In the meantime, the tasks of dealing with agents and negotiating player salaries\u2014 foreign concepts to an early-2000s coach \u2014 fell on Rodriguez\u2019s shoulders.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was crazy,\u201d he said. \u201cI was like, \u2018This is why you need other people.’\u201d<\/p>\n
Across college football<\/a>, employing a general manager has become table stakes for programs that are serious about talent acquisition. A GM\u2019s role can vary, but in most cases, that person oversees all aspects of roster construction: high school recruiting, the transfer portal, name, image and likeness compensation and \u2014 once the House v. NCAA settlement is approved<\/a> \u2014 a revenue sharing payroll. Some programs have prioritized hires with NFL experience to help navigate an offseason that looks more professionalized by the day, especially with contract negotiations and NFL-style holdouts playing out in increasingly public forums<\/a>.<\/p>\n In 2025, the GM has become one of the most important athletic department hires a school can make. But college football GMs aren\u2019t an overnight invention. They\u2019re a movement nearly 20 years in the making, with the largest roots tracing to some of the sport\u2019s most storied programs.<\/p>\n Major rules changes accelerated general managers\u2019 evolution from back-office grunts to one of the most influential people in the building. And their profile is only rising.<\/p>\n \u201cThe job of the recruiters and the departments now is less about managing cookie cakes and official visits and much more about managing a $22 million salary cap,\u201d said Matt Dudek, who as an Arizona staffer under Rodriguez in 2016 became the first in college football to hold the GM title.<\/p>\n Three hires in the last six months have helped bring college football GMs closer to household name status.<\/p>\n Stanford took a bold step by giving alumnus Andrew Luck, the former Indianapolis Colts quarterback and Heisman Trophy finalist, something no other college GM has: decision-making power over the entire football program. Luck\u2019s control, which closely mirrors what a typical NFL GM has, became crystal clear when he announced the firing of head coach Troy Taylor last month in the wake of investigations into the coach\u2019s \u201caggressive and hostile behavior\u201d toward colleagues<\/a>.<\/p>\n Michael Lombardi, who arrived at North Carolina alongside Bill Belichick, brought something none of his college peers had: 30 years of experience in NFL front offices, including one as the GM.<\/p>\n Oklahoma made a splash in February by hiring Jim Nagy<\/a>, the longtime executive director of the Senior Bowl and a former NFL exec. Nagy and the front office he constructs will work \u201calongside\u201d Venables, the school announced, rather than under the head coach, as most college GMs do.<\/p>\n UNC is paying Lombardi $1.5 million, the highest known salary of any college football GM and more than some Group of 5 head coaches make. Oklahoma will pay Nagy $750,000, which is also on the high end for a GM. USC is believed to be paying Chad Bowden, hired from Notre Dame in January<\/a>, around seven figures, while Alabama GM Courtney Morgan is getting paid $825,000<\/a> and Texas Tech GM James Blanchard surpassed $500,000 with his recent contract extension after an aggressive pursuit by Notre Dame<\/a>.<\/p>\n Those salaries, and the hiring of Luck and Nagy by somebody other than the head coach, send a message.<\/p>\n \u201cIt shows that athletic directors and administrators are valuing the acquirers of talent at the level of coordinators,\u201d said Cody Bellaire, a former recruiting staffer at LSU, Texas A&M, Baylor and Texas Tech who now works at On3. \u201cThey see that they are one of the five most important people in those buildings.\u201d<\/p>\n A few forward-thinking coaches opened the door for GMs to gain influence, Texas Tech coach Joey McGuire chief among them.<\/p>\n 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<\/a> from assistant coaches or even McGuire himself. \u201cI told him, \u2018The only person in that building who can tell you \u201cNo\u201d is me,’\u201d McGuire said. Blanchard was long believed to be the only GM in college football with that freedom.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not like I have any less power. I just have a guy that I believe in 100 percent,\u201d McGuire said. \u201cIt\u2019s about efficiency and trust.