The fact that there is an entire front office now is just insane, again it's been coming for a long time, but it's just more people trying to take their slice of the pie while we pretend this is an amateur sport
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The fact that there is an entire front office now is just insane, again it's been coming for a long time
It's been here for the 15 years now (I'd argue ever since Saban's THE PROCESS became a thing). People finally feel like they can (or have to) acknowledge it now.
more people trying to take their slice of the pie while we pretend this is an amateur sport
Dude... this is my biggest beef with even attempting amateurism. It's not that I think players "deserve" money because coaches get it. It's that everyone (schools, ADs, coaches, broadcasters, etc) are allowed to sell their money to the highest bidder, but players (until recently) weren't.
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So, I'll start by pointing out that the title of this thread is "GM now the most important job in college football" and the title of the article is "GM position the new gold rush for college football" - I think the latter is a far more accurate assessment of where we stand.
There's a quote in the article: "We're hitting the golden age of the personnel world, as far as college football goes" - I think this is 100% true - we're going to see funds redirected from facilities, coaching staff, etc towards personnel. And of course, every college football team needs someone who can optimize that distribution of limited money.
BUT I don't think you can copy/paste the NFL GM onto college football, for a variety of reasons, all of which boil down to: 'the business of college football is significantly less organized and predictable than that of the NFL.'
I love this excerpt from the article:
The flurry of GM hires with NFL backgrounds came with much fanfare and big paychecks, with Lombardi leading the way at an unprecedented $1.5 million per year. But it has also been met with skepticism from the GMs and player personnel directors who came up through the college ranks. To them, experience in the NFL doesn't translate to the recruiting trail.
"[Stewart] is going to walk into Nebraska and be like, 'Wait, I've got to do what now? I have to talk to this kid because his teammate is a 2028 [recruit] that we want?' All of those things are just learned, you know," said a fellow Big Ten GM, who questioned whether NFL executives fully understand the relationship-driven nature of recruiting. "I don't know that Lombardi is giving Belichick 15 phone calls to make at night so that at the end of the deal, 'Johnny Smith' doesn't say, 'Well, I talked to [NC State coach] Dave Doeren once a week and I haven't heard from Bill Belichick.'"
I DO think you're going to see the rise of three positions:
The head coach - The Head Coach/CEO; drives on field strategy and recruiting strategy. The Saban-esk figurehead will still exist.
The Associate AD who focuses primarily on football - this will be analogous to COO type; maybe the president at an NFL franchise. They own budget, resource allocation at a higher level (facilities vs staffing vs players vs op ex), GTM, etc for all of football. This person will have enough football knowledge to understand/recommend changes (ie; this person can watch film, practice, etc and advise the AD if the team should (a) spend an extra $10m to fire/hire a new head coach, (b) $2m to replace a coordinator, or (c) $2m to get better players, etc. This will allow your AD to fundraise, negotiate rights, manage the relationship between football and the university/other sports, etc.
The expandeddirector of personal role - I think this includes scouting, recruiting, compensation management/distribution, making sure players are in the right classes, etc
The latter two jobs will have a lot of different names at different programs. Neither job is quite like an NFL GM.
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I fully trust that Whit will follow the examples laid out by teams currently having success in this new landscape of college football...about 26 years after everyone else
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He was the director of football operations for the Falcons, he has the 2nd biggest office in the football building, this is the new side of college football, everything off the field including NIL, cost of attendance, for example he moved all the players out of dorms to apartments.
He gave the tour as a favor to a Jags front office guy he worked with in Atlanta before whose kid has played for me for years.
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I don't think this will happen. An associate AD? Yes. The person who drives personnel won't hire/fire coaches. This won't get NFL-ized for all the reasons stated in the article.
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Luck's title is GM, but I think his role is going to much more closely resemble associate AD. Doesn't sounds like he's very involved in recruiting at all. Also, from what other reporters have said, Stanford intends to distribute House money equally across almost ALL athletes... Assuming that's true, his role isn't going to have much to do with player compensation strategy.
Moving into pure speculation... I think the Luck experiment will fail. Either the AD will blow it up, or Luck will taking over the role of coaching.... which would effectively make the coach/GM chain of command irrelevant.
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At some point you're going to see a GM outlast head coaches. When the entire organization isnt trying to save their job because a head coach change then the entire structure has changed. Look at VT this year, the issue wasn't getting players, its was on field coaching. Why blow up the entire organization because Pry doesn't understand what to do in the 4th quarter.
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At some point you're going to see a GM outlast head coaches
I think if/when this happens, it will be uncommon and it will be situational (ie; top 5 recruiting class coming in after a back to back underwhelming seasons, or a scandel).
