The arduous and exhausting wait is over and the greater college football world can now witness what a bunch of high school football coaches can do with the UAB football program on a national stage.

The Blazers have enjoyed a renaissance in recent years, leading to impeccable facility upgrades and a new conference home, and enter a new era as they kick off the 2023 season against North Carolina A&T, Thursday, Aug. 31, at Protective Stadium in Birmingham.

Kickoff is set for 7:00 p.m. CT on ESPN+.

“I’ve learned over my football life that, regardless of what the season has for results, it’s going to be a wild ride,” UAB head coach Trent Dilfer said. “The highest of highs and the lowest of lows in football, and the one consistent is that it’s a journey of ebb and flows. I’ve been trying to prep them for that and how to handle those moments emotionally, mentally and physically. Football is a steep climb, we’re prepped for that and excited for the battle ahead of us.”

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The Blazers are a season removed from the sudden retirement of legendary coach Bill Clark, who led UAB to a 49-26 record with two CUSA titles, the first bowl win in program history and a 31-28 upset of No. 13 BYU in the 2021 Independence Bowl in his final game as head coach, but are not content with a rebuild as much as a renovation on an already solid foundation, as Dilfer has referenced many times since his hiring last December.

“We’re taking that ‘1-0 approach’ every single day,” Dilfer said. “I know that’s coach speak, I try not to do coach speak, but that’s one of the truths of coach speak. You’ve got to cast a vision as a leader, and that has to be number one.”

The Blazers have opened the season against an FCS opponent the past six years and posted three shutouts during that stretch, even outscoring its last two opponents (Jacksonville State and Alabama A&M) by a combined 90-0.

UAB returns only a handful of starters on the offensive end but Dilfer and his staff brought in a wide array of talent from the transfer portal and its freshmen signing class. While known for their bruising rushing attack under the tenancy of (Bill) Clark, the Blazers are expected to evolve their offensive prowess under new offensive coordinator Alex Mortensen, who was the man behind the curtain of the Alabama offense while serving as an analyst in Tuscaloosa.

Defensively, the McWilliams brothers, Fish and Mac, along with Michael Fairbanks II and Keondre Swoopes, lead a unit that lost key leaders but returns plenty of talent to maintain its menacing reputation.

Dilfer’s defensive coordinator, Sione Ta’ufo’ou, spent the last three seasons with the former at Lipscomb Academy (Tenn.) and will join him on the field, along with Mortensen. The play-calling is reserved for both coordinators but Dilfer will exert his influence when he sees fit.

“It will be a collaboration, that’s the easiest way to say it, but Mortensen and (Sione) Ta’ufo’ou are the lead dogs,” Dilfer said. “They will call the offense and defense as they see fit with my input. The best way I’ve seen it done is you win with how you prepare, and as Mortensen and I have spent more time together, and Ta’ufo’ou and I have a long history together and were spending a lot of time together, we think each other’s thoughts. When we’re thinking each other’s thoughts, then it’s a true collaboration in-game.”

Similar to UAB, North Carolina A&T is entering a new conference, the Coastal Athletic Association (CAA) Football Conference, operating under a first-year coach, Vincent Brown, and picked to finish near the bottom of its new league’s standings. The Aggies are coming off a 7-4 season that included a 0-3 start before winning seven straight games en route to the Big South title game, where they lost to Gardner-Webb and failed to make the FCS playoffs.

Despite a successful season and entering one of the strongest leagues in the FCS, North Carolina A&T, an HBCU institution, saw an exodus of its best players to the transfer portal — leading rusher Bhayshul Tuten, starting receiver Sterling Berkhalter and defensive anchors Jacob Roberts and Tyquan King – but added its own swath of portal entries to ease the lack of experience and leadership.

“You’re trying to get a DNA report on who they are and you can’t just go to last year’s film to figure it out,” Dilfer said. “That’s what we’re doing right now and we’ve been doing it for the last few days — trying to figure out who they are, what we think they’re going to be, but never losing sight of who we are.”

Dilfer has an unbridled passion for what his first UAB team could be and has been hot on the pavement of the UAB campus since classes started for the fall semester, preaching his message to as many that will listen.

He even made a guest appearance at UAB’s Welcome Back Concert on Saturday, joining Grammy Award-winning artist T-Pain on stage to encourage the student body to pack into Protective for the Blazers’ season opener.

“Naturally there should be excitement around this team — we have some great players, we have all-conference-type players and we have players that will be playing in the NFL one day,” Dilfer said. “There should be curiosity about what’s going on. If a high school coach can do this at the next level, if a couple of coordinators have never called a play in college football can do it, if we only have six returning starters coming back, if guys don’t have a lot of experience can play at a high level? You can be a skeptic, you can be an optimist, but you should be curious. I think curiosity alone should get you into the stadium. And, it’s college football.”