World Games are scheduled to be the first event there, a year from now.

A few things:

Legion Field is all the B'ham area has for a municipal stadium. It was built while Calvin Coolidge was president. Bama played their last game there in 2003. The city spends enough on it to keep the rust painted, but it's lipstick on a pig. The city *needed* a new facility. State High School tournament used to be held there as did the SEC championship. Both moved to newer, nicer venues.

Birmingham isn't paying for more than a share of it. Financing was a combination of UAB Football Foundation, local corporate donations, UAB, Jefferson County, and the BJCC (more on them in a sec). County and city both stand to gain on tax dollars from people coming to events via taxes on restaurants and stores, hotel tax, taxis, etc.

The B'ham-Jefferson Civic Center floated the bonds, as UAB is forbidden to. Bond issue included the stadium and a massive overhaul of the Civic Center and convention space. 1990's arena is being brought up to modern specs to include luxury suites, etc. Stadium complex is across a crosswalk from BJCC and includes BJCC meeting/convention space and food. Stadium will be used for UAB Football as anchor tenant but will also be a venue for stadium sized concerts and other events.

The new stadium is state of the art, highly digitally wired, screens everywhere. Far better food and drink choices and a modern open design plan. It will be very nice indeed. Between Lesion Field being a pit in the projects that people were scared to go to and having a brand new stadium that is right off the freeway, home attendance will improve as will season ticket sales. In 70,000 seat Legion Field you could always get a good seat, but in a smaller venue non-ST holders will get pushed to the margins.

UAB has been at or near the top in conference attendance since #TheReturn. The team has won division and conference championships since then. Team is undefeated at home since returning, three straight years. Defense has been NCAA Top Ten the last two years. Birmingham knows good college football, and tickets are cheap and access easy compared to a UA/AU game.

Regarding "why not play on Thursday or Friday night?", UAB plays according to the conference schedule and TV contract. We have played on Thursdays with some success. If we play Friday that puts us up against high school football. That causes conflicts (say a kid in the HS band as well as at UAB) and hard feelings with schools and coaches who fell it cuts into attention and attendance.

As to changing conferences, the obvious target is a move to the AAC. Most of that conference is schools who used to be in C-USA with UAB, and the conference footprint is better than C-USA's huge area. We were left behind on that move, but all of our facilities are far far better than they were then. UAB finally has a bit of autonomy and isn't being actively sabotaged by the Alabama Board of Trustees now, or not as badly anyhow.

UAB will have a tailgate area around the stadium. Uptown is kinda pricey, more aimed at the people coming to conventions, but Five Points South, Lakeview, and Avondale are close by if you're looking for food/drink/party options. I also expect multiple food trucks, as we have had at Legion Field.

With a brand new $20m practice facility and this new stadium, recruiting is going to jump as well, and that's a program's lifeblood so the program just gets better. This is a huge win for B'ham and UAB football, no matter what the naysayers say.

This post was edited on 7/20/20 at 1:22 pm