Q&A With Mark INgram About ReplaCing TRent Dilfer With Alex Mortensen

By Steve Irvine

BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA - December 6, 2025

A coaching search that effectively lasted for the final half of the 2025 football season ended on Thursday when UAB athletic director Mark Ingram chose to shed the interim label on Alex Mortensen. On Friday, after the press conference announcing Mortensen as the full-time head coach, Ingram sat down in his office to talk about the search and his decision to elevate an interim coach that finished 2-4 over the final half of the season.

On the decision to hire Alex Mortensen: “Mort is a high character guy. He's a high integrity guy. The period of time from when he took over until the decision a few days ago, it gave us the opportunity to observe him in a way that we had not seen him before. He had not been in a position to demonstrate leadership in the same manner prior to being the interim head coach. I'm sure that he spoke to the team at times (before that) where maybe I wasn't there to witness to it because I don't live in the football building. I have no doubt that he did that. You think about the press conference (when he was announced as interim coach) and how he handled himself and that week of preparation. We talked, he and I talked every day, a couple times a day, just making sure (he had what he needed). What do you need help with? What questions do you have? Whatever. Then just talking ball about who's going to play and all that sort of stuff. Then we win the game from a tremendous plan, obviously, and how he handled himself post-game. I mean, what's kind of funny is the guy that you met earlier today at the podium is the same guy that he was on the field after a Gatorade bath after the Memphis win. You know, he's just steady, man. And then he was great in the post-game. And that's what I remember thinking, I was just so excited that we won for a million reasons, but really observing him with real admiration, I guess, and pride. He really handled himself, and I thought, man, I've just not seen you like this before. He showed a side of himself that we hadn't witnessed, like I said. So that was where it started. Then, you know, every game and every week and the way he prepared and the way he managed the team was just really impressive.

Then to close out the season, you know, it's Thanksgiving week. Every student on this campus is gone. These campuses get lonely in the summertime and holiday time because you lose 20,000 people off however many city blocks here. All of a sudden, it's just quiet. And, you know, the only thing that we've got to play for is pride and each other. What I saw was that and also playing for him. There was a clear passion that they had for playing for him. He told us a story when I interviewed him. He told us a story about his high school coach. I'm sure I'll get this wrong, but middle school or high school coach was also his history teacher. And he was like, ‘I was doing just fine in the class. And I had all these big tests and then I had all these little bitty quizzes.’ He said, ‘I probably could have just not ever studied for them. And it wouldn't have mattered to really affect my grade. But I really wanted to do well on them for my teacher. I respected him and I really wanted to do well.’ I heard that story after the game, but that is sort of what I observed at the Tulsa game. I've had the good fortune of being in the locker room after a national championship win. I've had the good fortune of being in the locker room when a team has just won their sixth game and become eligible for the first time in a while. And then I was in that locker room at Tulsa. It's the same locker room. Just this pure joy and jubilation that as big of humans as they are, they're kids and they work incredibly hard with a lot of criticism, you know. And so that was fun, fun for them. But just that, it was that sort of transitional process that took some time to see out of him, which became just more and more impressive.”

