Trent Dilfer promises to learn from his mistakes like he has in the past. He is sorry for the way that he acted during Saturday’s loss to Tulane.
Dilfer is in his first year as the head football coach at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. The Blazers had their head coach retire at the end of the 2021 season and declined to give the full-time job to interim Bryant Vincent after going 7-6 with a bowl win last fall.
They went with Trent Dilfer instead. Although he was the former No. 6 overall pick in the 1994 NFL Draft, reached a Pro Bowl and won a Super Bowl, Dilfer had never coached college football before.
The 51-year-old served as a quarterback guru with Elite 11 and led Lipscomb Academy, a private K-12 school in Nashville, to back-to-back state championships in just his second and third years with the program. He infamously went viral back in late August of 2021 for chewing out and manhandling one of his high school players in a vicious sideline tirade during a blowout win.
Dilfer, through Lipscomb, released the following statement of regret at the time:
I want to address the incident on our sideline during Friday night’s game vs. Independence that has drawn a lot of attention. First and foremost, I take full responsibility as the head coach and leader of our team for not deescalating an emotional situation with one of our players, Beau Dawson. Beau is one of our finest student-athletes and embodies all the characteristics we are looking for in our Mustang players. Beau plays the game with the right kind of passion and is an inspiration to our other players.
During a moment of frustration in an attempt to get our team to play with more discipline, I unfairly singled Beau out. Somehow Beau Dawson has been portrayed publicly as the culprit in this situation, when in reality I should have been a better leader and shown greater wisdom and discernment in how I handled this incident. Overall, I could not be more proud of Beau and the rest of our team for how they handle the emotional nature of each game they compete in.
— Trent Dilfer in 2021
Fast forward about 25 months and Dilfer went viral again on Saturday. For a nearly identical incident.
UAB committed an illegal substitution infraction on a crucial 4th-and-2 that gave Tulane a first down during the Green Wave’s second-half comeback. It did not go over well with the head coach.
Trent Dilfer lost his mind, again.
ESPN caught the whole thing on camera. Dilfer went absolutely ballistic and proceeded to lay into his special teams coordinator. It was an angry tirade for the ages— which led to a lot of discourse about whether his behavior was appropriate.
Dilfer addressed the situation during a press conference on Monday and apologized, kind of.
Well number one, it has nothing to do with the perception of what it is and the commentary around it.
I’m regretful about it. I’m a passionate guy. Anybody that’s ever been around me as a player, as a coach, at ESPN. I mean, my kids will tell you this. I am a passionate, passionate person. Sometimes, that passion comes out in ways that I am not proud of. And that’s a moment that I am not proud of […]
Now, I could’ve done that in a better way, and I’ll learn from it like I’ve learned from my mistakes in the past. I don’t really get caught up in what people say. … I don’t get too caught up in that stuff, but I am very concerned about the 200 people in this building, about the people we represent in the city of Birmingham, and that’s not what I want their head coach to be remembered for. Now, I am going to be passionate, and there may be other times that I’m stern, but that one was over the top, and I regret it.
— Trent Dilfer
Here are his full comments:
Dilfer said that “he will learn from it like he’s learned from his mistakes in the past.” Hmm….
Back in August of 2021, Dilfer said “I should have been a better leader and shown greater wisdom and discernment in how I handled this incident.” And then he, basically, did it again two years later.
Did he really learn from his mistakes in the past? Technically, yes.
Dilfer did not berate the player this time. He berated a coach. That’s a step in the right direction!
Maybe next time he won’t blow his lid on the sideline in such a manner at all…