You're suggesting that at some point the director of player personnel/GM - whatever the title of the person who is responsible for distributing compensation across players - will have equal standing to the head coach. I don't think this will ever happen at scale. Sure, there will always be unique circumstances - perhaps a G5 program that really has the Moneyball will go this route, schools with unique situations like Stanford or possibly a service academy (I know service academies don't provide NIL/Rev share for gov't reasons) - but I think at 90% of FBS programs the head coach will continue to maintain and overshadow the director of player personnel/GM
Look at VT this year, the issue wasn't getting players, its was on field coaching. Why blow up the entire organization because Pry doesn't understand what to do in the 4th quarter.
Because in college football:
players commit to staff members, and sign contracts with a school and a third party collective
staff members commit to the head coach (the organization is irrelevant for a lot of them)
Donors commit to a head coach
In the NFL:
Players are contracted to an organization
Staff members agree to work for an organization
There's not warring factions within a franchise that remotely resembles college boosters
I just can't imagine a world where Brent Pry is fired (not for cause), the GM continues running the program, the majority of the staff and players stick around, and VT essentially swaps in a new HC + some auxiliary parts.
Excluding scandals and internal promotions, this has never happened in the sport. It's going to require a massive culture change across all stakeholders in the sport AND centralized authority to limit player movement to get to a point where your typical FBS college football program runs like an NFL franchise.
I suppose if you reduce the role of head coach to just callin ball, and the 'GM' drives all recruiting and donor shmoozing, maybe this could happen. But again, I don't see that happening at scale.
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10 years ago would you ever think that an OC or DC doesn't have to recruit on the road? That's the way the positions are moving with having unlimited position coaches and only 10 that can recruit. College football is massively changing in the front office is going to become a power play for some teams, but it just has to work once for teams to copy it
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10 years ago would you ever think that an OC or DC doesn't have to recruit on the road?
Yes - there's a history of Hcs only letting their awkward coaches do limited recruiting (Gene Chizek only put Gus in front of certain players because he was such a weirdo). 6 years ago you had Joe Brady publicly talking about how much hated recruiting right before leading a team to a natty. I didn't think this was far fetched a decade ago tbh.
The difference is that OC's not recruiting on the road only took one rule change and all of a sudden it became a perk, not a punishment. Moving power from the field to the front office will take a culture shift at the player level, the staff level, and the booster level. You think coaches want to give up this power? They will fight it to the end.
I'm sure it will happen at at least one fbs program. It might even work well. But I don't think it will scale.
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What happens when the GMs rake over recruiting as a perk to the HC, and then they take over fund raising (not that coaches will ever get out of doing events), and then takes over having those hard conversations with players, cause that's a perk. What's really left for the HC to do besides coach?
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College coaches are maniacal in the way they want to control things. Look at Saban, Urban, Kirby, Dabo, Matt Rhule, Chris Peterson, Lincoln Riley, etc. They want control over every little detail of the program. The first thing Kirby did as HC at UGA was work with the Governor to change FOIA laws in the state. Lincoln Riley had had all the windows in a dorm blurred when he discovered they had a view of the practice field closed. Chris Peterson basically shut out the press even when he was at BOISE. Dabo runs state media at Clemson.
These characters don't wanna be GMs because they want control over what happens during a game. These guys also don't want to work with GMs because they don't want decisions being taken out of their hands.
If I recall correctly, Belichik was Coach AND (acting) GM at the patriots. I think Chip Kelley had a similar set up at the eagles or the 49ers? Nick Saban left the dolphins for Bama because he couldn't get complete control.
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"The schools making playoff runs, they're not building a whole bunch of new buildings," said Oklahoma State director of football business Kenyatta Wright, who helped lead the second panel at the combine symposium. "Identifying talent, that's where the next big investment is."
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Looking at the final from 2024 vs the US News institution rankings, 15 of the top 25 are outside the top 75 institutions in the country. They've made their decision and know where they stand. And they aren't looking to improve on the academics side of things, so why build new shiny things for the common student?
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But in fairness, there are, literally, thousands of colleges and universities in the US. If 15 of the top 25 football schools are outside of the top 75 US News rankings doesn't mean much. Could also say 10 of the 25 (40% of the top football schools) are in the top 75. That percent is way higher than the odds of a randomly selected 4-year school being in the top 75. Places can be good at both.
I just tried looking up the number of US universities and you do get a very broad range over a variety of sources, but even the low end numbers were well over 1,000.
Also, I tend to view those rankings with a skeptical eye as (1) many of those rankings have subjective components and (2) I've seen first-hand how "elite" schools behave.
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Using US News, so not including the small schools or the lower division ones for the most part...I'd venture a guess that it's close to the number of D1 basketball schools, so around 300+.
