S3.6 John Ingram: Nashville SC in Less Than a Year, and the Enduring Power of the Green Light

Climbing the Charts with Angie Lawless and Brandon Miller

Former Mayor Karl Dean was known to ask, rhetorically and always in good humor, what Nashville would be without music (answer: Birmingham), but he could have substituted “the Ingrams” for music and arrived at the same punchline.

There are few beloved things in Music City without fingerprints, known and unknown, that in some way trace back or connect to the Ingram family. While Martha Ingram was the driving force behind, among many other things, the Tennessee Performing Arts Center and the Schermerhorn Symphony Center, her son John, who now serves as Chairman of Ingram Industries, is the driving force behind one of Music City’s latest loves: Major League Soccer in the form of Nashville SC! The story of how John and his carefully assembled team brought MLS to Music City has been told before, but never quite like this.

A favorite part of the conversation with John involves his telling of why the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock in The Great Gatsby has always spoken to him, "it's all about possibilities." When John sees the green light, "that's where [he's] headed." And, we think that's where Nashville is headed, as well.