Alex Mortensen Lands UAB Head Coach Job, Following In His Late Father’s Football Path
Alex Mortensen is a head coach. Not interim. Not on a tryout. The real thing.
UAB removed the interim tag on Thursday and named the 40-year-old its full-time head football coach. Mortensen had taken over after the school fired Trent Dilfer in October, and the school clearly liked what it saw enough to commit.
The numbers under Mortensen were not eye-popping. The Blazers went 2-4 with him in charge. They finished 4-8 overall. Both Mortensen and Dilfer posted identical 2-4 records, so this was not a turnaround narrative driving the hire.
It was something else. Stability. Buy-in. A win over a ranked Memphis team in his short stint. And a name that already carried weight inside the Alabama football world.
Mortensen spent six total seasons at Alabama as an analyst across two stints, working under Nick Saban. That kind of branch from the Saban tree still moves the needle in Birmingham. UAB wants in on the SEC’s overflow of coaching talent, and Mortensen fits.
His playing career was modest. He was a college quarterback at Arkansas and Samford. He stuck with the Tennessee Titans briefly as an undrafted free agent. He started coaching in 2012 and grinded through analyst roles before Dilfer brought him to UAB as offensive coordinator.
The decision to elevate him from interim is interesting because UAB had real options. The Group of Five carousel was active. Programs in this tier sometimes use the interim run as a glorified audition, then bring in a splashier name. UAB chose continuity instead.
That probably tells you something about how Mortensen handled the locker room. Going 2-4 with players who just watched their head coach get fired is not nothing. Keeping the group together long enough to upset Memphis suggests he can lead a building, even if the wins did not pile up.
There is also the obvious emotional layer. His father, Chris Mortensen, was one of the most respected voices in NFL coverage for decades at ESPN before passing away last year. Alex was never going to walk into a media-darling job by accident. He has carried that name through analyst roles where the work happens off camera, in the offices and on the practice field, not in front of microphones.
Now he gets the chair and the responsibility that comes with it.
The real test starts in the offseason. UAB needs to hold its current roster together through the transfer portal. Players who came in under Dilfer have options. Coaches who came in under Dilfer have options. Mortensen has to make decisions on staff that will shape his first full year.
The schedule next season will tell the story. UAB plays in the AAC, where the gap between contender and afterthought is brutal. If Mortensen can pull this group into something resembling a bowl-eligible team in year one, the promotion will look smart. If not, the school will face the same conversation it just had about Dilfer.
For now, it is a feel-good hire with real weight behind it. The kid who watched his dad chase NFL stories his whole life is the one calling the plays. That deserves a beat of respect before the wins and losses start mattering again.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
