Stepping into U.S. Bank Stadium, home of the Minnesota Vikings, prompted a mix of emotions for the Green Bay natives ready to cheer on the Oakland Raiders. It was enemy territory, no doubt, but setting the fandom aside, the $1.1 billion stadium full of bright lights and booming music was as charming as you can imagine. Yet for seven of us high up in section 305, the only thing we focused on was No. 45 in black and silver: Oakland Raiders rookie fullback Alec Ingold.

Alec’s family traveled from Green Bay while his friends, myself included, came from Madison to catch the Vikings vs. Raiders football game in Minneapolis on that sunny Sunday in September. I hadn’t seen Alec since the beginning of May 2019, prior to training camp, final cuts and his first few games as an NFL player.

Minneapolis is where I met Alec for the first time in 2016. I was visiting my friend from high school who happened to be freshman-year roommates with Alec’s girlfriend, Alexa Leiterman. Fast forward a few years later, Leiterman has been my friend and roommate since we both transferred to UW-Madison in 2017, where we never missed a Badger football game at Camp Randall Stadium and an opportunity to watch our favorite player, No. 45.

Training for the NFL was not Alec’s only career option. He graduated from UW-Madison in December 2018 with a bachelor’s degree in personal finance. Alec had a job lined up in Boston with Oracle, a multinational computer technology corporation. Deciding to forego this traditional career opportunity and pursue a more uncertain route would have been far more difficult without the support of his family and friends.

“There is no going back to football two, three years down the line, so he either had to commit to it to work toward getting the opportunity to play in the NFL, or there was just no second chance, so we were certainly supportive and felt like he should see it through,” says Alec’s father Patrick Ingold. 

Alec Ingold started playing football in second grade and eventually went on to play for the Wisconsin Badgers. He now plays in the NFL for the Oakland Raiders. (Photo courtesy of the Ingold family)

As a young kid, Alec enjoyed the physical push-you-to-the-brink aspect of football, and he always had a strong drive to not only play the game, but to win.

“He didn’t understand that kids didn’t want to win,” says his mother, Christine Ingold. “He couldn’t comprehend that kids loved to just play. He wanted to play, but he also wanted to win.”

Alec began playing football in second grade, wearing a little T-shirt and a belt with flags on each hip. That day was a long time coming. Even as a toddler, he showed a clear interest in all things sports.

“He never liked Legos, never liked trucks. Always sports,” Christine says. “We had a calendar that had quarterbacks on it from the NFL, and at a very young age he could tell you the name of the quarterback and what team it was. He was 3 or 4, and he just lived sports.” 

Many little kids, like Alec, are taught to dream big. They are told, “the sky is the limit,” and “you can be whatever you want to be.” As a result, their dream jobs range from astronaut to actor and even professional athlete, and they require a strong work ethic and passion to drive these dreams to reality.

But with only 32 teams in the NFL and 53 players on each roster, the number of dream-come-true-jobs is limited. Out of all the kids who dream of becoming professional football players, only 1,696 will play each year.

Following his collegiate football career, Alec made the life-changing decision to pass on a career in personal finance to chase his dream. He signed with an agent in Nashville to begin training for the NFL combine, just two months away. 

“It doesn’t matter if they’re going into the NFL or if they’re going into a profession, you just want them to fit where they should,” Christine says. “He works so hard that you just hope everyone sees that, too. Thank God Jon Gruden saw that.”

Gruden, the head coach of the Oakland Raiders, established a relationship with Alec prior to the NFL draft when he coached him in the Reese’s Senior Bowl in Mobile, Alabama. Alec’s work ethic may have stuck in Gruden’s mind, but it was not enough for him to get drafted. He was home in Green Bay during the draft with a house full of family and friends waiting for his name to be called. 

It wasn’t — but that didn’t stop him. 

“It’s probably one of the worst days of my life, in the fact that I had so many friends and family there that were ready to celebrate. To have to go in front of everybody and tell them the dream didn’t really come true that day was really tough for me,” Alec says. “But I’m really glad I had to go through it because it really made me understand how much I wanted to pursue this moving forward and how committed I really was to this dream that I had set up for training camp and for the NFL.”

