The Birmingham Stallions and the seven other United Football League teams have arrived in Arlington, Texas, for training camp. They’re the surviving franchises from the merger of the USFL and the XFL into a single spring-football league for 2024.

For Birmingham coach Skip Holtz, the decisions made in training camp could go a long way toward determining if the Stallions win their third consecutive championship. Birmingham won the title in the revived USFL in each of the past two seasons.

While eight teams survived into the United Football League, four teams each from the USFL and the XFL did not. That led to two dispersal drafts to allow the survivors to add players from the defunct teams to their depth charts.

“I love our roster right now,” Holtz said. “I’m sure everyone feels the same way. Kind of like talking to a coach right after signing day. I’ve never seen a coach get up after signing day and say, ‘Man, we did a bad job recruiting this year.’ Everybody signed exactly what they needed. I think Zach Potter, who is our personnel GM, has done an incredible job this offseason. …

“I think there’s a lot of talent on this roster. I think where it’s really going to be hard, we’ve got to cut down from 75 (players) to 50, and I don’t know where those cuts are coming from. When I look at this roster right now, it’s 75, it’s like, ‘Oh, my gosh.’ We signed two linebackers (Kyahva Tezino and Chris Orr). Both of them were among the leading tacklers in this league last season. And then you put on top of that Scooby (Wright) and (Elijah) Sullivan and the linebackers we already had, it’s going to be incredibly competitive at every position across the board, and it’s going to be hard.

“But that’s the thing I’m most excited about. I would much rather have the tough decision to make to get it down to 50 than I would to have that be clear cut. These are going to be hard decisions, but they’re going to be decisions that make us better, and I think camp is going to be incredibly competitive. When you start to look at it, out of every three guys, one of those guys isn’t going to be there, so everybody’s going to roll their sleeves up.”

The Stallions’ offseason losses included quarterback Alex McGough, who signed with the Green Bay Packers, and kicker Brandon Aubrey, who made first-team All-Pro in the 2023 season with the Dallas Cowboys. But the NFL did not just take talent from Birmingham’s roster. The Stallions reported for training camp with more players who appeared on NFL rosters in 2023 than any other UFL team, including former Ole Miss quarterback Matt Corral.

“Coming out of camp is going to be competitive,” Holtz said. “I think there’s only been seven players who played both years that we’ve had the opportunity to win two championships with, and I think it’s the nature of spring football with the turnover. Those guys are staples – JoJo Tillery and I could go on and on — so many guys who have been a huge part of the success we’ve been able to have, and I’m glad that they’re back. Their leadership is important to us.

“But I also say that 2024 is going to be a new team. Every football team has a life expectancy of one year, and there’s going to be new faces that are going to start to roll in a little bit and some of the older faces will roll out. But I think the ultimate goal is to try to continue this championship level that we’ve been playing here in Birmingham.”

As the rumors about a merger of the XFL and USFL emerged last year, Holtz said he didn’t know if the Stallions would get the opportunity to win a third straight championship.

“We got a text the night before it came out: Hey, by the way, this is going to happen tomorrow,” Holtz said. “So we were hanging on the edge of our cliff just like everybody else was – but excited.

“Obviously, when you look at playing at home for two years, building the foundation, the fan base that’s here in Birmingham, the success we were able to have on the field, I’m excited that we were able to make the point and be part of this UFL. It was certainly not something that we were in the know on the inside. We were kind of just as much in the dark and everything was very quiet until they finally, it was like a baby unveiling – and you’re in.”

The USFL played its entire 40-game regular-season schedule in Birmingham in 2022, and the Stallions and New Orleans Breakers played their home games at Protective Stadium while based in Birmingham in 2023.

In 2024, Birmingham will fly into the Magic City for five home games from the UFL hub in Arlington. The only game that the Stallions won’t travel for is the season opener against the Arlington Renegades on March 30.

The Renegades won the XFL championship in 2023, and their matchup with Birmingham will be the first game in UFL history.

“It’s going to be electric,” Holtz said. “And I go back to when we played the New Jersey Generals right here (in Birmingham) in the very first game of the USFL (in 2022) and all the excitement and that pageantry and that electricity that the Birmingham fans brought.

“Now they’re taking the two leagues and there’s a lot of debate about who had the better team, who had the better league. Was it the XFL or was it the USFL? And so they figured what a fitting way to kick off the UFL season to take the champs from the USFL and the champs from the XFL and play. I wish it was going to be right here in our backyard, but we’re going to play that one in Arlington. But I think it’s going to be electric. I think it’s going to be exciting. There’s going to be a lot of, I don’t want to say pressure, but you’re going to have the opportunity to represent not only Birmingham, but you have the opportunity to represent the USFL and get this thing kicked off and maybe, hopefully, put some of these arguments about who had the better league to bed early.”

The Stallions are scheduled to hold their first training-camp practice on Saturday. Birmingham is sharing Choctaw Stadium with the Renegades for its workouts.

“I am anxious to get on the grass at Arlington just to see what we have,” Holtz said. “I know we have names. I’ve seen film of them. But I want to see them in the meeting room. What’s their leadership like? How do they interact with others? I want to see how this team is really going to start to form once we go through this 30 days of spring camp.”

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