Trent Dilfer Gives Candid Q&A About UAB’s Recruiting Cycle

By Steve Irvine

BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA - January 14, 2024

UAB just went through a whirlwind football recruiting period where the Blazers got signatures from more than 20 players. When the calendar turned to the new year, UAB had secured a pair of transfer portal signees. When the spring semester began on Monday, the list of transfer portal newcomers was believed to be in the neighborhood of 25 players.

Trent Dilfer sat down on Monday afternoon to talk about what seems like a unique recruiting approach for his UAB football program right now but may become common over time.

Did you purposely go light on signing transfer portal players in December because of the defensive staff situation?

“No. This is actually pretty interesting and I’m more than happy to share it. In five cycles in recruiting (since taking the job). It’s actually more than that because you have high school and the portal. But let’s just call it five cycles. Our early visit close numbers are astronomically lower than our late visit (close numbers).  There's a couple reasons for that, the biggest reason in the portal is money. Everything that everybody is saying is absolutely true. You cannot deny that the number one factor in recruiting right now is money because now there's representation. If it was just a kid it wouldn't be that big of a deal. But now you have representation brokering deals and leveraging deals. So you get an offer and then the representation goes and shops that offer around. That's exploring their options. So, the sooner you bring one in, all you're doing is spending the cost of the OV (official visit), which we have to be concerned with. A big part of recruiting right now is the cost per OV and how much recruiting budget you have. Like when you're having to put 40, let's just use an easy number, it's 40. You have to sign 40 players. A typical hit rate is 3 to 1, some schools are comfortable with 4 to 1. We have to keep it less than 2 to 1, economically. We can't afford to be the first leverage money point. It doesn’t work. Like, just the number of data for five recruiting cycles, it’s egregious how our miss rate is so high early, where our hit rate is amazing late. So that's one reason is the money.

Number two is we have a really good reputation in college football as talent evaluators. When we offer somebody and bring them in, it's amazing the flood of offers and visits they get from Power 4s right now. I mean, it's crazy. We know who they are and it's clockwork. It is literally within 90 minutes, we know of 10 schools that will offer an OV right after we schedule. So, hence, it’s why we’ve had 14 guys in two years go to Power 4. So we have to be careful there, too. It’s like ‘Hey, we like Johnny. Johnny's a really good player. We really want Johnny. We can't offer Johnny right now. We can't OV Johnny right now.’ Because, as soon as we OV Johnny, Johnny's value just went way up. Johnny's gonna have visits to bigger, more glamorous than ours, gonna be offered more money and the logo, the brand. Now, you've invested in that and your chance, your ROI, is next to nothing.

Third one, I'll be fully honest with you, we had 12 trips cancelled of number one or two guys on our recruiting board because of money. So phone calls have been great, Zooms have been great, parents relationships have been great, like super interested. Lot of sweat equity involved in these and then they get the bigger offer, which we know is coming. I can't bring them here without them knowing the minuscule NIL money I can offer (compared to some). I’m not going to lie to a family and say ‘Come on down here, I got money.’ And then bring them here and I don’t. We let them know on the front end that this is no money, this is peanuts or this is just above peanuts, basically. It’s the same thing I do with my portal guys. Kameran (Shanks) got offered a max deal, Amare (Thomas) got offered a max deal, Brady (Wilson) got offered a max deal, Chris (Bracy) got offered a max deal, (Lee Beebe) got offered a max deal. I had eight max deals I could offer, I offered five or six to existing players. But, it’s two exact same situations (with players leaving and portal offers coming in. I was like ‘Kameran, this is the most I can do. I wish I could do more. If I had a million dollars, you’d be my million dollars.’ (Jalen) Kitna stayed for it and Corri (Milliner) stayed for it. I was able to get Sirad (Bryant) one and Isaiah Jacobs. (Shanks) literally was in tears. He said he knew what he could get out there. I told him if he can get that he should go.

Recruiting is the same way. (We had a kid), he was our No. 1 offensive recruit. Period. And he's scheduled for, on purpose, the 8th and 9th. On the 6th, a Power 4 school calls him and offers (5 times) the number. He cancelled. I get it, I’m not mad. I texted the parents (saying) I get it, no hard feelings, I’m your biggest fan, let me know if I can help you in the NFL. If he’s developed properly, he has the potential to be in the NFL. Well, that just saved us the cost of the OV and allows us to move on to the next person at his position. So that's the matrix of what’s going on.