On the bottom line world of college athletics and the 2-4 record under Alex Mortensen as interim: “Well, there's a lot of success stories of people who were assistant coaches on teams that had losing records that somehow one of the assistants became the head coach and went on to do great things. I would assume that, I don't want to speak for those other ADs in their situations, but whether it's Brian Newberry at Navy or Coach (Blake) Harrell at East Carolina or Dabo Swinney has done okay. These guys and many others, they just show leadership qualities that are critical for the job. He, in particular, for us has an incredible amount, not just his network in coaching, but an incredible amount of in-state knowledge. He has been in our state for a while now, including a short time at Samford as a player. He's from Atlanta, which is basically here, you know, and so there was a real connectivity that he has that not a lot of people have. And just a true affinity for the job and a great plan. You know, he is so respectful. Trent Dilfer hired him, so he’s very respectful (of Dilfer). But obviously one of the things we had to ask was, you know, what would be different or what are things that you would adjust? And he answered that so carefully, which I thought, again, demonstrates a real maturity about him and respect, but also he's clearly organized with his thoughts on what those plans need to be to make corrections. If you just look at scoreboard, you could easily say a lot of things about the team. You get with him and start talking about specifics and it's how close we were. Like, he said, oh, you know, defense gave up this many points (but) we put the ball on the ground on the 15-yard line, and they had to defend the end zone from the 15-yard line on this particular possession. Well, whose fault is that? Is that the defense's fault? Just as a little example. And I think that when we played those two games with fewer penalties and fewer turnovers, you see that we won those games. If we had been that way in the other four, I think the results may have been different, particularly at Rice and UConn. You talk about South Florida and North Texas, who I think are ranked one and two nationally in offensive productivity. So there's also just two great football teams, too. You know, maybe not a great sample size for him to be judged on.”

On the number of coaches he spoke to and how many offers were made during the search: “There were no other offers made. I know there's a lot of chatter about that. I've been told there's a lot of chatter about that. No, there were no other offers made. We offered the job to one person who accepted the job. Now we got pretty thorough with, I shouldn't say a bunch. I don't like terms like a bunch and a lot. That's not fair. I probably started with 70. Let's just say ballpark, 70 candidates, culled that down to probably 20 to 25 that I had conversation with. And in some cases, you do it because maybe we'd never met. Or gosh, we have met, but we haven't talked in a long time, man. It's been years. How you doing? You know, it's like a reconnect. That just starts a conversation about interest. It's not too deep in the weeds about their plan or their staff or what's your offense going to look like. It was as much about their interest in the position and why and what would make this attractive to you. Why did you reach out or why did you accept our call, whoever initiated. And they're all great, man. I really appreciate and respect all the people who are willing to speak with us because, like we said earlier today, this is a great opportunity here for so many reasons. That's just what they kind of, in their own words, kept saying is, man, you guys are in the American Conference, I've driven past that facility or I've seen that facility online. Man, that is really cool. And man, your stadium, I went by there. I drove past. That's that one out on the interstate, right? Yeah, that's one. Man, that thing is incredible. When did y'all build that? You know, it was just really overly positive conversation about that. Then they'd say, I've been reading more about UAB as a school. Man, you guys, you're a hospital, you're a med center, you know, this sort of talk. Sometimes we don't really know much about other schools until we take time to do a little research. You just sort of know of them out there. Oh, yeah, I know what their school colors are. Didn't they have that funny mascot or that? Didn't that thing happen to them that one time? And you don't know a whole lot about them in detail. So we just got a lot of positive response there.

But you can't go to the finish line with 20 people, you know, and so you've got to, for various reasons, start splitting hairs. That's really what it is. Because there's a lot of really strong coaches out there. These jobs are, I think, unfair to them in so many ways. I think it's incredibly hard what they do. And I think with the modern era of transfers, you know, you go find some kid that nobody else recruited and you put them on the field and they are the dynamic player that you hope that they were. And then poof, they might get gone. To steal a line from one of the candidates, regardless of how good your relationship is with that player, if they're talking to somebody for another dollar, then you may not have him anymore. That other place can offer another dollar. It's not just another $100,000. It's not always like that. I mean, some of that can be true. Anyway, so yeah, we had time to do it.

