BY JEFF COX | WBMA
Birmingham city leaders approved a deal this week to bring multiple college sports championships to the city starting in 2025.
According to documents, the City Council approved the agreement with the Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC) that would see Birmingham host their 2025, 2026, 2027, 2028, and 2029 Championship Tournaments to include Men’s and Women’s Track & Field and Baseball. The Track & Field tournament will be held at the CrossPlex — Bill Harris Arena. The baseball championship would be held at Rickwood Field. Through the agreement, there will be another Championship Tournament in the city, but the sport has not yet been announced.
The league’s track and field championships and basketball tournaments were held in Birmingham in 2023. Their baseball championship was in Atlanta.
Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin, along with the city’s Budget and Finance Committee, believes hosting the SWAC Championships, “…will create and foster community pride while providing recreation, entertainment, and opportunities for attendees.” City leaders also say the SWAC Championships are expected to bring jobs and have a ‘significant’ economic benefit to the City.
SWAC’s football championship game was played at Legion Field in Birmingham from 1999 to 2012 before leaving the city in 2013. The championship football game was rumored to return to Birmingham in 2018, but the league changed course and instead played at the institution with the highest ranking. In recent years, the football championship game has been played at Mississippi Veterans Memorial Stadium. They were held in Atlanta in 2024. It’s unclear if football will be the one championship left to be announced in the new agreement.
The city will contribute up to $250,000 in financial incentives each year of the contract.
The SWAC is headquartered in Birmingham and is made up of historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) in the southern United States. According to ABC 33/40 News archives, the SWAC headquarters considered moving to Houston, Texas in 2016. The conference headquarters moved to Birmingham from New Orleans in 1999.
“The city has made a lot of investments in updating our facilities, most recently with Rickwood Field in preparation for this year’s MLB game,” Councilor Clinton Woods said. “We want to make sure that these facilities are being fully utilized throughout the year. It really helps spur other economic development in these communities as well.”
