Cecil “Hootie” Ingram, a former Alabama football standout who subsequently became athletic director, died. He was ninety.
Tommy Ford, a long-time Alabama athletics department staffer and personal friend of the Ingram family, confirmed Ingram’s death to AL.com. Funeral services are scheduled for Saturday at Calvary Baptist Church in Tuscaloosa, with visitation from 10 a.m. to 11:30 a.m.
“We will miss Hootie dearly,” Alabama sports director Greg Byrne wrote on Twitter/X. “He was a nice man who always welcomed you with a bright smile. Hootie left an indelible mark on The University of Alabama as both a student-athlete and an administrator. We extend our sympathies to his family and friends.
Born Sept. 2, 1933, in Tuscaloosa, Ingram signed with Alabama in 1951 after a multi-sport career at Tuscaloosa High School. He was an All-SEC defensive back as a sophomore in 1952, when he set an SEC record with 10 interceptions.
Ingram added an interception and an 80-yard punt return in the Crimson Tide’s season-ending 61-6 victory over Syracuse in the Orange Bowl, the most most lop-sided postseason win in program history. He also played baseball during his Alabama career, which began without much hesitation after being offered a scholarship by longtime assistant coach Hank Crisp.
“Alabama didn’t have to recruit me,” Ingram told author Kirk McNair in his 2005 book What It Means to Be Crimson Tide. “I’d been practicing to be an Alabama athlete since I was in fourth grade. As a child, I spent a lot of time watching on Alabama’s practice grounds. I received letters from various schools, but I would never go anywhere else.
“One day during basketball season, coach Crisp asked me when I was going to sign. I told him I didn’t know I had an offer. He told me to come by his office the next day, which I did. He then sent me to coach Lew Bostick’s office to sign the scholarship. Coach Bostick told me it was out on the table, to fill it out and sign it. And I did. Years later when I was working for the Southeastern Conference, I went back in the files and found my scholarship papers that I had filled out myself.”
