The pay-for-play free-agent market that has become NIL in college football has given us some incredibly wild storylines throughout college football over the past couple of cycles.
One of the unfortunate parts about all of it, though, is the constant tampering that we are seeing across the country.
Without any sort of concrete guidelines or rules to abide by, programs have had to deal with other teams constantly trying to recruit their players into the transfer portal with enticing NIL deals.
Trent Dilfer just wrapped up his second season as the head coach at UAB with a 3-9 campaign in 2024, and has gone just 7-17 through his first 24 games.
In a recent appearance on McElroy and Cubelic in the Morning, Dilfer discussed many of the issues in college football, and one of his comments has started to make waves.
“In our conference, again not going to use schools, 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.
One of the most interesting quote tweets on this comment came from Tulane head coach Jon Sumerall, who tagged Memphis head coach Ryan Silverfield and South Florida head coach Alex Golesh, seemingly trolling Dilfer for his claims.
UAB played Tulane (L, 71-20), South Florida (L, 35-25), and Memphis (L, 53-18) in 2024 and was outscored 159-63 while going 0-3 in those contests.
The Blazers haven’t been competitive in the American Athletic Conference title race since joining the league in 2023, and from a 10,000-foot view, it appears roster retention has indeed been an issue.
Over the last two portal cycles, UAB has had 49 players leave the program via the transfer portal, and 12 of those players have gone on to sign with Power Four programs.
To this point, only one UAB player has landed with a program associated with any of the aforementioned coaches, with LB Everett Roussaw signing with Memphis in this portal cycle.
