Trent Dilfer to Return to Coaching at Lipscomb Academy

By Steve Irvine

BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA - January 8, 2026

Trent Dilfer is heading back to his coaching roots. The former UAB head football coach is returning to Nashville’s Lipscomb Academy, which he turned into one of the top programs in Tennessee high school football before coming to UAB after the 2022 season.

Dilfer was fired midway through his third season at UAB after compiling a 9-21 record and failing to win a game away from Protective Stadium. He returns to the only other head coaching job he’s had in a lifetime filled with football.

“Every chapter of my life provides lessons in leadership, communication and building culture,” Dilfer said. “Returning to Lipscomb Academy is meaningful because my heart is in Nashville, and I’m bringing all those lessons and growth back to a place where I’m deeply invested in developing young people and doing it for the long term.”

A source with direct knowledge of the situation said that the 54-year-old Dilfer “firmly decided and committed that his calling in life is to be a high school football coach.”

“He says he's more about transformation than transaction,” the source added. “I think some of these dynamics were certainly already started before he joined UAB. But that dynamic, I think, accelerated over his tenure there. And when it ended, it brought him to the place where he's decided he's fully comfortable with the fact that ‘I'm a high school football coach.’”

In 2019, Dilfer took over a Lipscomb Academy football program that was stuck in the mud upon his arrival. Lipscomb Academy was 2-9 in 2018 and 1-10 the season prior. Dilfer’s first team went 5-5 and he went on to compile a 44-10 record at the school with three consecutive state championship appearances and back-to-back Division II Class AA titles in his final two seasons. The Mustangs were 26-1 in the 2021 and 2022 seasons, outscoring opponents by a combined 1,233-215, with the lone loss coming in the sixth game of the 2021 season to an Oakland team that finished unbeaten after capturing the Division I Class 6A title.

Dilfer also coached 46 players who went on to play at the collegiate level. One of those players was linebacker Bryan Longwell, who led Vanderbilt in tackles in each of the past two seasons.

“Coach Dilfer was one of the most formative people for me in both football and in life,” Longwell said. “I would not be as successful as I am without him.”

Dilfer takes over a Lipscomb Academy program that didn’t finish with a winning record in each of the three seasons since he left for UAB. The Mustangs were 12-20 during that time and haven’t won a playoff game. He replaces Jamie Graham, who was Lipscomb’s offensive coordinator and wide receivers coach under Dilfer and spent the 2023 season working as an offensive analyst on Dilfer’s first UAB team.