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Ah got it. Thanks for the clarification. Though using those numbers, I'd think the football schools are still ahead, though roughly in-line. Say it's 300 in the base, top 75 is the top 25% of the schools. The 40% for the football schools is still ahead, though maybe not significantly.
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And also, Oklahoma State has been a really solid program for many years. One of the more successful outside of the P2. Last year was very much an outlier. Will see if the bounce back or not, but in the last 15 years they have:
Never had a year with less than 7 wins (outside of last year, of course)
10-4 in bowl games
Ranked 9 times
8 seasons with 10 or more wins
What would VT fans give to have that in the last 15 years?
Comments
The fact that there is an entire front office now is just insane, again it's been coming for a long time, but it's just more people trying to take their slice of the pie while we pretend this is an amateur sport
It's been here for the 15 years now (I'd argue ever since Saban's THE PROCESS became a thing). People finally feel like they can (or have to) acknowledge it now.
Dude... this is my biggest beef with even attempting amateurism. It's not that I think players "deserve" money because coaches get it. It's that everyone (schools, ADs, coaches, broadcasters, etc) are allowed to sell their money to the highest bidder, but players (until recently) weren't.
Oh yeah the process isnt new, it's just made it's way to everyone.
Now that it's in the open, you can just shovel money in every direction, and a lot more of it.
The fire is hot. It needs more money as fuel.
So, I'll start by pointing out that the title of this thread is "GM now the most important job in college football" and the title of the article is "GM position the new gold rush for college football" - I think the latter is a far more accurate assessment of where we stand.
There's a quote in the article: "We're hitting the golden age of the personnel world, as far as college football goes" - I think this is 100% true - we're going to see funds redirected from facilities, coaching staff, etc towards personnel. And of course, every college football team needs someone who can optimize that distribution of limited money.
BUT I don't think you can copy/paste the NFL GM onto college football, for a variety of reasons, all of which boil down to: 'the business of college football is significantly less organized and predictable than that of the NFL.'
I love this excerpt from the article:
I DO think you're going to see the rise of three positions:
The latter two jobs will have a lot of different names at different programs. Neither job is quite like an NFL GM.
I fully trust that Whit will follow the examples laid out by teams currently having success in this new landscape of college football...about 26 years after everyone else
I have a 'heart of the ocean" necklace I wear quite often. People ask me where I got it and I tell them it was a long, tough dive to get it.
The Florida gators GM is who took us on the tour of the football and athletics facilities a few weeks ago I wrote about.
So probably not the most important position at UF Football?
IMO, by definition whoever gave Hokie Fireman a tour is the most important position at UF football.
He was the director of football operations for the Falcons, he has the 2nd biggest office in the football building, this is the new side of college football, everything off the field including NIL, cost of attendance, for example he moved all the players out of dorms to apartments.
He gave the tour as a favor to a Jags front office guy he worked with in Atlanta before whose kid has played for me for years.
Don't think he's more important than the coach
Soon he will be. At some point the GM will be the boss, they'll be the one to hire and fire the coaches. That's the way this is going.
I don't think this will happen. An associate AD? Yes. The person who drives personnel won't hire/fire coaches. This won't get NFL-ized for all the reasons stated in the article.
I mean Frank Reich reports to Luck so while I doubt that luck has total authority to fire Reich, he'll probably be the one that let's him know.
Luck's title is GM, but I think his role is going to much more closely resemble associate AD. Doesn't sounds like he's very involved in recruiting at all. Also, from what other reporters have said, Stanford intends to distribute House money equally across almost ALL athletes... Assuming that's true, his role isn't going to have much to do with player compensation strategy.
Moving into pure speculation... I think the Luck experiment will fail. Either the AD will blow it up, or Luck will taking over the role of coaching.... which would effectively make the coach/GM chain of command irrelevant.
At some point you're going to see a GM outlast head coaches. When the entire organization isnt trying to save their job because a head coach change then the entire structure has changed. Look at VT this year, the issue wasn't getting players, its was on field coaching. Why blow up the entire organization because Pry doesn't understand what to do in the 4th quarter.
I think if/when this happens, it will be uncommon and it will be situational (ie; top 5 recruiting class coming in after a back to back underwhelming seasons, or a scandel).
You're suggesting that at some point the director of player personnel/GM - whatever the title of the person who is responsible for distributing compensation across players - will have equal standing to the head coach. I don't think this will ever happen at scale. Sure, there will always be unique circumstances - perhaps a G5 program that really has the Moneyball will go this route, schools with unique situations like Stanford or possibly a service academy (I know service academies don't provide NIL/Rev share for gov't reasons) - but I think at 90% of FBS programs the head coach will continue to maintain and overshadow the director of player personnel/GM
Because in college football:
In the NFL:
I just can't imagine a world where Brent Pry is fired (not for cause), the GM continues running the program, the majority of the staff and players stick around, and VT essentially swaps in a new HC + some auxiliary parts.
