Birmingham Stallions coach Skip Holtz said championship teams must learn how to handle winning. The Stallions have had plenty of practice in mastering that lesson because they’ve done practically nothing but win in their three seasons of existence.

Birmingham blanked the San Antonio Brahmas 25-0 on Sunday in St. Louis in the United Football League Championship Game.

Born in the USFL revival in 2022, the Stallions won that league’s championship back-to-back before the merger of the USFL and XFL moved Birmingham to the UFL for this year’s spring-football season.

“It is hard to continue to win,” Holtz said after the Stallions did just that on Sunday. “You put a target on your chest, and everybody shoots for you and everybody’s circling that game and you are going to get everybody’s best effort. But as I have told the team, the only thing better than playing against the Stallions is having the opportunity to play for them and the pride that they take knowing that everybody’s going to take their best shot at us.

“There are stages of a championship that you have to go through as a football team. You have to learn how to compete, then you learn how to win, then you have to learn how to handle winning, and that is probably one of the hardest steps to take. But the championship culture really takes off when you learn how to handle winning and your players take over the culture, and that is the buy-in factor in having leadership like the guys (quarterback Adrian Martinez and linebacker Kyahva Tezino) on this stage right here, so many guys on this team, that’s when for me I have the opportunity to be the duck that floats on top of the water and there’s a whole lot of people with their feet that are pedaling like hell underneath to make this thing go.”

The Stallions have a 32-4 record across their three seasons.

Birmingham went 9-1 in its first regular season, then won two playoff games, including a 33-30 victory over the Philadelphia Stars in the USFL Championship Game on July 3, 2022.

In their second season, the Stallions had an 8-2 regular-season mark and won two postseason contests again, this time capping the campaign with a 28-12 victory over the Pittsburgh Maulers in the USFL Championship Game on July 1, 2023.

Birmingham went 9-1 in the 2024 UFL regular season, then defeated the Michigan Panthers 31-28 in the USFL Conference Championship Game on June 8 before avenging its only loss of the campaign in the league title contest. The Brahmas had beaten the Stallions 18-9 on May 25.

Holtz has been the coach for every Birmingham game. But for all the winning, he said working with the players has been the best part about the championship streak.

“I’m blessed with some great players,” Holtz said. “We just really have to point them in the right direction, and then they have taken over the rest. It’s been a true blessing for me. It’s been a lot of fun. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve said it, but this is the best job I’ve ever had. I love these young men that we’re coaching.

“I think they’re here because they love ball. I think every one of them has a different why like Tez talks about, ‘I was at Amazon; now I’m here.’ If we brought up our whole team, they could all tell their own story of where they’re trying to go and what they’re trying to do. They’re hungry. They’re respectful. They take notes. They ask questions. They’re involved. They want to get better. And for me as a coach my favorite part of coaching is watching a player and a team develop.”

Holtz has been coaching since 1987. Until he joined the Stallions, all of that had been at the college level, where’d he had been the head coach at Connecticut, East Carolina, South Florida and Louisiana Tech.

“It has been an incredibly rewarding experience for me and a true blessing from God to give me the opportunity to be here,” Holtz said, “and I’m grateful to (Daryl) ‘Moose’ (Johnston), Jim Popp and everybody with the UFL, the USFL, the people that originally put me in place.

“As somebody wrote in an article earlier, I’m just a fired football coach – you know what I mean? – just trying to win a game.”

Mark Inabinett is a sports reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter at @AMarkG1.