In his first two weeks in West Virginia in December, Rich Rodriguez outdid himself a bit. The time for mountaineers?
As the school football signing era wore off and his move portal opened, Rodriguez promptly began signing the first of more than 35 new players (not counting 21 school rookies signed days before his arrival). It was planned to hire an executive leader, the fashionable head of the alignment control operation of a program, but it wasn’t finalizing that resolution until early January.
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Meanwhile, the responsibilities of managing agents and negotiating player salaries — foreign to an early 2000s coach — fell on Rodriguez’s shoulders.
“It’s crazy,” he said. I thought, “That’s why you love other people. “
Throughout school football, the employment of a general manager has a table factor for serious qualification acquisition systems. The role of a GM may vary, but in peak cases, this user oversees all facets of the construction, the list: the top school recruitment, the movement portal, the name, the symbol and the payment of the feeling and regulation of the house of the house are approved, a percentage of profits from the subsistences with which the percentage of profits are realized with the house retention system of those who have priorities of the house. Navigate an offseason that feels more professionalized during the day, especially with contract negotiations and NFL-style delays in increasingly public forums.
By 2025, the GM has become one of the maximum vital athletic departments a school can make. But GM school football is an invention during the night. They are a motion of only 20 years in progress, with the maximum vital roots that traced some of the maximum mythical programs of sport.
Major regulations replace the evolution of general managers from back-office grunts to one of the other top influential people in the building. And his profile is only increasing.
“The task of browsers and departments is now less about managing cookie pies and official visits and much more about managing a $22 million salary cap,” said Matt Dudek, who as a member of Arizona under Rodriguez in 2016 has become the first school football player to hold the GM title.
Three hires in the six-plus months have helped bring college football GMs closer to family calling status.
Stanford took an ambitious step by giving Andrew Luck of Andrew Luck, the former Indianapolis Colts quarterback and Heisman Trophy finalist, anything that no other school GM has: decision-making strength over the entire football program. towards the staff colleague.
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Michael Lombardi, who came to North Carolina along Bill Belichick, brought nothing from his schoolmates: 30 years of reveling in the NFL offices, adding one as general manager.
Oklahoma took a dip in February through the hiring of Jim Nagy, the lifelong executive director of Senior Bowl and former NFL executive. Nagy and the workplace in which he is building “Venable” paintings, the school announced, which under the chief coach, as GMS of the maximum school.
UNC will pay Lombardi $1. 5 million, the highest known salary of any college football GM and more than some five-head coaching teams. Oklahoma will pay $7Five0,000 Nagy, which is also high-end for a gm. Technology general manager James Blanchard capped $5,000,000 with his recent contract extension after a competitive search through Notre Dame.
Those salaries, and hiring Luck and Nagy through the head coach, send a message.
“It shows that athletic administrators and administrators are comparing qualifier acquirers at the coordinator level,” said Cody Bellaire, a former LSU member, Texas, a recruiting member
Some forward-thinking coaches have opened the door for GMS to gain influence, Texas Generation Coach Joey McGuire.
McGuire made Blanchard his first lease when he took over Tech Tech 3 years ago and promised Blanchard Autonomy to offer rookies or transfers without prior approval from assistant coaches or even McGuire himself. “I said, ‘The only user in this build who can say ‘No’ for you,'” McGuire said.
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For coaches who are used to having the final say on every detail, this is heresy.
“It’s not like I have less power. I just have one guy that I’m 100 percent,” McGuire said. “It’s about power and confidence. “
It works for Texas Tech, which signed up for top-30 recruiting courses for the first time in 2023 and 2024. This offseason, employing a deep wallet and an organized approach, the Red Raiders have designed one of the country’s premier portal classes.
“The other people at Coach Hav McGuire appreciate it,” Blanchard said. “Because if I hadn’t expressed ‘yes, this is how we do it, this is what I allow my staff,’ I don’t know if a lot of other people in (personal) school football would be as far away as they are now. “
But it took years to get this far.