Now, the funny thing is when you start looking as early as we did, this thing is like a marathon. From the Memphis game, let's just call it, or that week through the Tulsa game, it's like the first 25 miles of a marathon. And the last week is like the last mile. And for people who've ever run a marathon, that (last mile) is a sprint. And for that individual, the person running the race, it's 25 miles of steady, methodical approach in rhythm. Then that last mile is like hard at it as hard as you can go. And that's what happens. I know there's been other, unrelated to us, other stories out there about people commenting about coaches leaving before the end of their season or the end of their, before their bowl or their championship, or whatever they've got, which is difficult. But what I found was some coaches were more willing to talk during their season than others. Some people aren't willing to talk much at all other than to say, yes, I'm interested, I’d be happy to speak after my last regular season game or something. So while, yeah, it looks like you just have all this time, it's not quite that way. You have a lot of time to do a lot of research. You have a lot of time to have some conversations, but this is unlike any other type of hire that you make in any other industry because you've just got all these other dates that you're working with. Signing day that was a couple of days ago and transfer portal coming up and then you got the holidays and you got bowl games, you got championships, you got playoffs, whatever it's all involved for all these other people. For anyone that was going to take this job or any other job, as soon as they can get to that place, then they got to recruit. You heard Coach Mortensen say at the podium, you got to recruit your own team first and assess what do we truly need? And then you hope that the guys that have said they're going to stay actually don't get in the portal on (Jan. 2) or whatever, or worse yet, the 15th of January, which happens. It happens. There's a lot of people in those young people's ears, so they get stressed with a lot of decisions, too.”

On whether he discussed financial possibilities with other candidates: “Well, the reality is you do a lot earlier than you might think, and I think that probably creates a bit of the confusion (on offers). A lot earlier than you think, you’ve got to say, hey, are you aware of what the compensation is for our job? Whether it's directly to the candidate or to their agent. Are we all on the same page about what this package looks like? Do you have financial data about our program? Are there things you need to know? Yeah, you get into that because you have to because you don't want to waste your own time (and) I don't want to waste my time. So it is a little funny that you kind of have to get to get that out there. Like if you're the candidate, you're hoping no matter what the answer is that some way you could get that to be a higher number, no matter what we might say or what their response is. There's some of that to it. So, yeah, you have to get into that. And I think probably, again, I haven't read whatever is out there, but my guess is that probably would be the driving force of that confusion.

There are people who you could get. Look, I don't care if you're us or Tulane or Oklahoma State. There's a different pool of candidates if you have more to offer. I mean, that's just the reality. It's like anything else. You know, you have a scale within yourself that you think, okay, this is the range that we're in that compares to our level in our conference where we think we are. And okay, what do we think is our candidate pool? At some point there's a limit, but again, I don't care what school you're talking about. At some point, there's a limit.”

On why it took so long to decide on an interim candidate that took over eight weeks prior: “Well, I guess there's two things. One is the other, you know, all the other candidates. I'm my own worst enemy. I'm thorough. I just think it's important. It's a big job. I've had people go, you know, this job's an important job. Yeah, I know this is an important job. I want to be thorough to the other candidates. Anybody that reached out, we want to kind of look at them. Some you can kind of set aside one way or the other pretty quickly. But I want to thoroughly investigate that and get to know people that I don't. I know a lot of people, I don't know everybody. You know, at this point, I've been doing this for over 30 years since I've been at five different schools in five different states and you meet a lot of people, but there's the world of people I don't know. So you want to get to know as many people as you can. It's like trying on shoes, you know.

Then, you say, why'd it take so long with Alex? It's just the evolution of what I watched. It wasn't that it took so long. I just wanted to observe that. I've not seen (Mortensen as a head coach). Some, if not most, of the other candidates had a head coaching history. I have those numbers. So, it started off with what will be the record (for Mortensen). And then as I drilled down, I said, well, okay, two of those games are against two of the best offenses in the country. One of them, we played a great first half after a really difficult morning. And then Rice came down too many penalties in the second half. I think we had two in the first half and like nine in the second half. We were winning at halftime. If we can clean up some mistakes and turnovers, our season is very, very different. UConn, I think we had four interceptions, and I don't remember maybe 10 or so penalties there, too. But if you look at passing yards, rushing yards, time of possession was like identical to UConn. You go, golly, we're not really as far as it may appear to be. And so anyhow, I was just watching that evolution with him and being up close.

