innovative UAB program changes the game for strength and conditioning

Photo by Ken Shepherd

By Steve Irvine

BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA - May 20, 2024

As many innovative ideas do, the Blazer Score program, run by the UAB football strength conditioning staff, began with a conversation.

UAB football head coach Trent Dilfer sat down with Lyle Henley, the program’s Director of Sport Performance for Football, searching for the best and most unbiased way to chart a player’s strength and conditioning growth and performance. Dilfer said he wanted a similar system to the Relative Athletic Score (RAS) that the NFL formulates for players participating in the NFL Draft Scouting Combine.

“Coach Dilfer said let’s come up with a way,” Henley said. “We want them to care about it. We want them obsessed with it. We want them to daily look at the thing and say how can I improve it? What do I need to do? What are the actionable traits I can use, on and off the field, that can raise this score?”

The initial part of the idea not only came quickly, but it hit close to home for the players. They built it to resemble a video game.

“Nothing is more personal to guys now than to be in a video game and you have your Madden score,” Henley said. “With the NCAA Football game coming back out, I don’t care who you are, whether you say you’re going to look at it or not, you’re going to look on there and see what they rate you. The thing that is so cool with the Madden score, not many people realize, is they have Madden ratings experts go to games and they’re adjusting that score week to week, based on how they play. So it is a dynamic score. We wanted a dynamic score, as well, and I kind of put Cannon (York) spearheading it.”

York, a former defensive lineman at the University of Missouri, who joined the UAB football strength and conditioning staff in January, and Henley had a vision of how Blazer Score would look. Much like the video game players, the overall rankings would include different categories. In this case, they include speed, acceleration, agility, strength and power with 100 points being the highest they are capable of scoring in each category. Combine those with one more category and the average is the player’s overall rating. The final category – the “1-0 mindset” category - is perhaps the most important of all.

“The 1-0 score, that was a huge piece,” York said. “You may have a kid that doesn’t test well but if he’s accountable, more often than not, he’s going to be a dude on the field. He pays attention in meetings, he’s where he’s supposed to be, he gives you his best. You also see some guys where there is room for improvement. He’s a great tester but maybe they need to show up a couple minutes earlier or whatever. The 1-0 score, I think is the balancer. For us to have an accountability score, that takes the opinion out of it and is not biased at all, there’s no gray area, it’s all black and white.”

Putting it all together began with consultation with Scott Kuehn, LSU’s Manager of Applied Sports Science, and others within the Tigers’ football program. Again, the idea was there, but fine tuning that idea was imperative.

“Scott has been incredible at LSU,” York said. “He took time out of his day just to really inform us about a lot of this. Things that worked well with them, but also things that didn’t. They ran into some issues as well. So, now we’re months along the way avoiding issues we would have had just with his insight.”

One example, according to York, is setting scores by position. Comparing an offensive lineman’s speed, for example, to a wide receiver won’t produce an accurate overall score. It’s also important that when seeking dynamic scores, which means they can change monthly, weekly or even daily, that the testing changes throughout the year. And the UAB players have the chance to monitor that score daily with their own page, which is designed the same as the video game.  

“The ability for it to be dynamic and test different things is huge,” York said. “A speed score in this period of the year might mean a 40-yard dash but in season it might mean a 10-yard split or a fly 10. Just different metrics and being able to sub things out and add to them as we go. I’m sure as we get more of a feel for this, we’ll add in more tests. We’ll keep our base tests and then add in more as we go, as the guys advance.”

One of the challenges, early in the process, was figuring out what the players will be measured against. What is the standard in each of the tests? The answer is perhaps one of the coolest parts of the entire process. The standard is set by the players who set that standard in each category since the UAB program was revived in 2017.

It’s not only a way to keep recent history fresh, but it’s also a way to keep former players involved.

“Guys are talking about, ‘Man, you should have seen Garrett Marino in the weight room or you should have seen Starling Thomas run or you should have seen Tre Crawford and Kyle Harrell jump or I remember that day when Matthew Trehern broke the power clean record or, as a freshman, when Spencer Brown squatted 650-something pounds,’” Henley said. “Everybody hears those things but to be able to see it and relive it, that’s always cool. Everybody wants to relive their glory days. But those are all impressive feats. It’s cool to know they are always archived.”

It's also an opportunity for people new to the program, like York, to get to know the former player’s accomplishments.

“Even making the video and things like that, you start to do your research and you really gain a lot of respect for these guys,” York said. “I saw stories, posts, articles, videos of these guys training. I  may not be able to relate to knowing them but, as a former athlete myself, I think there is something to be said about honoring and giving respect to former athletes. Guys who have laid the foundation, really poured into this program.”

For the current players, charting their own score while chasing the standard not only helps with motivation but it also is easy to follow.

“If I’m a player, I can come in and see my speed is 89, I’m trying to get to that 90,” York said. “What that allows us to do is now with certain movements, certain days out on the field, we can correlate that to the score. We’ll tell them, if you want to bump that speed score up, today is the day you really got to lock in. The intensity’s got to be there, the effort’s got to be there. Those guys take it and run with it.  It means a lot to them, where if I say, ‘Hey your 10-split was 1.63,’ (the understanding) is not always there. Having that score has been huge.”