Mark Ingram Discusses Hiring Philosophy Amidst Search for Next UAB Football Coach
By Steve Irvine
BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA - October 13, 2025
The timing of Mark Ingram’s decision to fire UAB head football coach Trent Dilfer at the midway point of the season was not premeditated.
UAB dropped to 2-4 with a 53-33 loss at Florida Atlantic on Saturday night. The move to relieve Dilfer and make offensive coordinator Alex Mortensen the interim head coach was made on Sunday. Mortensen said he had already met with Dilfer about Saturday’s game and they had begun preparation for this week’s game against Memphis before Ingram delivered the news.
“I don't know what the exact moment was (when the decision was made) but just like any of us that observe and are around the program, it was just a feeling and a sense that this was the right move,” Ingram said. “And getting in front of that for the purposes of the search and how we move forward, the sooner the better, and delaying that didn't seem to make sense.”
It was the end of a difficult tenure in terms of wins and losses for Dilfer, who finished 9-21 as UAB’s head coach. Ingram was asked if he took responsibility for making a bold hire of a head coach with no previous college experience.
“Absolutely,” Ingram said. “We’ve hired, I don't know the number, I think in my time here, we've hired maybe 25 head coaches, something like that. And have had great success. We didn't have the success that we wanted to have with him. We knew that, like I said (to others), any hire has some amount of risk because these jobs are hard. These jobs are really hard. It's not as simple as just X and O's in football anymore. The totality of their job is enormous.”
Not long after, Ingram was asked for his response to people calling for his job because of Dilfer’s struggles as the UAB head coach.
“I’m in my 11th year here,” Ingram said. “With the support of our board and our president and our community, we’ve done some pretty incredible things. The evidence of that is all around us. I know that right now this focus is on football. We have 18 sports. What we’ve been able to do with our facilities and so forth to put us in a position to even get an invitation to the American was no small task. We’ll continue to do that. Our success is something we’re very proud of as a department. We’ve improved in a lot of areas – academically, we serve our community very well and we have won championships in more than one sport and have moved programs that used to be bottom feeders into the top 25. It’s like turning a battleship. It’s not something overnight that you just snap your finger and all the sudden you’re great. We are a lot better than what we used to be and we’re proud of that.”
However, UAB is not better than the Blazers were on the football field in six seasons under Bill Clark and one season under interim head coach Bryant Vincent. Clark was 49-26 overall and 32-12 in Conference USA play. His teams won two Conference USA titles, three C-USA division titles and were bowl eligible in each of his six seasons. Clark’s last game at UAB was a win over 13th-ranked BYU in the Radiance Technologies Independence Bowl. Vincent served as the interim head coach in 2022 after Clark stepped away from coaching. The Blazers finished 7-6 under Vincent, concluding the season with a win in the Bahamas Bowl.
Ingram is looking for new leadership for his football program to get them back to that standard. He said that college experience is a must during this search but the experience doesn’t necessarily need to include head coaching. He said on Monday morning that he already had several phone calls from coaches or agents. On his appearance on Blazer Sportsline from Learfield on Monday night, Ingram said over 30 coaches had called him with interest.
“We want to find people that have had success, as I said, college success,” Ingram said. “(Coaches) that have had some success navigating the transfer rules and managing the players and that kind of thing, with that ability to constantly leave or choose to redshirt on their own, those kind of things. These are new challenges that didn't exist, not very long ago. Let's just say college experience. … I don't want to pinpoint a specific character trait, but college experience, I will certainly emphasize that.”
Ingram said a new coach needs to be in place well before the 14-day transfer portal period for FBS and FCS transfer opens on January 2. Signing periods for junior college and high school recruits are on Dec. 3-5 and Feb. 4.
The parameters of the search, according to Ingram, will be the same as when he hired Dilfer in December of 2022 and coaches in other sports.
“Honestly, not to say that this is perfect, but again, with the number of head coaches that we have hired and the success that they have had, we've got a good formula,” Ingram said. “We have an internal committee that evaluates and recruits prospects and an evaluation process. It’s not just a dictatorship. I want everybody to weigh in. I want people to be open with their reaction to candidates and what do you really think. Everybody has a voice in that room. I think that's important to get other people's opinions. I will do that again and like I said, it's not foolproof, but it has been very good for us.”