By Steve Irvine
October 30, 2026 - BIRMINGHAM, AL
Two words have become the theme of a UAB football season that, for the first time in at least three years, still carries a ton of promise in the early part of the second half of the schedule.
Sometimes the words come with an attached hashtag on social media. Sometimes the words are spoken loudly in the locker room after a win. They may be used on the practice field or during a game. They have become a rallying cry for a team that is working to put three difficult years to rest.
Those two words? “New Blazers.”
Running back Bam McReynolds, who coined the phrase, was asked the importance of those two words.
“I feel like to have that motto, something to say, something that we could fall back on, it gives us a sense of camaraderie,” McReynolds said. “Especially (because) we’ve got a lot of guys that this their first year here. (It’s) a lot of transfers mixed in with a bunch of guys that have been here. They've seen like the ups and downs of the team and I feel like it's very important to have it.”
It wasn’t something that was preceded by much thought. It was something that appeared during a “very high energy competitive practice” during the spring.
“I just remember how UAB (was) in the past,” said McReynolds, a Mobile native who spent three years at South Alabama and last season at Louisiana-Monroe. “I was recruited by UAB and I just knew about previous teams and stuff like that. We kind of use it as a callback to the previous teams. We were having an amazing practice on offense and defense and I think I just said it just to say like this is a new team. Not only this is a new team, but I felt like this is gonna be a very, very high energy team. I feel like we brought that in a lot of the games that we found success in.”
UAB is 4-3 overall heading into Saturday’s American Conference game against South Florida at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa. UAB is 2-1 in American Conference play with both of the wins featuring a gritty come-from-behind effort in the second half. For Alex Mortensen’s UAB team, Saturday’s game gives the Blazers an opportunity to remain in a group of teams bundled toward the top of the conference standings.
Obviously there is a lot of work left but, for Lyle Henley what’s happened thus far is a familiar feeling. Henley, the program’s Director of Sports Performance and Assistant head coach, has been part of the program since the return to the field in 2017. He had an integral role in Bill Clark’s successful run from 2017-21 when UAB played in three Conference USA championship games and won two conference championships. He is one of two people in the program, the other being trainer Dan Springer, who has been with the team every year since the 2017 season.
Henley said this team has some similarities to Clark’s teams.
“I see tough defense being played,” Henley said. “Defense being the trademark. I see kids fighting all four quarters plus, never giving up, not looking at the scoreboard as Coach Mort likes to say. He challenges them to not look at the scoreboard and just play hard, play after play, which is very similar to the mindset we had when we were successful. Yeah, there are a lot of similarities, especially in the physicality I’ve noticed in these kids.”
Henley smiled when the term “New Blazers” was mentioned. He acknowledged it’s an important part of this team’s journey to this point. But he was also a little ahead of the curve when identifying that this team could live up to what the motto means.
“You could see aspects of it early on,” Henley said of a team which largely came to campus for the first time in January. “You could see a core group of kids who stayed here and vowed we were going to turn this thing around. They’ve been here since day one and as these other guys trickled in they didn’t resist against anything the (returning guys) tried to do. The toe-the-line mindset that we had every single day, the attention to detail, the no job is too great, no job is too small (mentality). They didn’t resist any of it. They just jumped in the boat and started rowing in the same direction. So, you could see it. You had hope but now you see it come to fruition.”