Mortensen’s Staff off To Blazing Start on Recruiting Trail
By Steve Irvine
BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA - January 20, 2026
The dizzying pace that the UAB football staff took through the transfer portal is not unique.
College football programs throughout the country went through the same process that UAB head coach Alex Mortensen and his staff endured from the day that the transfer portal opened on Jan. 2. Some are still in the middle of piecing together a transfer portal class. For UAB, because of the way the spring semester academic calendar is shaped, its work on that portion of Mortensen’s first class as the head coach ends on Tuesday.
The final haul, unless somebody else has been added and announced on Tuesday, totals 40 transfer portal players. Officially, the Blazers signed 41 players over the past two weeks but one of those – defensive end Colby Archie – comes from junior college. UAB signed 28 defensive players and 13 offensive players. By position, the Blazers signed 12 defensive backs, 10 defensive tackles and ends, five linebackers, four offensive linemen, four wide receivers, three running backs, two tight ends and a punter.
That’s a busy two weeks and little time to celebrate.
“You do (celebrate) but with the craziness and the timing of everything right now, you almost forgot that it happened,” said UAB General Manager/Director of Player Personnel Lino Lupinetti. “At the same time, you’re turning around and scheduling the trips for the next 10 people that are coming. In the moment, you are excited and celebrate, but then you get back to it. When the portal closes and everybody is in school, that’s when you celebrate. It’s not like in high school when you get a kid in week two (of the season) and you’re like this is awesome and everybody is jumping around. There are eight other kids on campus at the same time, people are moving around, (another is) about to miss a flight, you’re trying to call to get the flight changed. There is just a lot of madness going on.”
Lupinetti, a University of Pittsburgh graduate, chose the madness as an undergraduate student at Pitt. He worked as a student assistant at Pitt from 2016-19, beginning by working on graphics and doing more in personnel and recruiting each year. His “foot in the door” came after graduation at Virginia Tech, where he began as recruiting assistant before being elevated to assistant director of player personnel and then the director of that department a year later. He moved to Michigan State in 2023 but left after a coaching change and came to UAB in the summer of 2024. He leads a department that includes director of scouting Brendan Donovan and assistant director of player personnel Carsen Kapilovic.
Their challenges this year were a head coaching search that crept into the early signing period and a new recruiting calendar that included just one transfer portal period in early January. Dealing with a change in leadership was not new for Lupinetti. The calendar, obviously, was new.
“Every year is a different challenge in a good way,” Lupinetti said. “Now you’ll have to figure out how do you navigate it being one window, with a dead period in the middle of it, and then you’re budging up against your school calendar? What’s your best way of attacking that? It’s more of calculated risks and trying to figure it out. It sounds nuts but you really get to have a lot of fun with taking risks. You hope it works out but if it doesn’t there are always ways to minimize the problems that come from it. There’s a lot of adaption.”
Obviously, the plan began long before the portal opened.
“During the season, kind of a trick you want to use, is you do all your advance scouting stuff (for the portal),” Lupinetti said.
That includes studying film closely of the opponents a team plays and determining if there are players worth looking at if they hit the portal after the season. It also includes talking to professional football scouts who come through the building to see what underclassmen jumped out to them in their visits to other schools and getting on the phone with agents to get an idea who could possibly be available. It doesn’t include talking to other players. It’s all about evaluation of possible portal players.
“You try to use as many touchpoints as you can to acquire a list,” Lupinetti said. “You have a pre-portal board and a guesstimate of who may be in the portal. You say let’s look at those guys and kind of rank them and see who we may have to look at. Obviously, you look at your top 25 guys and probably don’t have a chance but you want to see what the market looks like ahead of time. That’s normally how you’re going to do it.”
In December, after the early signing period for high school and junior college players is finished, it’s a matter of keeping a close eye on players announcing they will enter the portal in January and doing the evaluation, putting some on the recruiting board and ranking the newcomers.
Then the transfer portal opens for players to join and portal recruiting opens.
“All the sudden it’s mayhem because you’re moving and shaking to make sure you can get guys here and make sure the transcripts get evaluated,” Lupinetti said.
It’s all hands on the deck throughout the UAB Football Operations Center and the transfer portal visits are different than when high school players come town.
“It’s kind of the same method of trying to do the same day over and over again,” Lupinetti said. “You kind of get into a routine. You primarily get them in late (in the day), do your dinner, have them hang out and get to know everybody. Then you’ll wake them up early the next day and that’s when all the information hits. When that visit ends, the next group is doing the same thing. You’re going back and you’re doing the same thing that night. You kind of keep doing rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat.”
In a way, it’s a bit like speed dating.
“If you do like the traditional high school visit over two days, it just minimizes the amount of people you can see,” Lupinetti said. “You really got to keep it in that 24-hour range. Portal is more business driven. You think of it more like a NFL thing. You’re coming in to learn about the football. You’re seeing us, we’re seeing you. This is where you are, this is where we can get you, how do you feel about that? And then it’s over. It seems like it’s transactional but it kind of is. It’s hey we have a need, you fill the need. You have a need, that’s why you’re in the portal, you want to go from there to here. This is what we can do, this is what you can do for us and then you try to see if both ends fit. By the end of it, they meet with Coach Mort and say I’m in.”
Apparently, the focus in the early days was filling out a secondary depleted by portal defections and graduation. Most of the 12 defensive back commitments and signing announcements came early in the process. From there, daily progress was easy to chart and some big victories came along the way. With incoming defensive coordinator Todd Grantham leading the way, most of the defensive needs were filled, at least on paper. The running back room transformed with the addition of Braylon McReynolds (Louisiana-Monroe), Roderick Robinson II (Georgia) and Ja’Vin Simpkins (Coastal Carolina).
It ended by beating an important deadline with a flourish.
“For us, school started on the 12th,” Lupinetti said. “The 19th is the last day we can get anybody in (for the spring semester). We can’t do anything after that. If they aren’t in then we’re just out of luck (for now).”
That made this weekend even more special, particularly on Sunday when the Blazers made official signing announcements for seven defensive linemen, two cornerbacks and a linebacker. On Monday, the cherry on the top of the class came with additions of offensive lineman Samuel Riddy Jr. (ECU) and linebacker Mantrez Walker (Colorado).
That period is now complete for UAB but the work is not done yet with the next signing period coming up on Feb. 4.
“Obviously, you transition out of that, you look at your roster and see some numbers you need to fill,” Lupinetti said. “You can still do your high school and JUCO stuff after that to fill.”