Former UAB Blazers head coach Trent Dilfer has returned to the place that makes the most sense for him: A high school program built to win, insulated from the churn of modern college football, he said last week.

Almost immediately after returning to his old Lipscomb Academy job again, Dilfer has found himself back in headlines, because UAB, apparently, is still part of the story he wants to tell.

UAB hired Dilfer straight out of high school from Lipscomb despite never having worked at the college level, and the results were predictably a disaster.

Compiling a 9-21 record in two and a half seasons before being fired during the middle of the 2025 campaign, Dilfer’s Blazers never got off the ground.

During a recent interview with Outkick talking about the last three years and his decision to return to high school, Dilfer implied the reason UAB did not win under his guide was a lack of commitment to winning financially and otherwise in the NIL era.

“It was so hard to maintain the relationships working with people that didn’t see winning like I did,” Dilfer said.

“You know the one thing that’s great about Lipscomb is that they care about winning as much as I do. They are invested. I cannot say that about the last place that I was at. It was just really hard.”

“I’m a much better man than I was when I left. I think I got truly broken by college football in a great way. Everybody goes, ‘Why would you say that?’ Well, because that’s part of growth. I mean, you’ve got to be broken and reshaped and molded…College football broke me. Just the losing, developing players. Like we had 14 players that we recruited, I recruited, we developed … you play them, and then they go to Ole Miss and Arkansas and Alabama and everywhere else.”

While Dilfer makes a case that UAB is at a major disadvantage relative to the big programs in terms of NIL, acting as if the program is not serious about winning is absurd, given that they won both before he arrived and after he departed.

Dilfer’s teams in his tenure did not win a single game on the road, almost impressively going 0-15 when playing away from home and not a whole lot better in their own building.

The game after he was relieved of his duties, the Blazers got their first ranked win in a half decade over Memphis and ended the year with a road victory over Tulsa.

It’s been proven that it can be done at UAB and Dilfer was simply not the man for the job. Clearly though, he sees it an entirely different way after 2.5 years leading the program through some of its darkest days of the last two decades.

Michael Brauner is a Senior Sports Analyst and Contributing Writer for Yellowhammer News. You can follow him on Twitter @MBraunerWNSP and hear him every weekday morning from 6 to 9 a.m. on “The Opening Kickoff” on WNSP-FM 105.5, available free online.