Mortensen Busy rounding out staff aS Well As UAB’s 2026 Recruiting Class

By Steve Irvine

BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA - January 15, 2026

Phone calls, texts and recruiting visits have consumed the hours for UAB football head coach Alex Mortensen. Sleep is optional and adapting on the fly is mandatory.

Obviously, his primary focus is on recruiting, particularly during the transfer portal period, which began on Jan. 2 and concludes on Friday. The long hours have paid off with around 20 roster additions this month with all but one of those coming from the portal. The lone exception is offensive tackle Barrett Maddox, who began his college career at Vanderbilt but spent last season at Itawamba Community College.

Mortensen and his staff were allowed to take a quick breather for the first three days of this week with a NCAA recruiting dead period. But they still worked the phones, set up visits and evaluated prospects. Thursday kicks off a busy weekend of recruiting visits as they try to close out this portion of the class.

Completing his first staff has also been part of Mortensen’s schedule, even though that took a backseat to recruiting for the past couple of weeks. The only incoming coaches that have been formally announced by the school are veteran defensive coordinator Todd Grantham and offensive assistant coach Hindley Brigham. Mortensen plans on retaining his duties as the program’s offensive coordinator.

On Wednesday, Mortensen took time to sit down with The Banner and talk about recruiting and give some thoughts about his coaching staff.

On the busy schedule in January: “Yeah, since January started, it's been very busy. You know, we've worked basically every day, pretty long hours most days. I think every day we're keeping an eye on the portal in terms of our roster. We look at our depth chart. I call it our depth chart, but (it’s more) our roster at every position. Some of those guys are on our team and some of those guys have entered the portal. We obviously have a different philosophy on how we want to approach all of our guys in the portal. Some of them, we want back. Some of them, it's uncertain as to whether we want them back relative to what we're recruiting. Then some of them, we're comfortable with them moving on. We have to stay on top of that every day. And then the portal itself, you know, we're constantly evaluating who's going in (from other schools) and then we evaluate them. In the middle of all that, there's a lot of communication, of course, like the actual recruitment of the player and trying to get to know them. So it is a busy time period.

I can actually expound on that even more. It's different than it's ever been because as most know, but I think sometimes we take this for granted, the way it used to be is we had a long runway to signing day when it was just the second week in February. We would see the player's video, talk to them on the phone, talk to their high school coach. We would go see them in person usually, a lot of times in the school or at a spring practice. They'd probably be on our campus for a junior day. Probably you're going to see them play in a high school game, their senior year. We're going to sit in their living room at some point. We're going to get to know their family situation. They're going to come on an official visit. Back then, those official visits were 48 hours and those official visits usually occurred during (school being in session), so one of our players would host them.

If you compare and contrast that with the way it is now in the portal, which is obviously different than high school recruiting, sometimes all we get is video, and then you're trying to do as much homework on them as quickly as you can, whether that's their previous college coach or their high school coach. And sometimes if their previous college coach wants to recruit them back to their place, you're wondering if you're getting good information or whether or not they're going to withhold information. Then next thing you know, a lot of times they're here. On the visit, these visits are usually under 24 hours because the window is so tight, the players want to get in and out faster. So it's an entirely different process. And then in the middle of that, there's an agent involved. Some players only want you to talk to their agent or want your program to talk to their agent and some want a combination. There's a very small percentage of guys that seem like they're not represented by an agent. It's quite different. I think one of the biggest differences is our ability to do homework on a player is much less. Usually, you've seen a guy work out in person and you know a lot about them. In this case, we haven't seen him work out in person and we really don't have the long runway to know what kind of personality, character, toughness, grit he has. Those things you have to do research on. We have to do it a lot faster. That's why this time period has been so jam-packed. It's dead right now (on Wednesday), but we've had a lot of players on campus every single day.”

On the process of recruiting the UAB players in the portal that they want back: “I think when you have a guy that's here that's in the portal, in my mind, you want to treat him in some ways like anyone else that's in the portal. I know that might sound odd because you have a prior relationship with them, but I think it's important that you explain to them your vision for them going forward because everyone else that's recruiting them is doing the same thing. Just because your last year was a certain way doesn't mean that you're not developing into a new role or a different role this year. In our case, having some turnover on the staff too, if you're in a position that's involved with staff turnover, I think it's important you have an idea of whether that's a fit too. I think you need to make sure that you're communicating that with those guys that are on your team that you want back. But it is odd. It is an odd situation.”

On his feelings about the recruiting class at this point: “Look, we're a little bit behind where I would like to be, but I'm certainly optimistic that we can close the best way we can. I think in the future, don't hold me to this, but we'll probably want to sign more high school players in December. But just the timing of everything, it probably didn't work that way this year, but I'm positive that we can hopefully close out well by Monday.”

On the portal closing on Monday: “Schools start classes at different times (in the spring term). The key date, obviously is the start of school and it's also when is the drop dead date for (enrolling in) classes. You know, when can you drop or add classes? Then how do those things coincide with the portal? So the portal, this year is open until January 16th. All that tells you is that is a player's last opportunity to enter the portal. It is not a player's last opportunity to sign with a program. If a player can find a program that can get them in school later than that, then the January 16th date is really of no significance for them. They also could sign in May (if they are in the portal by Jan. 16). They could sign at the end of the spring semester too if they don't find a home they're comfortable with now. The portal dates just give you an indication of what window does a player have to declare that they're transferring.”