This scenario seemed familiar to Alec. According to him, his football career at Bay Port High School was a roller coaster. After losing out on a chance to play quarterback, Alec was switched to running back. For some, this would be a frustrating and unexpected challenge, but for Alec, he just wanted to win.

“Instead of just playing a specific position, it was playing the game and helping my team win the game that was really the main objective, it wasn’t about statistics or how I was doing particularly,” he says. 

Football was not Alec’s only athletic talent in high school. With coaches who believed wrestling and football complemented each other well both physically and emotionally, Alec was a Division I Wisconsin high school state wrestling champion his senior year.

“He’s always been driven, but he was fortunate he had some coaches at the high school that really pushed him and helped condition him mentally to be able to compete in that environment,” Patrick says. “I think you take those things across sports.” 

Following his high school career, college recruitment presented Alec with a new set of challenges. After visiting Northern Illinois University and verbally committing to the team as a quarterback, he continued to receive Division I offers but not from any Big Ten schools, which was his goal.

Wisconsin Badgers fullback Alec Ingold (45) runs as the Badgers take on New Mexico. UW-Madison’s football team faces New Mexico at Camp Randall Field, Sept. 8, 2018 in Madison.
(Photo courtesy of Tom Lynn/Wisconsin Athletic Communications)

“There were a number of Division I universities that were interested in [Alec], but when it came to the Big Ten schools, they didn’t necessarily think he was good enough or didn’t fit their needs,” Patrick says. “I think there was a lot of frustration, from [Alec’s] standpoint, that some of these larger schools didn’t think he was good enough to compete.”

After watching Alec play, Paul Chryst, the University of Pittsburgh’s head football coach at the time, offered him a scholarship. No more than two weeks later, following the resignation of Wisconsin’s head football coach, Chryst’s name surfaced as the coach who would take over. When the rumors came true, he offered Alec a scholarship — this time at his dream school. 

Even at Wisconsin, Alec had to be willing to learn a new position. Recruited as a linebacker for the Badgers, Alec had to learn how to play defense, a side of football he had never played before. His willingness to play any position throughout the whole process opened doors later on for him to find a niche as fullback, something that has ultimately been beneficial for his career.

“Being able to make that decision to really chase after this dream and sign an undrafted free-agent deal was tough for me, but at the same time, I really had to put all my chips into one basket there and really cut all ties to anything else and really just chase it,” Alec says.

Moving to Oakland, California, marked the beginning of another uphill battle for the hopeful rookie. To make the NFL team, Alec had to outplay former Raiders’ fullback, Keith Smith, a league veteran since 2014. As an undrafted kid from Wisconsin, this seemed like a stretch for Alec.

“Being undrafted you really don’t have any respect out of any coaches, any teammates. You’re at the bottom of the totem pole,” he says. “It was a daily challenge of waking up, being motivated for 30-some straight days of some of the hardest physical and mental work you have to go through.” 

At the end of August, Alec’s dream became a reality. With Leiterman by his side, Alec finally received the news that he made the Oakland Raiders 53-man roster.

“You gotta think crazy, you gotta think big, you gotta dream big if you want to ever accomplish something like that,” Alec says. “To even give yourself a chance at accomplishing your dreams, you have to believe in yourself before anybody else.”

Sitting in section 305 of U.S. Bank Stadium, I was much closer to the ceiling than the field. Countless bright lights, loud speakers and big screens surrounded the field. Fans filed into their seats, filling the stadium with purple and gold, but our eyes were locked on No. 45 warming up in black and silver. 

Passing on a traditional career in personal finance to pursue a more uncertain route in the NFL wasn’t an easy decision. It took a lot of perseverance, and in Ingold’s words, a lot of hard work.

“If you want to work hard and you want to really accomplish something that’s pretty spectacular, then you have to work hard for it,” Alec says. “It might not be the path that you think you will navigate, but there’s definitely a path for you when accomplishing your dreams and goals.”