Birmingham Needs a New Stadium

Birmingham is the capital of college football...there's no doubt. Yesterday I was driving through B'ham when me and my wife stopped at a mall. We went in to eat at the food court and they had about 10 different TVs and all of them had SEC replays on. Not live games - replays! And this is a mall, not Buffalo Wild Wings. 75% of the people there were women, but they were showing REPLAYS.

Birmingham is the top college football market. They watch the most on TV, they have the greatest percentage of people who care about the sport.

But their football stadium, Legion Field, is a dump.

Alabama used to play a lot of games there, but now they don't play any. The SEC Championship Game played its first two contest there but that was it...on to the Georgia Dome. Now UAB is the only one using the stadium, and it is pretty bad. It's in a bad part of town, and it's run down. The BVAA Compass Bowl is played there, but who has actually watched that game?

How does the city who cares the most about college football have such a dump as a stadium?

The Georgia Dome is 20 years old, and Falcon's owner Arthur Blank is trying to find a new home for the Falcons. This could be a chance for Birmingham to set up and seize the SEC Championship Game. If they had a decent stadium they could have that, a good bowl game, Alabama and Auburn might be interested in playing neutral site games there (not necessarily against one another). It seems like a natural fit.

It's a shame B'ham has Legion Field, and that's it. They really need a new stadium.