Mike Repole said Friday that the Hoover Metropolitan Complex is no longer under consideration for the Birmingham Stallions, closing off one possible home for the team as the United Football League keeps sorting out where Birmingham fits after the 2026 season.
Repole said the league looked at Hoover Met but found a basic problem: it does not have the spring dates the UFL needs to stage a season there. He made the point bluntly. “We looked into Hoover Met as an option,” he said, adding that the site was unavailable because it could not accommodate the league’s spring schedule.
The decision matters because the Stallions have become one of the league’s most successful clubs on the field, winning three consecutive spring football championships under former head coach Skip Holtz before former Alabama quarterback AJ McCarron took over. Yet the home-field question has followed them for more than a year, and Repole used his posts to argue that the issue is not just about where the team plays, but what size of building actually works for it.
Protective Stadium opened in 2021 with about 47,000 seats, but the Stallions have drawn only a fraction of that capacity. Repole questioned why Birmingham was built around such a large venue in the first place and said the city would be better served by a 12,000 to 15,000 seat stadium that creates energy, demand and a real home-field advantage. He said the people of Birmingham deserve a great stadium of that size, one that fits the market and the atmosphere the league wants.
That is where the friction sits. The league announced last summer that the Stallions would remain in Birmingham for the 2026 season, but Repole publicly questioned one day earlier whether they should return to Protective Stadium for the 2027 season. On Wednesday, he said he had a hard time seeing the team stay there because it conflicts with the UFL’s strategy, which has already led the league to replace franchises in Michigan, Memphis and San Antonio with new teams in Columbus, Louisville and Orlando earlier this year.
Repole has also asked Birmingham residents for “options and ideas,” but Friday’s update narrowed the field instead of widening it. Hoover Met is out, Protective Stadium is under fresh scrutiny, and the league’s preferred model points toward smaller venues that can be filled and felt. The next real answer is not whether Birmingham wants the Stallions. It is which building, if any, can still fit them after 2026.
