Why UAB coach Trent Dilfer made the jump from high school to FBS

ATLANTA — On the heels of overseeing an undefeated season and winning a second consecutive state championship as the head coach of Lipscomb Academy in Nashville, UAB coach Trent Dilfer made the jump from the Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association to the NCAA‘s Football Bowl Subdivision, where undefeated records can be synonymous with the sport’s greatest teams.

“I was very happy,” Dilfer recently told On3 at the 2023 INFLCR NIL Summit. “I wanted to build the best program in the country and my wife looked at me one day and she said, ‘Realistically, can you be the best high school program in the country with 230 boys in your school and what else can you change in the community more than you’ve changed? How many more lives (can you change)?’

“I said, ‘Ok. I hear you,’ and she goes, ‘You need another mountain to climb. I’ve been your wife for 30 years.’ She’s like, ‘You’re always at your best when something really hard is coming and this won’t be hard.’ She’s like, ‘Great. Go 14-0 next year and then you go 14-0 the year after that. Is that going to make your life any better?’

“I said, ‘No. I need another challenge.'”

Dilfer began his tenure as a college coach on Dec. 2, 2022, one day after Lipscomb Academy defeated Christ Presbyterian Academy 42-0 to win its second straight TSSAA DII-AA state championship, finishing the season with a 13-0 record.

On July 1, UAB will officially join the American Athletic Conference, along with Charlotte, Florida Atlantic, North Texas, Rice and UTSA, when Cincinnati, Houston and UCF will depart for the Big 12 Conference.

“I sat in that room last week at our conference meetings,” Dilfer said. “I looked around. I’m like, ‘Alright, this is a challenge. These are great ball coaches. These guys have won everywhere they’ve been.'”

Why Trent Dilfer chose UAB and why now

The animated Dilfer spoke with a combination of self-deprecation, if not self-awareness, and self-confidence. He called himself the worst head coach in the conference – upon his arrival at UAB and UAB’s soon-to-be arrival in the AAC – while also describing a “distinct advantage over everybody listening” while leaning towards a reporter’s voice recorder.

Dilfer said he was pursued by “a few different people.” But he said he fell in love with the Southeast and he called UAB athletic director Mark Ingram a “football AD.”

“Bill Clark did an incredible job building this program,” he said. “The foundation had been set. This is a great opportunity and it’s gonna be hard and I like that.”

At the NIL Summit, Dilfer called coaching his fourth career. After earning WAC Offensive Player of the Year and All-America honors at Fresno State in 1993, he spent 14 years in the NFL, highlighted by a win in Super Bowl XXXV. Dilfer worked for ESPN for nine years. Then he became both a small-business owner and investor.

His fourth career now has a second chapter.

“I’ve had a distinct perspective because I just coached the kids (in high school),” he said. “I know what they’re going through. I was the one that walked them through recruiting on the other end. So, they and their parents would sit with me and I would counsel them on what they were going into.

“Well, now I’m on the other side of that.”

Dilfer said not every high school prospect will fit with a program or a coach’s core values or scheme.

“I don’t put the pressure on myself, like, ‘Oh, I have to recruit him and we have to get in there,'” Dilfer said. “Well, he doesn’t fit us. He actually fits our competitor better. That’s OK.”

Dilfer’s transition to college coach

Trent Dilfer certainly isn’t the first former high school head coach to receive a job offer to become a head coach for an FBS program. However, Dilfer coached fewer seasons in high school than other college head coaches who made such a career progression. He’s also transitioning right from a high school head coach to a college head coach without a stop in between as a position coach or coordinator.

UTSA coach Jeff Traylor was the head coach at Gilmer High School for 15 seasons before Charlie Strong hired Traylor as Texas‘s special teams coordinator and tight ends coach for the 2015 season. UTSA hired him as its head coach after he spent five years as an assistant coach across stints at Texas, SMU and Arkansas.

“When he left high school and got into college, he kind of felt the same way,” Dilfer said of Traylor. “Like yeah, now I’m just talking to the kid I was counseling the year before.”

Texas Tech coach Joey McGuire spent 14 years as the head coach at Cedar Hill High School in Texas before then-Baylor coach Matt Rhule hired McGuire to coach tight ends. Rhule promoted McGuire to associated head coach for his third season on staff. Texas Tech hired McGuire after he spent five seasons in Waco – the same amount of time Traylor spent as an assistant coach in college.

Trent Dilfer’s opportunities and challenges

In conversations with On3, multiple FBS staffers identified the potential challenges facing a first-time head coach, such as Dilfer, including hiring the right personnel around him, adjusting to the time demands of college football coaching, particularly related to recruiting, and then implementing his vision.

During Dilfer’s tenure, how will he balance hiring coaches whose strength is their relationships in recruiting versus Xs and Os, or those with vast college experience versus staff with an innovative, analytics-heavy perspective?

“Does he know what he wants it to look like?” one source said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “I’m sure he can (talk about it) right now. But when things are actually going, does he know what that looks like in a college football program? He’s been around the pros but it’s been a while since he’s been in the (college) locker room and those guys are built so much different.”

UAB has newfound opportunities in the AAC. In the age of the transfer portal, perhaps its recruiting footprint could prove beneficial as it pertains to potential Power 5 transfers who are in search of more playing time at a school closer to home.

