Lee Dufour has played football since he was 5 years old and he is in the midst of his longest period of not playing a football game.

The offensive lineman and his teammates at the University of Alabama at Birmingham have worked this spring to get ready for the return of Blazers football in fall 2017. They know that fans are as anxious for their return to play as a child waiting for Christmas.

And they don’t want to disappoint them.

“The strength staff has us coming in with the motto, ‘Get better every day,’” Dufour said following a Monday media event recapping spring football practice. “There are no days off. You have to work your butt off. If you follow that mindset, you can’t fail at whatever you’re doing.

“We’re not playing until 2017 but we come in every day that we’re going to get better every single day. Once 2017 gets here, we’ll definitely be ready.”

Coach Bill Clark and his staff completed spring training last week, taking about 60 players through drills even though the program’s next game won’t come for almost 18 months. He said the unique situation of resurrecting the program has made them regulate their efforts with one goal in mind – improvement.

“The worst thing that can happen is we make strides – academically, in training – and then you go back,” he said in the Green and Gold Room in Bartow Arena. “Are we incrementally getting better? That’s that gray area.”

UAB football ends spring practice, looks to 2017 from Alabama NewsCenter on Vimeo.

The coach acknowledged that there’s no playbook for their situation. He hopes they’re making educated guesses on what we’re doing.

Cornerback Darious Williams said the Blazers are thriving off of the high expectations of their fans.

“That puts pressure on us,” he said, “but it’s a good pressure. It drives us to be better. I don’t think we’re somebody who’s going to be beaten up on. I think we’re going to be beating down on (opposing) teams.”

Transfer quarterback A.J. Erdely knows that Clark and his assistants are busy recruiting, looking to add greater talent to the UAB roster. He said he can’t fret about someone coming in to challenge for playing time in the interim.

“You just have to go out there and compete every day, do the best you can do,” he said. “Coaches make the decision, they’re going to play the best player and the best player plays.”

Dufour said he tries not to think about his extended break between games.

“In the back of your mind, it’s 540-something days but that’s just every day between now and then to get better,” he said. “We have a unique situation where we can concentrate on our academics and our strength and conditioning and become the best players we can be.”

Beyond team preparation, the aim of spring practice was to maintain the enthusiasm for the Blazers’ return. Clark and company will stoke the fire again on Aug. 27 with a scrimmage as the 2016 season for other teams approaches.

“I want it to look great,” Clark said of the scrimmage. “I want it to look like if we were going to be playing a game. Hopefully it’s not where we’re going to be in ’17, but we need to see a marked improvement from that practice everybody saw the other day.

“We want to see this big difference, knowing we’re going to keep getting incrementally better. We want to be worthy of this excitement. This should be our standard. This is what we’re expecting.”