Arkansas’ Gage Wood throws historic no-hitter in College World Series
Arkansas’ Gage Wood tosses the third no-hitter in Men’s College World Series history as Arkansas tops Murray State.
NCAA
FAYETTEVILLE — Remy Cofield “wanted to get off that hamster wheel.”
The leap took him from Boston to Northwest Arkansas.
On Thursday, the Razorbacks‘ new general manager of athletics spoke to the media for the first time since his hiring on March 24. After spending more than a decade with the Boston Celtics front office, Cofield is now shifting gears and entering a college sports landscape going through radical changes.
To an outsider, the move could have been a questionable one. Cofield had climbed the NBA ladder from intern to Director of Scouting and Boston had just won the 2024 NBA Championship. But Cofield will now set his sights on conference titles within the SEC. He outlined his motivation for the career move Thursday.
“I’m being forced to step away from my comfort zone, try new things, meet new people and then just kind of be solution-based, a lot more often than we were in Boston,” Cofield said
“In Boston, we had a lot of smart people in the building. They still do, they have a lot of smart people and what’s going to continue to happen is they’re going to continue to churn out new and new talent every single year. I just felt like why not get out when I can and try to help someone else and take on a new challenge that makes more sense at the time.”
Cofield played college basketball at Penn and hails from Newton, Massachusetts. Boston first hired Cofield in 2013, according to RealGM, and he previously served as general manager of the Maine Red Claws, the Celtics’ G-League affiliate.
According to an Arkansas news release, Cofield “will oversee the strategic allocation of department and affiliate resources to support Razorback head coaches in the acquisition and retention of championship-caliber athletic talent. He will lead player contract negotiations and collaborate with head coaches, recruiting coordinators and administrative staff in implementing each program’s strategic vision.”
The new general manager didn’t disclose many more details of his job description Thursday. He said he’ll be watching film and be a primary communicator between high school and transfer portal prospects. That was something football coach Sam Pittman was eager to ditch.
“I mean, we need a negotiator,” Pittman said before Arkansas hired Cofield. “To be honest with you, I need someone that takes the, ‘Well, Coach Pittman won’t give it to me. Coach Pittman won’t give it to me.’ I need that taken off my plate. I need somebody to be ahead of what the market is.”
Cofield still aims to hire a front-office staff at Arkansas, but he did not say how many people he wanted to bring in or the type of candidates he was looking for. Athletic director Hunter Yurachek has previously expressed the desire to hire assistant general managers to help across different sports. Cofield’s background until this point has exclusively been in basketball.
“I do think there’s good people at all different levels that can evaluate talent. It doesn’t have to be at the NFL,” Cofield said. “It could be the college level. It could be somebody that’s just getting out of school and everything, that just puts in the time. We’ll look at all different angles.”
Another major unknown is how Arkansas will distribute its revenue-sharing budget. After Judge Claudia Wilken approved the landmark House vs. NCAA settlement earlier this month, schools across the country will now be able to pay their players directly through a revenue-sharing system.
Each school will operate under a $20.5 million salary cap. Cofield confirmed each SEC school will pledge $2.5 million toward additional scholarships, but it’s up to the individual universities within the conference on how they distribute the remaining $18 million.
Cofield and Arkansas are keeping their plans on which sports get which slices of the pie under wraps.
“I will say that we’re going to put forth a good effort to be competitive in all of our sports from a revenue sharing standpoint,” Cofield said. “Those numbers that are getting tossed out there, we’re happy to accept them and see them from our standpoint, we’re just not going to do that from the University of Arkansas.”
Jackson Fuller covers Arkansas football, basketball and baseball for the Southwest Times Record, part of the USA TODAY Network. Reach him at jfuller@gannett.com or follow him @jacksonfuller16 on X, formerly known as Twitter