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 college football, the employment of a managing director has trouble with serious systems on talent acquisition. The role of a GM may vary, however, in peak cases, this user oversees all facets of the alignment structure: high school recruitment, the movement portal, the name, symbol, and likeness remuneration, and once the C House regulations are passed. NCAA, a payment for the source of the income exchange. Some systems have prioritized hiring with the NFL’s delight over assisting navigation in an offseason that proves more professionalized for more days, in specific negotiations with contract negotiations and the NFL’s game of taste retained 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 made a splash in February by hiring Jim Nagy, the longtime senior executive director of the Senior Bowl and former NFL executive. Nagy and the workplace where he is building paintings “alongside” Venables, announced the school, which under the head coach, as the peak school GMS.
UNC will pay Lombardi $ 1. in five million, the known maximum salary of any school football GM and more than some teams of five chief coaches. Oklahoma will pay $ 7five0,000 Nagy, which is also high -end for a GM. The General Technology Manager James Blanchard crowned $ five00,000 with his recent extension of the contract 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 hire when he took the Texas Tech job three years ago and promised Blanchard autonomy to offer recruits or transfers without prior approval from assistant coaches or even McGuire himself. “I told him, ‘The only person in that building who can tell you “No” is me,’” McGuire said. Blanchard was long believed to be the only GM in college football with that freedom.
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To coaches who are accustomed to having the final word on every detail, it seems like heresy. McGuire shrugs it off, because the two have been together for six years and rarely disagree on evaluations.
“It’s not like I have any less power. I just have a guy that I believe in 100 percent,” McGuire said. “It’s about efficiency and trust.”
It works for Texas Tech, which signed consecutive top-30 recruiting classes for the first time in more than a decade in 2023 and 2024. This offseason, using deep pockets and an organized approach, the Red Raiders inked one of the nation’s top transfer portal classes. Blanchard turned down an offer to become Notre Dame’s GM in part because of the control he has in Lubbock.
“People in personnel need to thank Coach McGuire,” Blanchard said. “Because if he hadn’t been vocal about ‘Yes, this is how we do it, this is what I allow my personnel staff to do,’ I’m not sure if a lot of people around college football (personnel) would be as far as they are now.”
But it took years to get that far.
The first known use of the title “director of player personnel” in college football — the precursor to the general manager — was the result of a road trip Geoff Collins and Matt Rhule shared from Dallas to Cullowhee, N.C., in January 2006.
The two Western Carolina assistants were driving home from the AFCA Convention, where then-Georgia Tech coach Chan Gailey had offered Collins a job as the school’s director of high school relations.
Collins wanted to be an on-field coach, but he was also motivated to return to FBS football, so he took the job but asked Gailey if he could have a different title. “I don’t care what you call yourself, I just want you to come here and help us recruit,” Collins recalls Gailey telling him.
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 the secrets. or through Saban’s former assistants, through similar assistants, through those who sought the head of the Secret, or through Saban’s assistants. 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 Ohio State’s ace, Mark Pantoni discovered his way into the Florida recruiting workplace as a student volunteer in 2006. He showed up each day at 6:30 a. m. , and the mailings were ready for coaches to send to rookies. He cataloged the film and organized recruiting visits.
Pantoni did such a clever task that the word finally turned here to Urban Meyer, who presented him with a full-time recruiting assignment, paying him $25,000. Pantoni is a component of a person who controlled the entire recruitment operation. His ethics and eye for gradability made it simple for him to move in. Ryan Day’s GM.
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Without many companions in the industry, MaryNowitz and Pantoni trusted others, exchanging tickets and creating an obligation. In 2018, they directed the first staff and the recruitment symposium in Nashville, an agreement for industry staff. The first edition had around 70 participants, said Pantoni.
Last year, the symposium drew more than 700 people, NFL Scouts.
For worker managers to allow them to break through behind-the-scenes members recruiting members for forward-oriented influencers, they needed head coaches who would empower them. As vital as Saban and Meyer were to the body of the labor movement, their autocratic styles meant that no one would rise that high.
Ed Orgeron had another vision. Taking over as LSU coach in 2016, he had his strengths: recruiting and coaching the defense, especially the defensive line. For everything else, he needed a confidant and Austin Thomas has compatibility with the bill.
“They’d watch a movie at staff meetings and every coach would come in and give their opinion and the guy who had the last voice of Austin Thomas,” Bellaire said. “We knew it wasn’t normal. . . and it is transparent 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 duration of college football as a whole and control of an organization had become,” Thomas said. “It allowed you to handle the facets outside the box on a higher level. “
Eight years ago, the name GM in college football would have arguably seemed odd. There is no loose agency or movement portal, players were not paid above the table, and the draft still concerned the signing of 25 secondary players consistent with the year. But Thomas, Pantoni and Marynowitz bigger idea.
“I see them as pioneers,” said Brian Spilbeler, vice president of Scouting Service Tracking Football, which works with the corps of worker departments. “They didn’t think it was a flash in the bread.
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The movement portal, instant eligibility for movements and reimbursement freedoms of the players caused an explosion in the body of the workers industry. The acquisition of talents is the maximum vital facet of the structure of the equipment.
“If you only had 10 full -time trainers who deserve to handle this, it would be impossible,” said Collins. Nineteen years after his way with Rhle, his reserved area name has become a motion in his own right.
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 implication to getting those players out of their purse,” Texas A 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.
“The paintings are much more forward-thinking than ever before,” he said. “The manager’s role is so many null and contractual conversations and the portal (than 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 skeptical that a GM will be hired through someone who is not the main coach. Malchow said he and Oregon Dan Lanning’s coach are tied to the hip. “I would hate being on a stage where I think I’m looking to replace what Malchow said. “In school 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. “
Dudek says, “I think if it works, it will be the new path. “
Existing and old GMs are amazed at the speed with which everything has changed. A decade ago, the schools’ debate player staff involved providing a general attendance charge and giving athletes 3 meals a day. And now, “kids have Lamborghini in the parking lot,” Dudek said.
While hiring a GM may seem like a tendency to taste the moment, it is the product of a long -term evolution.
“GM’s rise has been major for almost a decade,” Spilbeler said. “He just didn’t call that. “
Rodriguez, who coached before GMS or even DPPS existed in school football, can no longer believe operating without one. In a fast-moving sport, they’re 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)