UAB coach Trent Dilfer will return for a third season, athletic director Mark Ingram told CBS Sports on Tuesday.
Dilfer, a former Super Bowl-winning quarterback with the Baltimore Ravens, is 7-17 in two seasons leading the Blazers football program. In a statement released by the school, Ingram said the program “will make operational and staff changes, as well as additional investments.”
Ingram hired Dilfer in Dec. 2022 from Lipscomb Academy in Nashville, believing his success coaching at the high school and Elite 11 levels plus his college and NFL playing experience would translate to the FBS level. The UAB AD cited Dilfer’s work ethic, dedication to the program and football IQ, among other factors, as the reason to still believe it can while acknowledging Year 3 will be critical for his head coach and football program.
“We don’t think losing is OK,” Ingram told CBS Sports. “I know our fans sometimes wonder or ask about it on social media, but losing is not something we’re OK with. We know what we’re capable of. While the American Athletic is a lot tougher league than what we’ve been playing in (Conference USA), I think we are positioned well to be successful here.”
UAB joined the AAC in 2023, Dilfer’s first season with the program, to compete against programs like Tulane, Memphis and South Florida.
Dilfer, who told CBS Sports he’s “super excited about the opportunity to correct mistakes” moving forward, already started a 360-degree review of how his program go to this current place and what it needs to do to be successful. He admits it has perplexed him at times why UAB hasn’t seen more success on the field. He thought his Blazers program would be farther along by now.
His early findings, which he has conveyed to his team and staff, is the program needs to do a better job of mastering the little things it takes to be successful. That has been a struggle for a team that lost its season finale to Charlotte last weekend after back-to-back unsuccessful field goals.
“Winning football as I’ve experienced is winning the inches, and we’ve lost most of the inches,” Dilfer told CBS Sports. “We’ve done a lot of really good things, there’s a lot of things to be excited about, there’s a lot of optimism with our young players and more time in the system together. But at the end of the day you win winning all the little inches. We’ve lost most of the inches in critical times. I’m a detail freak but I’ve got to do a better job of helping our players understand what those details are.”
One solution to that problem, Dilfer says, is being more hands-on with every facet of the program.
“The one thing I’ve learned is I need to manage more,” the UAB coach said. “I need to be more involved at every single level of the organization. I try to have a healthy involvement as well as collaboration. But what I’ve learned is everybody needs to go the same direction to win and the only way I can get everybody going the same direction is if I’m the one guiding each department. That’s going to be the direction I go from here on out.”