When you're looking at another candidate, you're only looking at their record, but you don't really know how they handle themselves and how they speak to the team and how they address others and how they treat the other people in their building. There's just so many subtle gestures or subtle interactions that Alex has with people around the building that he treats everybody with a great amount of respect. And I think it's important in that job. I think it's important that the head football coach understands and this would be true probably everywhere, that the majority of the athletic department staff spends, you know, 80 or 90 percent of their job on doing things that are football related. It's because of the size of the team. You know, marketing staff, media relations staff, because of the number of games, how long it lasts, the size of the team and the media coverage. There's just an incredible amount of time spent on football by people who don't work specifically directly for the head coach. And so when the head coach observes that and acknowledges that, I think it's important. And he also demonstrated that as I just sort of watched him interact with (people), whether it was (the media) or (media relations). There was just no ego behind it. You know, he's just a very appreciative, respectful guy. Which, I don't want to act as though I didn't think that of him, but it’s a different chair. When you slide from that chair to this chair, things change and you never know. Sometimes people's personalities change. Like I said, in that press conference (on Friday) and after Memphis, same guy all the time.”

On whether a loss to Tulsa would have changed Mortensen’s chances as a candidate: “I hadn't even thought about that really. I hadn't considered speculating. I wasn't just sitting there every game going, well, if we win this one, then X or lose this one, then Y. I wasn't doing that. But it certainly demonstrated to me that, like I said a little while ago, when you've got a situation where everybody on this campus has gone home for Thanksgiving and there's only one reason to play. And in the modern era of transfer portable football, you know, rallying guys to go out there and play for each other. What I felt like I also saw was a bit of that history teacher coach thing. They were also playing for him because they respect him and wanted to play well for him and each other. But each other was not just the team. It was the team and the staff as one. And it was cold and blustery. I mean, it wasn't like the coldest game I've ever been to, but for Birmingham, Alabama, it felt cold. And it was gray like today and windy. And it was just like, oh, gosh, this is crummy. It's two days after Thanksgiving. They didn't have a huge crowd either. And so it was like, we're just playing now. We're just out here playing and playing as well as we can play. And frankly, after the game, the first thing he said was, I'm sorry, we could have won that by three touchdowns. Or we should have or something like that.”

On hiring an interim coach this time after not hiring an interim coach last time: “I have a lot of respect for Bryant Vincent. I like Bryant Vincent. That's a good question. I hadn't considered that either. I don't know, just a different time, a different situation. I'm thrilled Bryant has gone on to do well and I don't have any doubt that he'll continue to do that. I just think the situations are different.”

On terms of Alex Mortensen’s contract: “Well, there's a process that we have, so I can't divulge any of the deal points, but we'll release all that at the appropriate time.”

On comparing coaches at different levels when filling this position: “Well, I've heard our coaches talk about in all sports how hungry players are from say, Division II and FCS and how sometimes they may play with a chip on their shoulder. I kind of like that idea, but I also value a person that's been in the American Conference and seen what the talent level looks like. So you're trying to discern which of these qualities, you're trying to give them like a weighted value. Is being from here more important than being a head coach or is being a head coach more important than what level of football they've played at? You're trying to weigh each of these qualities. And then, again, if you can find somebody that's high character. I don't want to say it's hard to find a person of high character, but nobody writes on their resume, I intentionally cheat. That's not on anybody's bio. So part of the amount of time that we spend is a lot of, as best we can, discrete background work. Listen, frankly, I didn't get very many bad references on anybody, but anybody we spoke to about Alex, people were just so positive about him, about how intelligent he is and just what a quality human being that he is. He's an easy-to-like guy.”

On whether he will be involved with how the staff is put together: “We talked about it when we sort of formally interviewed him. We talked about that. That's a kind of a standard question, really, that you ask anybody, tell me what your staffing plan is. I think what you heard him say is that's something that he wants to evaluate now that he's in this chair. And I don't want to act as if he hadn't thought about it. That would be factually untrue. But I think that now that he is the person to make that decision, I think he wants to be a little bit more critical about it and take a very careful, critical eye. You also sometimes, as things move through this, call it hiring cycle, some people move on their own. So you're also kind of observing and paying attention to somebody who might have another opportunity. So again, you may think that a portion of the staff is, well, I'm definitely going to keep them. And then next thing, one of them gets an offer. He’s going to give that a lot of careful consideration and I don't think that he's ready to talk about exactly what that looks like. But we're certainly going to help him through that.”

