What the prospectus doesn’t say

Parker Executive Search distributed the position prospectus for the University of Alabama at Birmingham's Director of Athletics opening last week. The 16-page document is professionally produced and methodically organized — The Opportunity, The University, The Department, The Community, The Role, Procedure for Candidacy — and does what a search firm prospectus is designed to do: sell the university to prospective candidates.

It does that well enough. The university section runs six pages and reads like UAB's institutional resume. Record enrollment of 20,868. Research expenditures exceeding $915 million. NIH funding ranked 14th nationally. A Health System with 15 hospitals and the fifth-largest hospital in the United States. A $12.1 billion annual economic impact on the state. Alabama's largest employer. Aa2 and AA+ credit ratings. A $6.5 billion operating budget.

The department section runs two pages. Eighteen sports. The American Conference. More than 380 student-athletes carrying a 3.46 cumulative GPA. An approximately $48 million FY27 budget. Protective Stadium, the Football Operations Center, the Legacy Pavilion, the Basketball Practice Facility, PNC Field and a $15.4 million Bartow Arena renovation approved by the UA System Board of Trustees. A revenue-sharing program launched July 1, 2025. A Competitive Excellence Fund.

It is a competent document. It is incomplete in ways that matter.

Diehard has learned that Parker Executive Search has already begun initial conversations with applicants. While the formal application deadline is November 13, the firm is pursuing a timeline to have a new athletic director hired and in place, if possible, before the end of 2026. The urgency is practical: interim athletic director Andy Kennedy also serves as UAB's men's basketball head coach, and he needs to be able to turn his full attention to the team as soon as possible, especially before the conference schedule begins.

Kennedy, a UAB alum with a 411-231 career record, two SEC Coach of the Year awards and six consecutive 20-win seasons at UAB, is one of the best basketball coaches in the Group of 6. His contract runs through 2030-31. He is not a placeholder. The sooner a permanent AD takes the reins, the sooner Kennedy can get back to doing what he does best.

The timeline matters, but not as much as getting the hire right.

The prospectus tells you what UAB has. It does not tell you what UAB faces. It does not show you what UAB aspires to be.

There is no mention of the House v. NCAA settlement — the most significant financial restructuring in the history of college athletics, one that is fundamentally reshaping how every athletic department in the country operates. There is no mention of conference realignment, or what it means that Cincinnati, UCF and Houston — all former conference peers — left for the Big 12 because they invested in their athletic programs when the window was open. There is no mention of what South Florida, Memphis and James Madison University are spending right now to position themselves for whatever comes next.

There is no mention of UAB's AAU membership — the most significant institutional achievement in UAB's history, accepted last week. UAB is the youngest university in the 126-year history of the Association of American Universities. Alabama's first and only member. Its institutional peer group now includes Michigan, Stanford, Virginia and Duke. UAB's athletics budget is the lowest in the American Conference.

There is no mention of the football shutdown — a defining event in UAB's athletic history that any incoming AD needs to understand in full. The university canceled football on December 2, 2014. The community raised nearly $48 million to bring it back. Bill Clark rebuilt the program from nothing and won 49 games in six playing seasons — two CUSA championships, three consecutive division titles, a bowl victory over No. 13 BYU. That resurrection came with compromises. Caps on subsidies and budgets that made sense at the time have left the program behind as spending across the competitive landscape has escalated dramatically.

The prospectus mentions the Competitive Excellence Fund. It does not mention that UAB's budget is the lowest in the American Conference. It does not mention that JMU is arriving with a $78.6 million athletics budget — more than $30 million larger than the one UAB presents in the prospectus. It does not mention that South Florida has quantified a $2.52 return for every dollar invested in athletics — $96 million in total value flowing back to campus — and responded by pushing revenue-sharing commitments to the House settlement cap, breaking ground on a $348.5 million on-campus stadium and hiring a CEO of Athletics. It does not mention that Memphis committed $21.3 million in athlete revenue sharing this fiscal year. It does not mention that UCF joined FBS in the same year as UAB with the same record and is now in the Big 12 with a $121 million budget because that university committed when this one did not.

The job description posted online uses the right language. "NIL, revenue sharing, and governance reform." "Conference dynamics." "Entrepreneurial leader capable of developing new revenue streams." The words are there. The document does not convey the scale of what those words mean for UAB specifically, or the urgency behind them.

Perhaps they are leaving room for a candidate to articulate a vision.

Diehard published an eight-part series on the UAB athletic director search in August: The job. The profile. The obvious names. The Birmingham connections. The basketball background. The builders. The outside-the-box hire. The dream list. Since then, the case has only gotten stronger. UAB joined the AAU. The American Conference's spending arms race accelerated. JMU's addition to the league raised the competitive bar again. The gap between UAB's institutional profile and its athletics investment has continued to widen.

This is not a standard mid-major athletic director opening. The prospectus reads like one. Change the name on the cover and the facilities list on page 10 and you could hand it to candidates at 30 other schools.

What makes this job different is everything the document leaves out.

