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 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. 1 million, the highest known salary of any school football GM and more than some five-coach teams. Oklahoma will pay $7Five0,000 Nagy, which is also high-end for a gm. General manager of technology James Blanchard surpassed $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 he hadn’t expressed, ‘Yeah, here’s how we do it, here’s what I allow him to do,’ I don’t know if a lot of other people in 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 be a coach on the field, but he also motivated to return to FBS football, so he took on the task but asked Gailey if he could have another title. “I don’t care what it’s called, I just need you to come here and help us recruit,” Gailey recalled.
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 recruitment, and acquired the table from the gambling gang. At the time, regulations allowed coaches only in the box to officially assess and recruit players, however, members of the box have played key roles. Collins also helped recruit five prospects out of the gates, a typical Georgia Tech imprint. The Yellowjackets filmed in top-15 recruiting elegance in their first year, after having no more than 50 in the five seasons before their arrival.
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 has become Alabama DPP at age 24 and took the branch to a new level. He built an army of student staff who prepared a film and leaked through the physical references of the leads specified through Saban. Each post coach was assigned to a student, who worked as a scouts in the domain of the attendees.
While the tide followed a seven -year series of recruitment courses number 1, Alabama staff members, whether full time and student attendees, began the work of TouchDown in other programs, hired through opposite coaches, in the hope of obtain Ayes of Saban. Jobs. The first time a student attended a full -time concert in another place, which paid less than $ 30,000 at that time, is a revelation.
“We said to ourselves, ‘Holy shit, can it be a career for us?'”,” said Oregon Marshall Malchow, a former Alabama staffer. “We didn’t know it would become anything we can 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 paintings for gradability made it simple for him to move in. Ryan Day’s GM.
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Without many industry peers, Marynowitz and Pantoni leaned on others, exchanging notes and creating an obligation. In 2018, they led the first Staffing and Recruiting Symposium in Nashville, a conference for industry staff members. 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 worker managers to get to the bottom of the recruiting staff behind the scenes with front-end influencers, they needed head coaches than freelancers. As vital as Saban and Meyer were in the movement of personnel, their autocratic styles meant that no one would rise that 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 each coach would spend their opinion and the guy who had the last voice was Austin Thomas,” said Bellaire. “We knew it wasn’t a general array . . . and he was 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.
“The coach or had the vision of understanding the duration of the global school football and how to direct an organization had become,” said Thomas. “It allowed someone to take care of the facets outside the field at 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.
“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, 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 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 is a monetary implication to get those players out of their bag,” Texas told
Miller has noticed that everything evolves first hand. When Bowling Green DPP in 2018 is the only full -time recruitment staff in the department. Now, supervises an operation of 35 people in a
“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 the force that Stanford has given luck? His rival program, Cal, has donors who are not easy for Ron Rive, the former NFL chief coach that the Bears hired as managing director, receives a force, 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 who now works for 247Sports, said the balance of force is changing more to the environment. If a training replacement occurs, it does not necessarily mean that the non -public device will replace. “I think that is something intelligent,” he said. “Now he has an insurance and continuity policy when a new coach enters. “
Dudek says, “I think if it works, it will be the new path. “
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.
Although the hiring of a GM may seem like a tendency to the taste of the moment, it is the product of a long -term evolution.
“GM’s rise has been greater for almost a decade,” said Spilbeler. “He just didn’t call 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.
“This genie doesn’t go back to 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)