Trent Dilfer made millions in the NFL. Why take the UAB job?

Trent Dilfer played golf 218 times in the year 2018. There was 365 days in that year, which works out to a round three out of every five days. That calculation doesn't include any possible 36-round days... but why would he feel the need to play twice in one day when he could've just played again tomorrow?

"There's retirement," Dilfer said, "and then there was how I was retired." 

The former NFL quarterback left the network's roster of pro football analysts in 2017 but was still getting paid by the network. 

"I was living the life, and I'd be lying to say it wasn't fun. It was a lot of fun." 

He earned an estimated $27 million on the field and worked at ESPN long enough to reportedly ask for a private jet in contract negotiations. There's no telling how much he made serving as head coach of Elite 11 and The Opening, but it likely wasn't charity work. 

At some point, though (I like to imagine it was as he made the turn on Round No. 207) the easy life started to feel hollow.

"What we learned, and what my wife and kids have seen in me, is that I'm at my best when I'm climbing. When things are hard. When my back's against the wall. When things are chaotic. When people say I can't," Dilfer said. 

"I wasn't at my best, I had gotten soft. In fact, I had become a hypocrite because I was not living the life that I had shared with so many young people around the country about what gets the best out of us."

And so he traded his golf spikes for mountain climbing shoes. He took the job at Nashville's Lipscomb Academy. He'd never seen the campus and he didn't know how much he'd get paid. Upon his first tour of the weight room, Dilfer saw six players lifting PVC pipes because the school didn't have enough bars. The first time he watched the film of Lipscomb's 2-9 team of 2018, he cried. "We're never going to get a first down," he told his offensive coordinator. 

"We started recruiting the basketball team. We started having lunch with the teachers. We started meeting the moms," Dilfer said. "We just got dirty with their lives. We just became part of the community. The football was an overflow of it."

That was in 2019. By 2021, Lipscomb was in the state game. On Thursday, they won it.

To be clear, the PVC days did not last long. Lipscomb has facilities and amenities that rival many colleges'. Dilfer estimated close to 30 of his Lipscomb players will ultimately play college football. 

By the PVC pipe standard, UAB might be too flat a mountain. The program has been bowl eligible for seven seasons running, and won Conference USA in 2018 and 2020. The Blazers don't even play in the ancient Legion Field anymore.

There is one aspect of the job where Dilfer admits he's operating from a deficit: recruiting. He's observed the recruiting world from his time at Elite 11 and Lipscomb, but he's never done it himself. 

"I've learned a lot about which coaches can recruit and which ones can't. Which one's recruiting's about a transaction and which one's about a connection. I've taken a lot of notes," he said. "Now, I'm going to be figuring it out. I'll hire coaches that have recruited at a high level, but I'll also hire guys like me that are figuring it out on the fly, but we'll figure it out really quick." 

Dilfer says his first, second and third priorities will be meeting the needs of UAB's players, current and former. And to borrow two Dilfer-isms, if he and his staff are able to get down and dirty with enough good football players, they'll reach the top of the mountain together. 

"I like looking up at the peak and people saying, 'There's no way you're getting up there,' and me saying, 'Let me show you.'"