How will UAB balance recruiting high schoolers, junior college players and college players in the transfer portal?

In the modern era of college football, it will often take financial support from donors, fans and local businesses to retain players from the first category who develop while at UAB, or to be an attractive destination for players in the second or third categories.

“I don’t know how much this is because I’m not going to try to go raise $400,000 to match a kid,” Dilfer said, when asked how much money in UAB’s players need in NIL compensation for the program to be successful in the AAC. “I can take care of most of my roster with that money.”

Like any new coach, Dilfer will get some level of grace period to build a program. That number might be two years.

In what could be a potential double-edged sword, depending on how UAB performs, Dilfer also inherited the program that’s at a different level than Clark, who was Dilfer’s predecessor as UAB’s full-time head coach.

Bryan Vincent served as the interim coach last season. The Blazers went 7-6 with a win in the Bahamas Bowl.

Clark won 65% of his games and coached in four bowl games, despite the program shuttering for two seasons in the middle of his tenure, whereas his predecessor, Garrick McGee, went just 5-19 in two seasons. UAB has technically been bowl eligible in its last seven seasons as a program; its bowl game in 2020 was canceled and the Blazers went 6-6 in 2014 before the program endured a two-year hiatus from competition.

‘I have a distinct advantage over everybody listening’

Colorado coach Deion Sanders might have the most similar career trajectory to Trent Dilfer of any current FBS head coach. It’s a generally similar career arc from NFL veteran to media personality and high school coach to first-time college head coach. Sanders coached at his Prime Prep Academy, plus two other Texas-based schools, for a combined four seasons as a head coach and four as an offensive coordinator.

“Does Trent Dilfer even get hired if Deion’s not successful?” the source said. “Like is he even in the conversation for that job? Like that model, does it exist if Deion’s not successful?”

Jackson State hired Sanders prior to the 2020 season. He left Jackson State for Colorado after three seasons.

“I’ve said this on a podcast, so I’ll say it loud and clear. I have a distinct advantage over everybody listening right now,” Dilfer said. “I don’t know the old way. I know one way. It’s the way I walked into. I’m not a college football coach, don’t know anything about the old way. Didn’t know how to recruit the old way. Didn’t know how to do the economics the old way. Didn’t know how to do any of it the old way.

“I only know this way so I’m not complaining. I actually frickin’ love it. Everybody else is complaining. I’m like, ‘I’m just finding ways to win.'”

When asked what he thinks he needs to change or modify in his transition from Lipscomb Academy to UAB, Dilfer said he thinks adapt is a more apt word than change. He said young adults need to know they’re heard and in an authentic way. He cited his experience when his daughters enrolled at college.

“They moved away from me and all of a sudden,” he said, pausing for effect, before thumping his chest with his fists, “It’s like, ‘Hear me roar!’ And we’re like, ‘Amen. You go girl.’

“And when they start making mistakes, ‘Hey, do you need any help with that?'”

Dilfer was joined at the INFLCR NIL Summit by defensive tackle Fish McWilliams and wider receiver Tejhaun Palmer.

“You can feel the different vibe in the facility,” McWilliams said.

“He’s a good person to take advice from and he takes care of his players, too, so that’s a big thing,” Palmer added.

Dilfer said he’ll rely on his players, like McWilliams and Palmer, with how he can improve.

“I’ve asked my players – you can go ask them right now; two of them are here – and I told them, ‘What do I need to do better? You tell me,” Dilfer said. “I don’t know but I want to get better. I want to coach you the best way I can coach you so you tell me how I can coach you better.”

Dilfer is bullish on AAC, which he defines by coaches

Dilfer told On3 that UAB will have to compete with the ACC and SEC’s strongest programs when it comes to retaining its best players in the converging eras of NIL rights and the one-time transfer exception.

“I’m not competing against Tulane and UTSA for retention,” he said. “I’m competing against Georgia, Alabama, Ole Miss, Arkansas, Tennessee, North Carolina, Clemson, South Carolina, right? That’s who I’m competing against.”

However, the Blazers won’t necessarily have to compete with the latter group of schools on the field, at least in conference play.

“I would argue our conference is probably the best chance to get to the College Football Playoff when it expands,” he said. “It’s an automatic berth. You don’t have to beat Alabama to get there or Georgia.”

The College Football Playoff will expand to 12 teams in the 2024 season. The six highest-ranked conference champions and the next six highest-ranked teams will qualify for the CFP.

However, Dilfer wasn’t presumptive of UAB’s position in the conference or dismissive of his competition when discussing The American’s position in college football’s evolving landscape. He described his experience attending spring meetings for the first time, when he surveyed his fellow head coaches in attendance.

“These guys have won everywhere they’ve been,” Dilfer said. “Stan Drayton‘s been one of the best recruiters in the country for 15 years. Like he’s a legend. Everywhere he goes, running backs get drafted in the first round. Tom Herman, hate him or like him, like the guy can frickin’ coach football. Jeff Traylor. Willie Fritz might be one of the best coaches in America and he’s standing next to me. Alex Golesh, who me and him were like this last year in Tennessee, it goes on and on and on. Mike Houston.

“Like it’s unbelievable, and I think our conference can really be defined by our coaches, me being the worst of all of them.”