Something is happening at UAB

Monday, classes start at UAB.

But for the UAB football program, a master class in culture building has been in session for months. Head coach Alex Mortensen arrived in Birmingham with nine years under Nick Saban on his resume and a mandate to rebuild a program that had lost its way. Three weeks into fall camp, the early returns are starting to show.

We will see how it translates when real games arrive Sept. 3 at Illinois. Win or lose that one, everyone around this program can sense the shift.

A cloud is lifting. And on Saturday night, under the lights at Legacy Pavilion, you could see where the sun is breaking through.

UAB held its annual fan day Saturday, and the scene carried an energy that has not been around this program in years.

Fans lined up for autographs from the football team, volleyball, soccer and cross country. Food trucks and bounce houses. Kids catching footballs thrown by players — young fans who might someday catch them on this field for real. Interim athletic director Andy Kennedy was there. Families spanning generations. Smiles that needed no manufacturing.

And optimism. The kind you can feel without anyone needing to sell it.

One of the team's veterans was asked what's different between this squad and last year's.

Everything, he said. This team is together. This team is close. A night and day difference from 12 months ago.

"Not saying we're going to go 12-0," he said. "But I can promise you this: We're going to be in every game."

If the scrimmage that followed was any indication, that confidence has a foundation.

For the second straight week, UAB's defense dominated. The Blazers finished Saturday night with 11 sacks — three more than the first scrimmage a week ago at Protective Stadium. Marlin Dean led the charge with 3.5 sacks. Blanche Gold added 2.5. Courage Ugo returned an interception for a touchdown. Delvon Gulley picked off another and broke up two more.

"I've seen real, real maturation with that group from day one to now," Mortensen told the Birmingham Banner.

On offense, the picture is still developing — and Mortensen would be the first to tell you that. But the signs were there. Tight ends Gabriel Cline and Scott Isacks each hauled in three receptions. The quarterbacks, Mortensen said, "stayed very steady emotionally, which I think is a really good sign." Young running backs Jayson Moll, JR Mosley and Hudson Higgins ran hard.

And kicker Jonah Delange went 3-for-3 on field goals — connecting from 25, 35 and 45 yards.

The defensive dominance is not an accident. When Mortensen and his staff went to the transfer portal to retool the roster, they went with a plan: get experience.

UAB's defense is almost a complete rebuild. Experience is not the problem. As ESPN noted in its preseason ranking of all 138 FBS teams, UAB has more career defensive snaps — 27,366 — on its roster than any other team in the country.

More than Alabama. More than Ohio State. More than everyone.

The coaching staff did not go to the portal to collect names. They went to collect snaps. And the evidence is showing up on the field — in the communication, the alignment, the absence of the mental busts that plague defenses learning to play together for the first time. Experience together is still the variable. That is what camp is building. But the raw reps are already in the room because the staff went and got them on purpose.

You do not spend nine years working for Nick Saban — the architect of The Process — without absorbing something deeper than scheme.

Saban built championships on the belief that culture drives outcomes. Get the daily habits right and the games take care of themselves. The details in August pay dividends in November. Mortensen is putting his own stamp on this program as a first-time head coach, but the DNA is unmistakable.

You can hear it in how he talks about his team.

"I think the biggest thing is just the attention to detail on certain fundamental things (that were) not to our standard," Mortensen told the Birmingham Banner. "Overall, I thought the guys took the field with really good energy and effort and toughness tonight and played hard."

Our standard. A first-year head coach, three weeks into fall camp, already has one. And his players know what it is.

Saturday's scrimmage reflected that methodology. The staff did not run a standard let-them-play format. They regularly reset the field to rehearse specific down-and-distance, field-position and game-management scenarios — situational football designed to prepare for moments that will decide games in October and November. The kind of preparation that comes from a program built around process.

Former UAB players gathered at the scrimmage Saturday night for a reunion. Their optimism runs more guarded than the fans in the autograph lines — and it should. They have the experience of knowing that the dreams of August can hit hard realities by the cold of November. They have watched good camps produce bad seasons.

But they also know change when they see it. They remember what it looked like when Bill Clark had this program humming — two conference championships and proof that a program left for dead could come back and compete at the highest level of Group of 6 football.

And they see similarities.

I have been here before.

Spring of 2017. I had just moved back to Birmingham, and UAB football was preparing for The Return that fall — the first season after the program's reinstatement following the 2014 shutdown. I was at an alumni event, talking with UAB super fan Bill Kennedy, and his eyebrows furrowed when I told him UAB would shock the world and make a bowl game.

Twenty-five years of covering college football — including that very month watching FAU and Lane Kiffin in spring drills — had given me the experience of recognizing winning culture when I saw it. That UAB team, ranked No. 130 out of 130 in the preseason, had it deep.

"They don't know what's coming," I told Bill. "UAB is going to knock them on their asses. This team is going to win. The rest of the conference is going to hate them for it."

That team went 8-4 and made a bowl game. The next year, they won 11 games, earned a top 25 ranking, won the school's first conference championship and brought home their first bowl trophy.

In the portal era, where most Group of 6 teams will not really know what they have until they hit the field, I am not ready to say this will be a repeat. The variables are different. Rosters turn over faster. Chemistry that used to develop across three and four seasons now has to form in months.

But culture matters. Maybe more than it ever has. When you are building through roster reloads — when players arrive from different programs with different habits and have to learn to trust each other under fire — culture is the connective tissue. It is what holds when the depth thins and the road gets loud and the season gets long.

UAB is building it. Of that, I have zero doubt.

Sept. 3 at Illinois will be the first measuring stick.

Not the verdict.