UAB football coach Trent Dilfer hasn’t been shy in the past about what he perceives as both inequities in NIL at various levels of college football, but also outright poaching of players by the Blazers’ conference rivals.

In an appearance Tuesday on “McElroy and Cubelic in the Morning” on Birmingham’s WJOX-FM 94.5, Dilfer said other schools in the American Athletic Conference can and will pay players “double or triple” in NIL to leave UAB — even if they’re not going to start. Coming off a 3-9 season, the Blazers lost close to 30 players to the transfer portal in the most-recent cycle.

“In our conference … we have two teams that will go to our roster and sign double or triple what these guys can make on our roster and make them backups on their roster so that we can’t have them,” Dilfer said. “That’s happening in our conference.”

Dilfer did not name names, but at least three players transferred from UAB to other AAC schools in the last month. Two of them — linebacker Everett Roussaw and cornerback Chris Bracy — went to Memphis, while defensive lineman Derrick Sheppard went to Tulane.

Tulane coach Jon Sumrall certainly seemed to believe Dilfer was calling out his program. He quote-tweeted a video of Dilfer’s comments and added a “double-eyeball” emoji, while tagging two other AAC head coaches — Memphis’ Ryan Silverfield and USF’s Alex Golesh, and adding the light-hearted “wink with tongue out” emoticon.

UAB has also added a number of incoming transfers for 2025, with quarterback Ryder Burton (West Virginia), running back Jevon Jackson (UTEP), wide receiver Kaleb Brown (Iowa) and defensive lineman Nigel Tate (Boston College) among those who have committed. But that’s not likely to offset the loss of Roussaw, Bracy, Sheppard and others who left, such as running back Lee Beebe (Indiana), wide receiver Amare Thomas (Houston), wide receiver/kick returner Kam Shanks (Arkansas), center Brady Wilson (Virginia), safety Adrian Maddox (Georgia) and cornerback Kelvin Hill (Georgia Tech).

Dilfer said his program just can’t compete with others when it comes to money, characterizing UAB’s NIL resources as “chicken scratch.”

“Value that we can show a kid is care, connection, plus value, plus opportunity — plus some ‘chicken scratch,’” Dilfer said. “When you have people in our conference that have four to six players making more individually than our entire payroll, you better be able to provide them something else to show them value.

“That’s what we have to do, and you have to get a certain kind of makeup of player, that you feel like you can elevate his (physical) traits because of his intangible makeup, instead of leaning only on traits. Now again, you have to have enough traits. We’re not putting a bunch of guys out there that run a 5.2 (40-yard dash). You have to have enough traits that you’re hoping that the coaching, the culture, the mindset that can elevate them beyond their trait set.”

Though it was widely speculated throughout the fall that Dilfer might be fired at the end of the 2024 season, UAB athletics director Mark Ingram announced in early December that the coach would return for a third year. The school has promised “additional investments” in the program to make it more competitive after two seasons in which the Blazers have won a total of seven games.

Dilfer also made numerous staff changes, bringing in veteran college and NFL coach Steve Russ as defensive coordinator and also hiring Brent Vieselmeyer as linebackers coach and Ryan Lewis as cornerbacks coach. However, he said the Blazers’ roster won’t necessarily be stronger in 2025, he said.

“I don’t know if we’ll be more talented,” Dilfer said. “… We’re very talented on offense, so I don’t want to short-change those players. But defensively, we don’t have one single starter coming back. So how can you say you’re going to be more talented? How do you have no money and go into the portal and create more talent? The job was to get better football players and the right football players.

“We won’t be as long. We had great length last year on defense. We had unique length last year on defense. Didn’t do us any good, because they didn’t play hard when things were tough. They didn’t make good decisions. They lost their poise. … We need guys who know how to play football.”

You can listen to the entire Dilfer interview HERE.