Report: UAB becomes first full college football roster to join players association

A player’s association is seen as one of the next steps that could be on the horizon in the ever-changing space of college athletics. Now, UAB has broken ground as the first program in college football to fully sign up for one.

Per a report by ESPN’s Dan Murphy, the UAB Blazers have, as an entire football team, signed with Athletes.org, a venture by Jim Cavale that’s looking to bring the athletes into conversations such as revenue sharing. This comes after Trent Dilfer, the program’s head coach who’s entering his second season in Birmingham, presented the option to his team earlier on this month.

“They’re going to have a seat at the table,” said Dilfer to ESPN. “I wanted to make sure I helped pour gasoline on something that is going to happen no matter what. I might as well use my influence to help it happen faster on behalf of our players.”

Sharing this opportunity with his team is a player-first approach from Dilfer. He wants to show his players that he’s about their well-being and expects that things like this will prove which coaches are and aren’t the same in that sense.

“I think this is a revelatory time for college football coaches,” said Dilfer. “It’s going to reveal if they are about their players or about themselves. It’s not bad if they are about themselves, but the players are going to know.”

Cavale, along with AO CEO Brandon Copeland, are attempting to teach their member athletes about the business, what’s to come, and what they can be a part of if they capitalize by uniting now. That’s why Copeland was glad to see some “A-ha moments” during his presentation with the Blazers while it’d also be pleasing to hear two other significant names on the roster describe it as “eye-opening”.

Athletes.org launched last year in late August of 2023. At the time, On3’s Pete Nakos reported on the start of the non-profit organization and spoke with Cavale about their mission to give support to athletes who want to be a part of the future of college sports.

“For a long time, there have been a lot of organizations and associations for everyone else, except for the athletes,” Cavale told On3. “I mean, the NCAA has been the association for college athletics programs for over a century. The AFCA has been the association for head football and assistant football coaches for a long time, and I can keep going right back to ADs, etc. There’s never really been an association for college athletes.”

“It has never been more complex to be a college athlete than it is today,” said Cavale. “They need an organization that they can go to that they can trust. That’s theirs, that will give them on-demand support when they need it and will help them have more of a voice to speak into the future of college athletics.”

As a university, UAB has, per Murphy at ESPN, not since responded to this report regarding their football program.

However, this could be the first word in a larger conversation about athlete involvement in the future, especially since this case was a unanimous one. That represents a resounding interest by the players themselves to have a say and an impact on the direction in which the game goes from here on, whether that means just a seat at the table or eventually means an actual piece of the pie when it comes to revenue.

According to the report, the organization has a membership of just under 3,000 players with nearly half of those coming across football as well as men’s and women’s basketball. By the end of the year, Cavale said his goal to have roughly 5,000 athletes from those three sports signed on with them.

For now, these are only seeds, even though this is a larger one in comparison, for what could be coming down the line. Still, once they take root and grow, initiatives and associations like this one could stand tall in regards to how impactful the players, like those at UAB, are in their respective sports off of their field of play.