The first known use of the name “Director of Player Personnel” in school football, the precursor to the general manager, was the result of a shared Geoff Collins and Matt Rhule Road from Dallas to Cullowhee, North Carolina, in January 2006.
The two West Carolina assistants were at home from the AFCA Convention, where then-Georgia Tech coach Chan Gailey had presented Collins with an assignment as the school’s citation director.
Collins sought to coach on the field, but also motivated to return to FBS soccer, so he took on the task but asked Gailey if he could have another title. “I don’t care what your name is, I just need you to come here and help us recruit,” Collins Gailey recalls.
During the 14-hour drive, Collins and Rhule reflected. They saw that NFL executives held the titles of the players’ personnel director. “I don’t know if I even knew what that meant,” Collins joked, but that’s where they landed, DPP. A month later, Collins announced as a member of the Yellow Jackets in the newly created position.
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Collins wrote letters, arranged phone calls, controlled the recruiting board, and acquired the game board. ATAT that time, regulations only allowed on-field coaches to officially compare and recruit players, however, off-field staff members nevertheless played key roles. Collins also helped recruit five clients outside of Georgia Tech’s typical footprint doors. The yellow vests rotated in top-15 of top-15 elegance.
Nick Saban hired Collins in Alabama in 2007 to install a non-public NFL-style device. In Tuscaloosa, Collins grew from an individual organization to the head of a five-person premiere that included a DPP assistant, Patrick Suddes (who led the TEXAS, Auburn, Georgia State, and North Carolina of North Carolina) and a graduate assistant from Lance, Lance, now in Texas, Auburn State, Georgia State, and North Carolina) and a graduate assistant from Lance, Lance Traylear, now West’s Arizona Trainato, now. Michigan). Collins excelled but left after one season for the coaching linebackers assignment at UCF.
In 2009, Ed Marynowitz became the DPP of Alabama at age 24 and took the branch to a new level. He built an army of student staff who prepared a film and filtered through the physical references of the leads specified through Saban. Each pole coach was assigned to one student, who worked as a Scouts of the mastery assistants.
As the tide followed a seven-year series of No. 1 recruiting courses, Alabama staff members, either full-time and student assistants, began touchdown jobs in other programs, hired through opposing coaches, hoping to get a taste of secret sauce or through former Saban assistants they were looking after setting up similar operations when they landed in secrecy or through the ancient assistants of Saban through the assistants through the similar assistants through the head or sauces of the Secrets. Coherence work. The first time a student attendee landed a full-time gig elsewhere, which paid less than $30,000 at the time, is an eye-opener.
“We thought, ‘Holy shit, can this be a career for us?'” said Oregon Chief of Staff Marshall Malchow, a former Alabama employee. “We didn’t know it would become anything we could do for a living. “
Years before being Ohio State Staff, Mark Pantoni has discovered his way into the Florida recruiting workplace as a student volunteer in 2006. It showed up each day at 6:30 a. m. , and the shipments were ready for coaches to send to recruits. He cataloged the film and organized recruiting visits.
Pantoni did such an intelligent task that the word, despite everything, returned to Urban Meyer, who presented him with a full -time recruitment task, paying him $ 25,000. Pantoni is a component of a staff of two other people who controlled the entire recruitment operation. His ethics of paintings and his eye on the qualifiability facilitated their movement on the scale. When Meyer took over in the state of Ohio, he hired Pantoni to lead the staff, and Pantoni remains in Columbus as Ryan’s day.
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Without many industry peers, Marynowitz and Pantoni relied on others, trading tickets and creating an obligation. In 2018, they led the first staff and Recruiting Symposium in Nashville, an agreement for industry staff. The first edition had about 70 participants, Pantoni said.
Last year, the symposium drew more than 700 people, NFL Scouts.
In order for the body of the workers’ administrators to reach the background of the recruitment personnel behind the scene with frontal frontal people, they needed chief coaches that self -employed. As vital as Saban and Meyer were in the movement of the staff, their autocratic styles meant that no one will rise so high.