The next athletic director will inherit an institution whose academic and research profile now sits among the most prestigious in North America — and an athletics program whose budget sits at the bottom of its conference. That is the defining tension of the job. A candidate who reads the prospectus and walks in thinking this is a standard Group of 6 athletic director position will fail. The standard approach is what got UAB here.

The facilities are real. Protective Stadium is one of the best venues in the Group of 6. The Football Operations Center exists because donors funded it. The Bartow renovation is opening this Friday. UAB has nice buildings. Those buildings will be nice and empty if there is not a real commitment to step up on things like revenue sharing and getting UAB positioned for larger revenue streams by playing at the highest revenue level it can achieve. The empty seats are already a problem. The cost of inaction is not standing still — it is falling further behind while subsidies increase and the revenue gap between UAB and its conference peers grows wider every fiscal year.

Diehard has covered the investment case extensively — the peer spending, the ROI evidence, the UCF comparison, the competitive bar JMU is raising, the revenue-sharing landscape in basketball. Those arguments are on the record. The question now is whether the institution has absorbed them.

Parker Executive Search has a strong track record in college athletics, and the prospectus accomplishes what it is designed to accomplish — a professional introduction to the university and the position. The additional context matters because it shapes what the search committee should be listening for when candidates present their vision for the job. A candidate who understands the House settlement, the conference realignment landscape, the AAU opportunity, the revenue-sharing arms race and UAB's specific competitive position within the American Conference is a fundamentally different candidate than one who sees the facilities list on page 10 and the budget number on page 11 and thinks the job is to manage what exists.

The title on the prospectus is "Director of Athletics." South Florida hired a "CEO of Athletics." That distinction signals the scope of the mandate the institution is prepared to give — and it is worth thinking about.

The next athletic director at UAB cannot be a program manager. The times demand more than that.

Whether that person comes from inside the conventional athletic administration pipeline or from outside of it matters less than what they intend to do when they get here. A traditional AD candidate with deep experience in revenue generation, NIL infrastructure and conference politics could be the right hire — if that candidate walks in with a specific, ambitious vision for UAB and the ability to execute it. A nontraditional candidate from the business world or another sector could be the right hire for the same reasons. Where they have been is only important in the context of how it prepared them to do what must be done here.

If the search committee is focused primarily on conventional resumes and traditional career paths, it risks hiring someone who runs the same plays everyone else is running — the same inside-the-box thinking that created the inaction and dysfunction that exists at UAB and at programs across the country. The search committee should be listening for vision. How will you close the revenue gap with conference peers? How will you leverage AAU membership and a $12.1 billion economic footprint to build donor and corporate investment? How will you position UAB for the next wave of conference realignment? What does competitive investment look like in year one, year three, year five?

There is one more dimension to this job that the prospectus does not address directly.

Almost any time UAB makes a major announcement, a common thread appears. It was there when football returned. It was there when UAB joined the American. It was there when new hospitals opened. It was there last week when UAB joined the AAU.

"Being asked to join the AAU is an honor that recognizes the great work and results driven by UAB's talented faculty and staff, the support of our public and private partners, and the unwavering dedication of the University of Alabama System Board of Trustees," President Ray L. Watts said.

The University of Alabama System Board of Trustees is always the elephant in the room when the conversation turns to UAB athletics. The shutdown of football in 2014 remains the most painful chapter in the program's history, and the hard feelings from that process have never fully healed in the fan base or in Birmingham.

But in this instance, the Board is needed. Not as a passive approver. As an active partner.

The Board can play a vital role in improving UAB's athletic profile and potential. Even in the difficult process that was the return of football, it did exactly that — working with public and private leaders on facilities, on Protective Stadium, on the infrastructure that allowed a program to come back from the dead and compete at a level few believed possible. The $15.4 million Bartow Arena renovation that is opening this Friday went through that Board. The facilities the prospectus lists on page 10 exist because the Board approved them. The next phase of UAB athletics — the revenue-sharing commitments, the competitive investments, the fundraising infrastructure — will require the same level of institutional support, and then some.

UAB cannot get its athletics program to where it needs to go without the Board's active engagement. That is the reality, regardless of how anyone feels about the past. The time to bury old grievances and build coalitions around UAB's athletic future is now. The right AD hire could greatly facilitate those conversations — someone who can work productively with the presidential administration, the Board and the Birmingham community to align everyone behind a shared vision for what UAB athletics should become.

Anything less than the full-throated pursuit of being the best program in the Group of 6 and in the conversation for membership in the ACC or Big 12 is a colossal failure of DiLLLLLLLLfer proportions and an abject lack of vision, courage and stewardship.

It is that important.

This column is also for the candidates.

If I were a candidate reading this prospectus, I would have questions of my own — and they would be pointed. What does the institution intend to invest? How does it intend to do it? How do the presidential administration and the Board of Trustees intend to support my efforts to get it done? A serious candidate for this job should have more questions for the institution than the institution has for them. The answers to those questions are what separate a job worth taking from a job designed to maintain what already exists.

The prospectus introduces the university. The commitment the institution is prepared to make — the one that is not in this document — determines whether the next athletic director can do what UAB needs.

That conversation has not yet begun.