On whether he reached out to Bill Clark: “I wouldn't talk about any specific candidates. Sorry.”

On whether it matters what the reaction is to this hire: “Yeah, well, you always want your fans to be excited and yet you also know that there's some level of criticism that regardless of what today's announcement would have been, it would have garnered. Again, we have to try our best to block out the noise during the process and then go get the very best person that we can get for the reasons that we state. I appreciate everybody's passion. I think that's the thing that gets lost here is through any potential criticism, the value in that is the interest. And that's something that we are slowly building more interest in our program, which is people just paying attention. As the school gets older, as we graduate more students and so on and so on, it's turning a battleship, man. But over time, we have more people that are interested in paying attention to what UAB is doing. I think that's a good thing.”

On the university’s increased commitment to the program and how that will affect improving the nutrition aspect of the program: “I don’t remember the question that I was asked when we introduced Alex. Something similar to that was asked, I think. And I said then we evaluate all sorts of things after every season as to see what do we think we could do differently that would be better for next year to create priorities. Whether it's, do we practice in the morning? Do we practice in the afternoon? How do we eat? And what do we eat? And how often do we eat? And, you know, the volume and all this stuff. And, you know, everybody has a different dietary need. Some people need to be a little bit leaner and some people need to gain a lot of weight. But anyway, so that is something, yeah, that we always evaluate. Dr. Watts, during the process, committed some more resources, which are really helpful that'll allow Alex to do a lot of things as he's able to really dissect the budget. He has kind of a large number, you know, just like all of our candidates did. He was given a large number. He'll have the opportunity to really put his fingerprints on and allocate dollars within that. Maybe we have technology or software that he's like, you know, we don't really use it that much. What does that cost? Oh, that costs X amount a year. We could redirect that to this other thing, whatever the other thing is. More equipment or new equipment or different equipment or food.

I guess on the revenue share spend and all that, no one has had to submit data, like actual data on that. There's a lot of surveys that we're required to fill out for various NCAA or whatever. You guys have seen the NCAA report before. We all do that. But I don't know if revenue share dollars will ever enter the equation into what information you share. I would just say that like NIL money, revenue share money, is a little hard to understand what is actually happening versus what people think is happening. I think that coaches are not always completely truthful with one another because they don't want it, whatever number they might say, they think might hurt them or help them in recruiting. So they get real careful about how they share that. There's a lot of numbers flying out there. And when things are reported directly from an institution, then that will be different. And there's been probably some articles maybe that you're thinking about. I've been in this for 30 years, and I cannot remember a time where having more something hasn't been important. And, you know, that we need more. That's always been the case. So it's just a new line item in the budget that we have to also now have to pay attention to that we didn't used to have to pay attention to.”

On the significance of the increased monetary commitment to the program: “Well, first of all, having more is always appreciated, and the increase that Dr. Watts and I have talked about is really important in a couple of ways. One, the amount of money is significant. And two, it's him clearly understanding this new unusual challenge that everybody has to deal with. I appreciate his acknowledgement of that challenge. We’ve talked about it probably every year that I've been here. How do we compare to everybody else and how does that look and what can we do? Community guys want to participate and so you're trying to do that. He certainly recognizes the value and what the institution can do as it's able. You know, there's a lot of priorities around this place and a lot of really good work, a lot of important stuff. If you're the guy in the president's office, that's a tough job. And so given all those circumstances, I really appreciate him stepping up and saying, hey, we want to help because we know that it's important. That in and of itself is as important as the money, is that he has said, hey, we want to make sure that you have enough to go be competitive and win.”