ARLINGTON, Texas – The first call Bryant Vincent received with a job offer after graduating from West Alabama came from close to home.

The Glasgow native returned to southcentral Kentucky to begin his coaching career at Hart County High School, but now he’s leading one of the top Group of Five football programs in the country.

Vincent enters the fall as the interim head coach at UAB after Bill Clark announced his retirement earlier this summer due to health issues.

“First and foremost, I’m honored and excited to be here as the head coach at UAB,” Vincent said at the Conference USA Football Kickoff at Globe Life Field in Arlington. “It is, to me, an opportunity of a lifetime to be able to lead the UAB football program in the 2022 season – a program that is very personal to me and my family.”

The Blazers have gone 43-20 overall and 30-9 in C-USA play since returning from a two-year hiatus. The program claimed three straight West Division titles from 2018-20 and won two league championships during that stretch in 2018 and 2020. UAB is coming off a 9-4 2021 season in which it was in the mix for the West crown before ultimately falling 34-31 on the road to eventual league champion and then-No. 15 UTSA. The Blazers, who are American Athletic Conference bound after the upcoming year, capped off last season with a 31-28 victory over No. 13 BYU in the Independence Bowl – the highest-ranked opponent the program has ever come out on top against.

But the man who led the program through a shutdown and reemergence is now retired, and as UAB opened fall camp Monday it was Vincent’s team.

For Vincent, it’s the next stop in an athletic career that began in Glasgow as a player.

“He wasn’t big and he wasn’t particularly fast. His attribute was that he played hard. He tried to get every ounce of ability that he could from himself and he could not stand to be non-successful,” said Sam Royse, who was an assistant football coach for the Scotties for 27 years and was the position coach for Vincent, who was a receiver and defensive back. “He could not stand to not win the game. I guess you could say from that regard he was very, very competitive.”

Royse also worked with Vincent on the diamond during his career as a coach with Glasgow’s baseball program that has spanned over four decades, and said that in speaking with Vincent recently, the interim UAB leader had interest in coaching as early as his junior year of high school.

The Scotties’ skipper even had a hand in getting Vincent’s career started, though he won’t take much credit for it.

Vincent went to Western Kentucky University for a semester after graduating from Glasgow in 1994 before deciding to make a change. Royse, who played collegiate baseball in Alabama, was a friend of Mark Smartt, who coached the sport at West Alabama and later at Troy.

“I made a couple phone calls,” Royse said. “I had a friend at West Alabama who was a baseball coach down there and Bryant wanted to change the direction of his young life at the time. I made a phone call. Back in those days it was a little easier to pick up the phone and call somebody and go, ‘Hey, the kid wants to give it a shot. He don’t want any money, just wants to be a part of your program and give it a shot.’ That’s what we did.”

Vincent was a redshirt freshman with the baseball program but decided to begin his football coaching career the next year. He served as a student assistant at West Alabama from 1996-97, and after graduating in 1998, made the return to his home state to serve as an elementary teacher and assistant coach at Hart County.

“I grew up in Glasgow and graduated from Glasgow High School. I went to West Alabama, and when I graduated from West Alabama, my first and only job offer at the time was at Hart County High School. I remember the superintendent called me and I was at the fieldhouse at the University of West Alabama,” Vincent said. “I wanted a job and I went and took that job.”

The Raiders went 2-8 in 1998 and lost their final eight games, according to records on the KHSAA website, and Vincent returned to Alabama the following year to begin working through the ranks of coaching in the state.

Vincent was an assistant at Charles Henderson High School from 1999-02 and an assistant for Spain Park High School from 2003-05 before getting his first head coaching gig at Greenville High School in 2006.

The program was struggling – it went just 1-9 each of the two seasons prior to Vincent’s arrival – but went 10-3 and advanced to the third round of the playoffs in his one season there. He was named the Class 5A Coach of the Year.

After the 2006 season, he made the move to Spanish Fort High School to be the head coach and essentially start a program that had gone 0-10 its first season and had no facilities – no weight room, stadium, practice facility or locker room.

Vincent was there four seasons. Spanish Fort went 4-6 in the first, 11-2 in the second, 11-3 in the third and 13-2 with a state championship in 2010.