On the decision to hire Todd Grantham: “Really excited about Coach Grantham. We worked together in 2022 at Alabama and I enjoyed working with him there and was impressed with him. I've had to coach against him a number of times and that was always challenging. I thought he did a really good job with his defenses. I remember the first one that jumps out to me, I think in 2017 when he's at Mississippi State, we coached against him and he did a great job there. That was a defense I think the prior year was near the bottom of the country in defense and they turned around really fast with Todd. They were in the top 15 or top 10 defensively that year and they almost beat us. We had to score late to win. Playing against him, obviously, I respected him. Being in a building with him, I respected him and liked him. And then you talk to a lot of people that have worked with him, a lot of people really think highly of him. I feel like he's always connected well with his players. He's a smart coach, knows a lot of football and knows a lot of the challenges that college offenses present and has enough pitches to adjust to those things. I think he's got a track record of, if you really look into it, most places he's been, they've been really good defensively. You look at his four years at Georgia, I think the first three they were ranked really high. Maybe the fourth year they was a slight drop, but not significant. You look at the three years at Louisville, they were very, very good. The Mississippi State season, they were very good. I mean, I could go on and on. Then Coach Saban likes him. Obviously, he’s hired him at least twice. I'm really excited about having him here.”

On whether he was set on hiring a veteran defensive coordinator or looking for the best guy regardless of years in the business: “The best guy. I think too often it's easy to paint with broad strokes as to what you're looking for. I think you hear people do it a lot of times. They fire a coach, like you see it with head coaches. Well, the last guy had no head coaching experience, so the next one's got to have head coaching experience. Well, the last guy had never been a coordinator. We've got to make sure our new guy has been a coordinator. I'm more interested in the individual and what they bring to the table because I think some of those things can get overstated. I think a lot of people just react to maybe going the opposite direction of whatever was there previously. That being said, I do think there are experienced coaches out there that are mediocre, you know. So I just wanted to make sure we got a really good coach. I think Todd's experience helps him but I'm just really more excited that I think we got ourselves a really good football coach.”

On Todd Grantham building his defensive personnel in recruiting: “I think Coach Grantham does a good job with the personnel part, so it's been a collaborative, you know, been a lot of ongoing conversation and discussion. But I also trust him, too, because he knows what he's looking for and what he's looking for at every position. Then also we both have some similar history in that we've been in sort of the same coaching tree at different points. I think there are certain critical factors and specific skills we're looking at each spot. There's a lot of philosophical carry over too. He's really doing a good job casting a vision and working towards it in terms of the personnel on defense.”

On bringing Hindley Brigham back on staff: “I’m really excited to have Hindley Brigham back here. I was fortunate to get to work with him two years and really like him. I think Hindley is a very bright guy. I think he's intellectually gifted. I think he's always connected well with the players. And his guys have always played really hard and tough and physical. I think he's a really good evaluator and good recruiter, too. I think getting him back here is really, really exciting. I didn't want to lose him when we did the first time, so I'm really happy to have him here.”

On whether the entire staff is in place: “Not quite, but we're pretty close. The focus right now is to really get through this intense recruiting cycle and then we'll take a breath and look a little bit further at the staff. Some of it will be staff organization and whether or not we are going to make any other changes.”

On hiring an offensive coordinator: “At this point, we're not planning on doing that. My plan is to run the offense and then organize the staff the best we can to be efficient. That's really the plan right now and I'm really excited about that. That's kind of what we're planning on doing. We've got good people on our offensive staff, too, that I think I feel really confident working with.”

On whether the staff was able to take a breath during the three-day dead period: “The dead period does come at a little bit of a strange time, but it does coincide with the coaching convention. It does let you kind of take a breath and reassess everything that we've done to this point. And then what do we need to do and maybe reconsider our strategy. That has been really positive. I think the negative, obviously, is that this is a very tight portal window without a spring portal window. So it's three days that could have presented opportunities to get players on campus. I’d probably feel a little bit better about it if we had a little bit more time. But yeah, we have used it to try to do the things I've previously mentioned and also evaluate more guys, too. There  are so many players that are in the portal, you want to make sure that you don't have people falling through the cracks that maybe you've missed. We've watched a lot of players in these (three) days too.”

On the days getting busy again with only a few days left to get portal players in for the spring semester: “Yeah, it's going to get busy. We have a lot of visits lined up in the coming days as we close out. We'll be booking more on top of it. Our recruiting department has done a really good job. Our staff has too. It's really all hands on deck to try to manage a high volume of people when they're here and do a good job of putting our best foot forward and showing what UAB has to offer as an institution, a community, and a football program. I'm grateful for the work everyone's putting in to handle that many players at a time. It also can create some organizational challenges, but I think it’s challenges that we've managed well.

Right now, our focus has primarily been on portal or players that can't join us midyear. It is important for us to recruit high schools. I'll just say this, we're going to get out on the road and recruit the high schools too. I can't tell you how excited I am to do that. We'll do that in January. Then, of course, we're going to open our doors when the recruiting calendar allows in the coming months and also get on as many campuses as we can in spring recruiting.”