UAB needs vision, political fluency, fundraising ability and fire for this program — and Maddox checks every one of those boxes.

Bill Clark

Those are four people I would put on the short list. Any of them could do this job well. But if I am being honest — and this is the part of the column where the opinion gets loud — there is a clear hire here.

Bill Clark.

The man is a winner. He loves this place. He will fight for his coaches and athletes, build the community support, surround himself with the right people and create a winning culture from the bottom up. And UAB will win.

Every qualification I laid out at the top of this column — leadership, vision, passion for this moment, willingness to build something new — Clark embodies all of it. He proved that UAB could work at the FBS level. He rebuilt a program from a shutdown, raised the money, sat in the living rooms, hired the staff, won the games and earned the trust of a fan base that had every reason to stop believing.

When he spoke publicly about the AD job, he did not talk about his resume. He talked about servant leadership. About supporting coaches. About understanding what they face and making their job easier, not harder. “My number one job is to make you look good,” he said. “What do I need to do?”

That is the philosophy UAB needs in the AD chair. Clark knows what it looks like when the AD and the coaching staff pull in opposite directions — he lived through it. He also knows what it looks like when a program is unified behind a single vision, because he built that, too.

Some people will say he has no AD experience. But that’s not entirely true. Bill was AD for nine years at Prattville High School. No, it’s not D1 but working with coaches and caring about student-athletes? Where do you think Bill developed his leadership philosophies? Also, it should be noted that much of what Bill did for The Return - building a program from the ground up in record speed - was straight from the UAB-Needs-This list of AD duties.

If anything, the time away has probably given him opportunity to further strengthen his administrative skills and mindset while also having time to think about what he’d want in an AD should he return to coaching, or have an opportunity to be an AD himself.

“This is a time for UAB to do something right,” Clark said. “And people have gotta stand up, people have gotta speak.”

He is right.

Which, of course, means they will not hire him.

So I have one more nominee.

As the self-appointed head of this mock selection committee and anointed final decider, I would like to present one last name.

I know a guy.

Gene Bartow recruited him to UAB. He has worked inside and adjacent to NCAA athletic departments since 1991. He managed multi-million dollar media operations at the Orlando Sentinel, the Sun Sentinel and CBSSports.com — the first person in APSE history to lead two top-10 large-division websites simultaneously. He became the president of the Associated Press Sports Editors. He won the UAB Excellence in Business Award. Twice. He spent three years as the color analyst for UAB football. He served on the College of Arts and Sciences alumni board.

He helped build the fastest-growing sports news app in the world. He has sold NIL software and services across the entire landscape of NCAA Division I and led content strategy for more than 40 NIL collectives. He has had hundreds of conversations with athletic directors at all levels of college sports. He has written about NCAA issues for three decades, hired and mentored countless media industry leaders and even wrote a best-selling book about Timothy Alexander and The Return of UAB football. He has set sales records and pioneered in his field everywhere he has worked.

Now he is building a media network to serve the 60-plus Group of 6 fan bases that national and local media abandoned — powered by a proprietary AI operations platform he designed himself. He knows every one of those fan bases because he is building for them right now. He understands NIL because he sold the tools that operationalize it. He understands the revenue model because he is building one. His rolodex has roughly 9,000 names — coaches, athletic directors, major business leaders, boosters, agents, network executives and former college and pro athletes.

He also has zero experience as a college athletic director. He’s only second-guessed a few of them.

But if Woj can leave ESPN to become the general manager for his alma mater, this guy can do a great job for UAB. Besides, he has really only got one task on the agenda.

I am Tim Stephens. I am the founder and CEO of Diehard Sports Network.

And I would like to formally submit my application for the position of athletic director at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

My first act would be hiring Bill Clark. If we couldn’t work that out, I’d go get my friend Walt Maddox. Heck, I might just hire both of them.

Then my next act would be getting fired.

And I would take the buyout, go back to Diehard and create more content for you with the money.

Win-win for everybody.

This is the final installment of the UAB AD Search series. Thank you for reading — and for being the kind of fan who cares enough to follow every word.