For UAB's running backs, Saturday's ULM game is personal

Bam McReynolds has been on the phone all week with his former Louisiana-Monroe teammates. He still has love for the Warhawks, the program he credits with reshaping his career. He talks about the coaching staff that believed in him and the teammates who pushed him. And when his running backs coach left ULM to return to UAB, McReynolds followed.

On Saturday, he lines up against all of it.

"I got love for ULM," McReynolds said Monday. "Being with the team that I love and playing against a team that I still have love for — I really can't ask for much more."

He paused.

"We understand that when we're on the field, it's business."

UAB (0-1) hosts Louisiana-Monroe (0-1) in its home opener Saturday at Protective Stadium (2:30 p.m., ESPN+). The game carries extra weight for a running back room full of ULM connections. ULM head coach Bryant Vincent is a former UAB interim head coach and offensive coordinator. Several current ULM and Blazers staff members have ties to the Vincent/Bill Clark era. And in UAB's backfield, two of the most important figures spent last season in Monroe — McReynolds as a player and Hindley Brigham as the running backs coach.

McReynolds rushed for 637 yards and three touchdowns in 12 games for the Warhawks in 2025 after three seasons at South Alabama. The 5-foot-7, 190-pound redshirt senior from Mobile made nine starts and posted two 100-yard games. It was the best season of his career, and it happened under Brigham's coaching.

Brigham is now back at UAB, where he spent nine seasons developing running backs before his one year at ULM. He returned in 2026 for what he calls unfinished work.

"I felt like the mission here was, you know, my part of it was incomplete," Brigham said on the Inferno podcast this spring. "I wanted to return and continue to build what I'd started back in, you know, really 2015, before we even returned."

When Alex Mortensen was named head coach, Brigham didn't wait.

"I immediately called him and told him that I was interested in coming back if he would have me," Brigham told the Inferno.

Mortensen was glad to have him.

"Bringing Hindley Brigham back is awesome," Mortensen said Monday at his weekly press conference. "Hindley's got a great track record with running backs, both as a recruiter and a coach and developer of the position, and I think he's got some really good big-picture thoughts, too, program-wide."

The track record speaks for itself. In his nine seasons coaching UAB's running backs, Brigham developed Spencer Brown (4,011 career rushing yards), DeWayne McBride (3,523) and Jermaine "Skull" Brown Jr. (3,078) — the only three running backs in school history to eclipse 3,000 career yards. McBride led the nation in rushing in 2022. Spencer Brown became the first player in CUSA history to earn championship game MVP honors twice. Jermaine Brown is UAB's all-time leader in all-purpose yards (5,026).

Brigham, a Mountain Brook native who played at Baylor and Furman, has no ambition to climb the coaching ladder. He wants to master the room he has.

"I have no interest in being an offensive coordinator or a head coach," he said. "I love being a running back coach."

His mentors at UAB — former head coach Bill Clark, Vincent and former offensive coordinator Les Koenning — taught him a principle he still carries.

"They impressed on me the notion that you are responsible for your room," Brigham said.

McReynolds followed Brigham from Monroe to Birmingham, a reunion that extended a relationship the running back values deeply.

"I love playing with Coach Briggs," McReynolds said, using the nickname UAB's running backs have given their position coach. "I feel like he allows me to explore who I am and who I need to be as a runner and as a running back."

He paused.

"He doesn't sugarcoat anything, so he'll tell me when I'm messing up. He's very hard on me, and I really need a coach like that."

Asked what Brigham told him after the Illinois game, McReynolds grinned.

"If you do bad, he's gonna tell you that you're doing bad, and if you do good, he's gonna tell you how you can do better," he said. "Sometimes you might not wanna hear it, sometimes it might get on your nerves, but you know it's coming from a sincere place in his heart, and he only wants the best for you."

McReynolds described Brigham as "a running back guru" and said their two years together have been foundational.