The behind the scenes vetting is amazing. And this is where (incoming defensive coordinator Steve Russ) and his staff just killed it. You know, we're talking to janitors. We're talking to elementary school teachers. We're talking to 7-on-7 coaches. We're talking to strength coaches. We're talking to high school administrators. A  big thing for me is talk to the opposing coach, because they played against him. Would you consider him one of the best players you played against, one of the toughest guys. Was he a good sport? We talked to ex-coaches because the team they're leaving usually won't say great things. But the staff before them that recruited them, they've had a different experience. So you're talking to those people. I'm guessing it's at least 10 touch points we're getting on the person before they ever get here. So, we're canceling trips.

In December, we were 2 for 7 on signed OV (offers from the portal). The last four days of January, we were 11 for 12. And that’s every portal cycle. I can go back to every portal cycle and it’s going to be similar.”

When you have to recruit this way, how anxious does it become over those final 10 days?

“I’ve never seen anything like it in my football life. That’s the easiest way to say it. My 44-year football life, I know it’s different (at other levels), but in my 44 years in this game, I’ve never seen anything like what we just did. You can’t put it into words. My neck surgeon just asked me and I’m like ‘Doc, I don’t have the words to explain what we just went through.’ I don’t know how to explain it. If you put me on camera right now and say ‘Walk us through,’ it would be a four-hour interview.

I'll give all the credit to the staff, they didn't get a break. We might not have been in this building, but you had 6 a.m. Zoom meetings. And we were talking all day, every day. I had earplugs in, my phone in my pocket, my laptop in my hand, and chased around my grandson. That was my Christmas break. Now, we would make sure, I would tell everybody, ‘Hey, no football here for the next four hours, go be with your families or whatever.’ Some listened, some didn't. I mean, nobody got a break, not one day. Christmas morning, we were texting, Zooming, talking. There is no break. And that's what pisses the old guys off. Like (former Cal and Fresno State head coach Jeff Tedford), who is a mentor of mine, he went on a 90-minute rant on me on the phone, how (messed) up this is because part of being a great college coach is giving your staff time with recruiting calendar and their vacations and work-life balance. He said he did this for so long and work-life balances is how he kept his coaches. Talk to any of my coaches, I'm a Tedford guy. I give them (their time).

Now, it’s 18 hours a day. You know you might be on the East Coast, on vacation, and you have a kid in Hawaii, which we did. Well, the only time he can talk is 7 p.m. Hawaii time. Well, Matt Wright is taking that call. He knows it, like you're not saying no. You literally live with your phone. I had my ringer on at the dinner table Christmas night, sitting right there in case I got a text or a call. You've got to take (the call) because you don't know. It might be an agent that is setting up OVs, it might be (UAB General Manager/Director of Player Personnel Lino Lupinetti) talking about an OV, it might be a player's mom. There is a story to every one of (the recruits) that will blow your mind. I kept repeating Philippians 4:6-7, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. 7 And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” Because if you can't you'd be a nervous wreck.

If you looked at it like you framed the question, our livelihood is on this thing, if that’s the way looked at it, you would have a heart attack. I just kept trusting. I kept telling everybody, ‘Here’s what I know, on August 1, we’ll have a full coaching staff and we’ll have a full roster.’ That's all i know. It’s the only thing I could guarantee. I have no idea of the path of getting there. I said, I'm trying, I think we've put a good framework together.  We met before we left (for Holiday break). I said it in the staff meeting, ‘Guys, I don't know, but here's my best leadership on where I think it's going.’ I said, ‘Plan your dive, dive your plan.’ So, when you dive deep sea, you have to have a distinct plan or you're going to drown or get eaten by a shark, right? You got to know. You got to know the reach, you got to know where your anchor is, you got to know everything. But then you get underwater and you got to adjust. That's kind of what this was. We had a very, very specific plan, but we knew, hey, we got to take a left, when it's time to take a left, we got to take a right, when it's time to take a right, we got to adjust, we got to be pliable was the term I used. Nobody get set in the old ways of doing it because this has to be our way. There is no model for this.

