Andrew Luck was named Stanford's Football GM earlier today:
Luck, 35, has accepted a newly created role at Stanford, which will place him above the entire program and is a distinct evolution from the traditional college general manager role. The hire could loom as a harbinger for structural changes in college football front offices across the sport.
Luck's role involves everything Stanford football touches, football-wise and business-wise. The football-specific duties will include managing the coaching staff, the player personnel staff, recruiting, roster management and the student-athlete experience.
His business duties will include some aspects often associated with an NFL team president role: fundraising, sponsorships, attendance, sales, in-stadium experience and alumni relations.
My understanding is that Luck controls the entire program (instead of Stanford's athletic director), which includes hiring and firing coaching staff.
Would VT benefit from a similar structure? Is there an obvious choice to fill that role?
Comments
If we did this, I'm terrified Ballein would get the role and then we would be stuck in mediocre football purgatory even longer.
GM on CFB teams is typically the same as director of player personnel. Sounds Luck's role is a bit wider than that.
Here's a Good podcast episode on the evolution of CFB front office and what the different titles refer to
Is this somebody with AD power that's essentially closer to the street level stuff? I'm curious to see how this pans out and if it becomes common place.
Hey speaking of GMs.
Jerry Jones is a fucking terrible one.
This concludes my TED talk.
With the introduction of NIL and it's fast changing economics, I would think a business role GM would be very welcome.
Good call. Football coaches don't have the time or knowledge, and ADs might not either.
first name that comes to mind if Jeff King. if i remember correctly, he has moved up quickly in the NFL scouting world (Bears, maybe?) and could potentially be an NFL GM someday.
I like the idea of Jeff King but it seems like it would be a step down from working the NFL.
We already have one. His name is John Ballein.
JB is all athletics not football GM.
I thought we already had a GM. It was one of Pry's first hires
We do.
It's unclear from the article, but it appears that the Stanford coaches will report to Andrew luck (they describe his role as being similar to the president of an NFL franchise), whereas at most other programs the GM/director of player personnel/director of football operations/COO of football/whatever they call it reports to the coach (or they may technically report to the AD, but the effectively work for the coach)
Stanford head coach isn't even titled coach there. He is the
- BRADFORD M. FREEMAN DIRECTOR OF FOOTBALL
- ANDREW LUCK DIRECTOR OF OFFENSE - KEVIN M. HOGAN QUARTERBACKS COACH
Has Mama Fuller popped out some more Fuller's, one of which is a business guru who can get VT football unstuck from the mud?
This is a good argument for crowdsourcing solutions right here.
We have an associate AD, chief of staff and director of football operations, but neither sound like this roll