He made the move to the college ranks as an assistant at South Alabama from 2011-13 and was offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach at UAB in 2014. When the program was shut down, he returned to South Alabama from 2015-17 as the assistant head coach and offensive coordinator. He came back to Birmingham in 2018 and, until Clark’s retirement, Vincent served as the team’s assistant head coach and offensive coordinator.

On June 24, Clark announced his retirement as UAB’s head coach due to chronic back issues. Three days later, UAB officially announced Vincent as the interim head coach – a position Clark recommended him for.

For the now 46-year-old, lessons have come at each stop along the way – all the way back to his playing days in Glasgow and first stop at Hart County.

“Growing up in Kentucky, that’s really all you know,” Vincent said. “When I got to West Alabama and I was in football in the state of Alabama, it really opened my eyes – the passion, the pride, the focus that’s put on football in the state of Alabama.

“Every stop – whether it was Hart County, whether it was Charles Henderson, whether it was Spain Park, whether it was Greenville, whether it was Spanish Fort, whether it was South Alabama or UAB – you learn from every stop you’re at and it kind of molds you to who you really are today. Every place I’ve been, you learn and you grow and you build, and I think it’s really culminated to the man I am today – all the experiences I’ve been through.”

Royse has followed along with Vincent’s career, and was especially interested when he got his first head coaching position. He had friends from Greenville from his college days, and says he’d wake up Saturday mornings to see how the Tigers did the night before.

He’s seen the success his former player has had coaching, and believes it’ll translate to success this fall in his new role.

“When Bryant got that head coaching job, not only was I interested in seeing how he was doing, but really pulling for him to do great things. I was also interested because I had followed them in college and it was a beautiful thing to all of a sudden see that program come back to life down there,” Royse said. “ … They were able to come in there and get things done in a hurry and that was a real interesting thing to follow and to watch and I’m very happy for him that he had that type of success that later led to an opportunity to go down and, I guess in all practical purposes, start the program at Spanish Fort, even though it was not their very first year, but he kind of was there when things got rolling. It culminated with the state championship.

“He’s been successful everywhere he’s been. He’s going to get after it, he’s going to work and he’s going to demand, he’s going to coach and he’s going to love them and he’s going to encourage his players – it doesn’t work any other way. They’ll respond. Those kids will respond.”

The UAB players already have trust in Vincent, as shown in comments made in suite 205A at Globe Life Field during the C-USA Football Kickoff.

“Coach Clark, he did a lot for this community, he did a lot for this city and this team. He brought us back. I’ve been here since 2017 until now,” redshirt senior safety Will Boler said. “Just saying that, it’s been a blessing working and really being under him, but now coach V is our guy and we put a lot of trust in him knowing he’s going to get the job done.”

“All of us owe a lot to coach Clark. We wouldn’t be where we are without him and we want to honor him this year and have a great year, but this is our guy,” redshirt junior center Will Rykard said. “We couldn’t be more excited to follow him and have him lead us and hopefully for a long time in the future.”

Vincent says he’s “more than ready for this situation,” and that he hopes to have the interim tag eventually removed. He’s already made his mark on the program in his new role, as evidenced by the handful of commitments he’s received in the last week.

While he’ll add his own touches, the program’s expectations don’t change with Clark now retired.

“Everybody’s got to be themselves and I’m definitely going to be me,” Vincent said. “One thing that you’ll see is the expectations are still the expectations. The standards are still the standards. It’s my job as the head football coach to continue to elevate those standards. One thing that UAB football teams have always prided themselves on is how hard we played, how hard we worked and playing together. I think you’ll see a team this year that truly loves each other, that truly plays for each other and will go from the very beginning to the end.”

UAB is scheduled to kick off the season Sept. 1 at Protective Stadium in Birmingham against Alabama A&M. Vincent said he’s looking forward to returning to southcentral Kentucky when the Blazers face the Hilltoppers at 7 p.m. Oct. 21 at Houchens-Smith Stadium.

Royse still sees the same competitive fire that Vincent showed during his days at Glasgow. He has faith that Vincent will have success leading UAB because of the success he’s had at each stop along the way – “I wouldn’t bet against him,” he says – and plans to continue following along with his former player’s career with great interest.

“That’s something special now. That’s something special right there,” Royse said. “That’s something special for a kid that 28 years ago was playing right here in little ol’ Glasgow.”{&end}