"I built a deep relationship with Coach Briggs, and just being able to play for him for another year, it means a lot to me," he said.

His time at ULM also connected him with former UAB running back Jermaine "Skull" Brown, a fellow Mobile native now on Vincent's staff as an assistant running backs coach — yet another thread tying the two programs together on Saturday. McReynolds grew up watching Brown play.

"I've been watching Skull play since park ball, so I always kind of emulated his game," McReynolds said. "We kind of had a similar style as far as our ability to be elusive and versatile."

McReynolds valued that connection, but when Brigham left ULM for Birmingham, the pull of following his position coach was stronger. Brigham didn't just bring McReynolds back with him — he and the staff assembled a running back room built for depth and physicality.

Rod Robinson II, a 6-1, 235-pound redshirt junior, transferred from Georgia, where he was a consensus four-star recruit out of Lincoln High School in San Diego. He rushed for 196 yards as a true freshman in 2023 and caught a touchdown in the 2025 SEC Championship win over Alabama. His dad is from Birmingham. His parents are military. His running style, in his own words: "Violent."

"I just wanted to go somewhere where the coaches believed in me, had almost as much confidence in me as I do in myself," Robinson said on the Inferno podcast. "They told me what it was from the jump and how much they believed in me."

Robinson said his time at Georgia — including the physicality of what players called "Bloody Tuesday" practices — transformed his understanding of the game.

"I wasn't seeing simulated pressures in high school or all the different defensive fronts," he said. "When I was hurt, being able to sit down and really look into that and learn those things helped me. Now I can look pre-snap and see who do I have to pick up in pass protection, who can come, who can't come."

Brigham sees Robinson as a tone-setter — a back who will "wear defenses down."

"It's hard to tackle somebody that's 240 pounds that moves so effortlessly," Brigham told the Inferno.

Ja'Vin Simpkins, a 5-9, 185-pound redshirt junior from Miami, rounds out the top of the rotation. He led Coastal Carolina with 591 rushing yards in 2025 and participated in the Under Armour All-America Game out of high school. Between Robinson, McReynolds and Simpkins, the trio entered the season with a combined 2,340 career rushing yards.

The room debuted together at Illinois on Sept. 3 and rushed for 194 yards against a Big Ten defense in UAB's 42-23 loss. The final score stung, but the ground game was a bright spot — and what stood out most to quarterback Ryder Burton was the effort after contact.

"I thought it was incredibly impressive," Burton said after the game. "Rod, Bam, Ja'Vin — those guys are really talented football players. I thought we did a really good job up front in the run game. And on top of that, I felt like Rod and Bam and Ja'Vin did a really good job at extending and getting that extra two yards. That's something we kind of focused on coming into this game — find the extra two."

Burton described the goal simply: "You get met at the first yard past the line of scrimmage. Can you get me to second and seven?"

Mortensen praised the backs' instincts.

"I think those guys showed really good vision, patience, burst," Mortensen said. "They were really good at the point of contact, whether it's making guys miss, falling forward, running through arm tackles. As you continue to play real football, I think they're only gonna get even better."

McReynolds said the execution matched what the coaches drew up.

"I feel like the only time that we were stopped was when we stopped ourselves," he said.

The Illinois performance validated what the room already believed.

"Just knowing that we can do that against a big team, against bright lights, and nobody wavered or folded — it's very exciting," McReynolds said.

Robinson, who said the instant camaraderie among a roster full of transfers has been the biggest surprise since arriving at UAB, wants to channel it.

"I want this room to be the best position on the football team, no matter who we play," Robinson said.

Saturday brings a homecoming of sorts for McReynolds and Brigham — facing the program that connected them in the first place. McReynolds has been talking to his former ULM teammates all week and expects the chatter to continue right through kickoff.

"Yeah, I'm probably definitely gonna talk some trash on the field," McReynolds said with a laugh. "That's just who I am."

He'll keep it measured, though.

"I keep it to a moderate amount so that I'm still locked into the game."