A surprising name emerged in an ongoing college football coaching search Tuesday night that had the sport buzzing.
The UAB Blazers have reportedly found their next head coach, and it’s a major surprise. Trent Dilfer is the coach UAB has picked. Sports Illustrated writer Ross Dellenger reported that UAB was targeting Dilfer on Tuesday night, tweeting, “A splashy stunner: UAB is targeting former Super Bowl Champion QB Trent Dilfer as its next coach.”
Dilfer (seen above during a Sept. 23, 2021 game) has been out of the TV spotlight for a while. He has coached high school football at Lipscomb Academy in Nashville, Tennessee, and has run the Elite 11 national quarterback competition. On Wednesday, Lipscomb Academy said in an email to parents that Dilfer was resigning to take the UAB job.
Last year, Dilfer was in hot water after a viral video surfaced of him shoving a player. He apologized. To his credit, he hasn’t been involved in anything similar since. And he has won praise for his work with high school players.
Dilfer, of course, spent many years as an NFL quarterback. Famously, he won a Super Bowl with the 2000 Baltimore Ravens, who some argued had the best defense of all time. He then spent several years as an analyst for ESPN and then founded the Elite 11 quarterback camp for high school athletes.
The college football world reacted to the stunning news of Dilfer’s emergence as a candidate for the job:
I wonder what the record is for outgoing transfer portal entries in one month. I also wonder if UAB might get close to it. Players send the AD a letter backing the interim, and that day he goes and gets Trent Dilfer
— Alex Kirshner (@alex_kirshner) November 30, 2022
[Ross Dellenger on Twitter; photo from The Murfreesboro Daily News Journal, via USA Today Sports]
About Chris Novak
Chris Novak has been talking and writing about sports ever since he can remember. Previously, Novak wrote for and managed sites in the SB Nation network for nearly a decade from 2013-2022