Excluding scandals and internal promotions, this has never happened in the sport. It's going to require a massive culture change across all stakeholders in the sport AND centralized authority to limit player movement to get to a point where your typical FBS college football program runs like an NFL franchise.
I suppose if you reduce the role of head coach to just callin ball, and the 'GM' drives all recruiting and donor shmoozing, maybe this could happen. But again, I don't see that happening at scale.
10 years ago would you ever think that an OC or DC doesn't have to recruit on the road? That's the way the positions are moving with having unlimited position coaches and only 10 that can recruit. College football is massively changing in the front office is going to become a power play for some teams, but it just has to work once for teams to copy it
Yes - there's a history of Hcs only letting their awkward coaches do limited recruiting (Gene Chizek only put Gus in front of certain players because he was such a weirdo). 6 years ago you had Joe Brady publicly talking about how much hated recruiting right before leading a team to a natty. I didn't think this was far fetched a decade ago tbh.
The difference is that OC's not recruiting on the road only took one rule change and all of a sudden it became a perk, not a punishment. Moving power from the field to the front office will take a culture shift at the player level, the staff level, and the booster level. You think coaches want to give up this power? They will fight it to the end.
I'm sure it will happen at at least one fbs program. It might even work well. But I don't think it will scale.
What happens when the GMs rake over recruiting as a perk to the HC, and then they take over fund raising (not that coaches will ever get out of doing events), and then takes over having those hard conversations with players, cause that's a perk. What's really left for the HC to do besides coach?
Which is how most coaches would want it.
Those coaches go to the NFL.
College coaches are maniacal in the way they want to control things. Look at Saban, Urban, Kirby, Dabo, Matt Rhule, Chris Peterson, Lincoln Riley, etc. They want control over every little detail of the program. The first thing Kirby did as HC at UGA was work with the Governor to change FOIA laws in the state. Lincoln Riley had had all the windows in a dorm blurred when he discovered they had a view of the practice field closed. Chris Peterson basically shut out the press even when he was at BOISE. Dabo runs state media at Clemson.
These characters don't wanna be GMs because they want control over what happens during a game. These guys also don't want to work with GMs because they don't want decisions being taken out of their hands.
If I recall correctly, Belichik was Coach AND (acting) GM at the patriots. I think Chip Kelley had a similar set up at the eagles or the 49ers? Nick Saban left the dolphins for Bama because he couldn't get complete control.
And Saban left college football cause he lost some control. Others will leave too.
Frank Reich is an interim HC anyway
Thought this quote was interesting...
"The schools making playoff runs, they're not building a whole bunch of new buildings," said Oklahoma State director of football business Kenyatta Wright, who helped lead the second panel at the combine symposium. "Identifying talent, that's where the next big investment is."
They've already built their new buildings though, so now they're just shifting over to personnel.
Looking at the final from 2024 vs the US News institution rankings, 15 of the top 25 are outside the top 75 institutions in the country. They've made their decision and know where they stand. And they aren't looking to improve on the academics side of things, so why build new shiny things for the common student?
But in fairness, there are, literally, thousands of colleges and universities in the US. If 15 of the top 25 football schools are outside of the top 75 US News rankings doesn't mean much. Could also say 10 of the 25 (40% of the top football schools) are in the top 75. That percent is way higher than the odds of a randomly selected 4-year school being in the top 75. Places can be good at both.
I just tried looking up the number of US universities and you do get a very broad range over a variety of sources, but even the low end numbers were well over 1,000.
Also, I tend to view those rankings with a skeptical eye as (1) many of those rankings have subjective components and (2) I've seen first-hand how "elite" schools behave.
Using US News, so not including the small schools or the lower division ones for the most part...I'd venture a guess that it's close to the number of D1 basketball schools, so around 300+.
Ah got it. Thanks for the clarification. Though using those numbers, I'd think the football schools are still ahead, though roughly in-line. Say it's 300 in the base, top 75 is the top 25% of the schools. The 40% for the football schools is still ahead, though maybe not significantly.
OK State went 3-9 and winless in conference last year lmao
True - but that doesn't discount observations of what the schools that actually are winning are spending their money on.
And also, Oklahoma State has been a really solid program for many years. One of the more successful outside of the P2. Last year was very much an outlier. Will see if the bounce back or not, but in the last 15 years they have:
Never had a year with less than 7 wins (outside of last year, of course)
10-4 in bowl games
Ranked 9 times
8 seasons with 10 or more wins
What would VT fans give to have that in the last 15 years?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Oklahoma_State_Cowboys_football_se...