Ed Orgeron had another vision. Upon taking over as LSU’s coach in 2016, he had his strength: recruiting and defense coaching, on the specific defensive line. For everything else, he’s a confidant, and Austin Thomas reciprocated the bill.
“They saw film staff meetings and every coach would spend their opinion and the guy who had the last voice was Austin Thomas,” Bellaire said. “We knew it wasn’t General Array. . . and he was transparent about how much it meant for the operation. “
Thomas has noticed his GM name holistically, helping to manage the program from contribution to hiring, operating budget, and lineup management.
“Coach O had a vision to understand the longevity of the global school football and how running an organization had become,” Thomas said. “It allowed someone to take care of the off-the-field facets at a higher level. “
Eight years ago, GM’s name in university football would have seemed strange. There is no movement portal or loose agency, players were not paid above the table, and recruitment still referred to the signing of 25 secondary players consisting of the year. But Thomas, Pantoni and MaryNowitz idea bigger.
“Me as pioneers,” said Brian Spilbeler, vice president of Scouting Service Tracking Football, which works with personnel departments. “They didn’t think it was a flash in the pan. The idea that that’s where college football goes. “
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The movement portal, the eligibility of instant movement and the freedoms for reimbursement of the players have caused an explosion in the body of the workers industry. The acquisition of talent is the maximum vital facet of equipment construction.
“If I only had 10 full-time coaches that had to take care of this, it would be impossible,” Collins said.
The bets are high that never because players are paid. Ohio State spent 20 million dollars on his national championship list. Texas Tech spent more than $ 10 million in this cycle of the portal. The transfer of the seven trimester of transport is the standard. The source of the income exchange ceiling, if the camera regulations are approved, will be $ 20. 5 million for the school, which will be assigned to football.
“There’s a monetary share to get those players out of their pocket,” the Texas A general manager said
Miller has noticed that everything evolves with the first hand. When it was the Bolera Green DPP in 2018, it was the only full -time recruitment staff in the department. Now supervises an operation of another 35 people in A&M, with a dozen full -time teachers and 23 students. Evaluate and supervise recruitment, but talking to agents and negotiating contracts is your most sensible priority.
“Work is much more avant -garde than ever,” he said. “The role of managing director is all 0 and contractual conversations and the portal (like anything). “
Will we see more other people with force than Stanford who has given him luck? His rival program, Cal, is not easy to easy for Ron Rivera, the former NFL main coach, The Bears, hired as GM, has given strength, according to Sfgate.
Some are skeptics about the hiring of a GM other than the main coach. Malchow said he and Oregon Dan Lanning’s coach are attached. “I would hate being on a stage where I think I check to replace what it does,” said Malchow. “In university football, the main coach is the king. “
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But Cooper Petagna, a former Washington and Oregon DPP that is now running for 247Sports, said the balance of powers is moving more to the environment. If a training replacement occurs, this does not necessarily mean that the non -public device will replace. “I think it’s intelligent,” he said. “Now he has an insurance and continuity policy when a new coach comes into play. “
Doubek says: “I think if it works, it will be the new way. “
The current and previous GM are surprised how temporarily everything has changed. A decade ago, the players’ staff discussed what schools in question presented a general assistance position and gave athletes 3 foods a day. And now “the children have Lamborghinis in the parking lot,” said Doubek.
While hiring a GM may seem like a tendency to taste the moment, it is the product of a long -term evolution.
“GM’s has expanded for almost a decade,” said Spilbeler. “It was simply called that. “
Rodríguez, who trained before GMS or even DPPS existed in school football, can no longer believe that operating without one. In a sport that moves quickly, they are not going anywhere.
“That genie doesn’t go back in the bottle,” he said. He has one of the key positions and will probably continue to be so. “
(Illustration: Kelsea Petersen / The Athletic; Photos: David Madison, Kevin C. Cox / Getty Images)