 I think that's what I was really proud of was nobody flinched. Nobody in this building flinched, no matter what happened, whether they're here or not here, nobody flinched. They just kept saying, ‘OK, Coach, this is the next pivot. Is this the way we need to pivot? I just told (Steve) Russ, like, ‘Listen, man, you don't have to call me for permission. I trust your leadership. If you need to pivot on something pivot.’ They don't handle the money, they don't handle a lot of the things, I do. So I had to kind of be in the middle of both sides of the ball as we're navigating the water.”

Was there a particular routine in the building over the 10 days of visits in early January?

“You only had to pivot the routine when guys cancel on you. You know, like you might've paid for a buffet at a nice place to host seven recruits and their parents, and then three cancel on you the day before. There's a cost to that. You know, there's a pivoting from that. Everybody stepped up, I’ll tell you who really stepped up was our recruiting department, our GAs, our support staff. They're driving around doing airport runs, going to Atlanta to pick people up when they could only get to Atlanta. Weather came up. We had OVs that were weird because of weather. Like our support staff rallied in an amazing way.

Yeah, there were some adjustments, but I believe we have a very good process that we refined. It’s been good, probably the last three cycles. I give (former recruiting director Tristan Henderson) some credit. With Tristan, Connor (Koch) and (Scott Malinoff) then handing the torch over to Lino. And Lino agreeing with a lot of the way we do it, making subtle tweaks. Cole (Peterson) kind of having an umbrella view of it, because he’s done recruiting at a high level. We’re pretty dialed in on how we do the OVs. Kids have a great experience, parents have a great experience. We get to spend a lot of time with them. We don’t waste time. They get a real feel for the whole building, not just me, not just the coordinators, not just the position coach. College football can be territorial, sometimes, in recruiting. Like the position coaches are very territorial about the OV.  I coined a phrase ‘WEcruiting.’ We recruit as a group. It is all of us. All hands on deck, all the time, head coach will clean a urinal if he has to. The building is spotless, everybody be looking for everything, best foot forward, honesty, transparency, energy and nobody is above anybody else. We’re all ‘We.’ We want to give them what it will be like.”

What is the process like this week?

“They all signed so late. You got to get them enrolled, in classes and in apartments. The weather screwed everything up, so now the Sunday move-ins are Wednesday. Lino, Cole, Joey, Bo Spencer, (Ryan Shepard), they’ve all done that.

If I had to give a MVP, it’s Lino. There are a lot of other guys who are first team All-American but my Heisman goes to Lino. He’s done everything. At one time, he was on a Zoom with the offense, Zoom with the defense, at the same time in a critical moment, doing travel for all the OVs and dealing with agents because he's the frontline of the agents before they get to me. I mean, his life has been (crazy). He's most underpaid man in America.”

What are the steps toward transitioning to the February signing period?

“We have seven or eight spots (available). Remember we got guys back from the portal. We got BJ Hawkins back, AJ Brown, Sirad (Bryant), Corri (Milliner), Baron Franks. That’s like recruiting. I would consider that a signing, I mean, they’re out there. We’ll have a couple of spots for high school. We kind already know who they are. We’re about to get a commit from our Number One high school prospect. We have a safety recruit, I can’t use his name, and we targeted our linebacker. We believe he will come in. So, we're probably done on defense. That’s two, possibly three on defense. We have four (needed), for sure, on offense.”

Are the February signees a mixture of JUCO and high school or can you have some transfer portal players?  

“You can sign portal and JUCO forever. You can’t get them in school (until after spring). With the GIA, there’s no longer a binding agreement, so signing them (after the spring semester begins) means nothing. It's their word but they can get out of it until they get in class. We know who we want to sign in May, but the chances of us getting that far (are slim).

We will do something in the spring because you don’t know who you are going to keep. But I made that mistake last year. What did I do last year? I went heavy (in the spring portal). But I told you, what did I say the day of (the signings)? I said ‘We’re taking a risk.’ We had one productive starting player (during the 2024 season). I told you the day of that, I'm going against the data but I had to do it. I was transparent, I said, this is a massive risk. But it was a risk we had to take. And it proved to be a bad risk. I think it's realistic that you can get a couple. I think it’s no different than if you're an NFL team and you don't hit the early part of free agency hard and you go through OTAs, you're getting into summer OTAs, and you're like ‘Yeah, we need another guard. Let’s go get a guard. There's four of them. We like that one.”  It works a lot of times. it works. He's a quality backup, maybe he starts for you. He's a good, solid player. He might not be a difference maker but he’s a good player.”