\u201d<\/p>\n 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<\/a>, the Red Raiders inked one of the nation\u2019s top transfer portal classes. Blanchard turned down an offer to become Notre Dame\u2019s GM in part because of the control he has in Lubbock.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople in personnel need to thank Coach McGuire,\u201d Blanchard said. \u201cBecause if he hadn\u2019t been vocal about \u2018Yes, this is how we do it, this is what I allow my personnel staff to do,\u2019 I\u2019m not sure if a lot of people around college football (personnel) would be as far as they are now.\u201d<\/p>\n But it took years to get that far.<\/p>\n The first known use of the title \u201cdirector of player personnel\u201d in college football \u2014 the precursor to the general manager \u2014 was the result of a road trip Geoff Collins and Matt Rhule shared from Dallas to Cullowhee, N.C., in January 2006.<\/p>\n 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\u2019s director of high school relations.<\/p>\n 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. \u201cI don\u2019t care what you call yourself, I just want you to come here and help us recruit,\u201d Collins recalls Gailey telling him.<\/p>\n During that 14-hour journey, Collins and Rhule brainstormed. They noticed NFL executives had director of player personnel titles. \u201cI\u2019m not sure if I even knew what it meant,\u201d Collins joked, but that\u2019s where they landed, DPP. A month later, Collins was announced as a member of the Yellow Jackets in the newly created position.<\/p>\n Collins wrote letters, organized phone calls, managed the recruiting board and acquired game tape.\u00a0In those days, the rules permitted only on-field coaches to formally evaluate and recruit players, but off-field staffers nevertheless played key roles. Collins also helped recruit\u00a0five prospects from outside Georgia Tech\u2019s typical footprint. The Yellow Jackets turned in a top-15 recruiting class in his one year there, after not having one higher than 50th in the five seasons before his arrival.<\/p>\n Nick Saban hired Collins at Alabama in 2007 to install an NFL-style personnel apparatus. In Tuscaloosa, Collins went from a one-man band to the leader of a five-person staff, which included an assistant DPP, Patrick Suddes (who later headed up personnel at Texas, Auburn, Arizona State, Georgia Tech and North Carolina), and a graduate assistant, Lance Taylor (now Western Michigan\u2019s head coach). Collins excelled but left after one season for the linebackers coach job at UCF.<\/p>\n In 2009, Ed Marynowitz became Alabama\u2019s DPP at 24 and took the department to a new level. He built an army of student workers who prepared film and filtered through prospects using physical benchmarks specified by Saban. Each position coach was assigned a student, who worked like an area scout for the assistants. Marynowitz put the student workers through \u201cscout school\u201d and had NFL scouts who passed through campus speak to them.<\/p>\n While the Tide went on a seven-year run of No. 1 recruiting classes, Alabama personnel staffers \u2014 both full-timers and student assistants \u2014 began landing jobs at other programs, hired either by opposing coaches hoping to get a taste of the secret sauce or by former Saban assistants who wanted to set up similar operations when they landed head coaching jobs. The first time a student assistant landed a full-time gig elsewhere, which paid less than $30,000 at the time, it was a revelation.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were like, \u2018Holy crap, this can be a profession for us?’\u201d said Oregon chief of staff Marshall Malchow, a former Alabama staffer. \u201cWe had no idea that this would turn into something we could actually do for a living.\u201d<\/p>\n Years before he was Ohio State\u2019s personnel ace, Mark Pantoni found his way into the Florida recruiting office as a student volunteer in 2006. He showed up at 6:30 a.m. every day and prepared mailings for the coaches to send out to recruits. He cataloged film and hosted recruiting visits.<\/p>\n Pantoni did such a good job that word eventually got back to Urban Meyer, who offered him a full-time recruiting job, paying him $25,000. Pantoni became part of a two-person staff that managed the entire recruiting operation. His work ethic and eye for talent facilitated his move up the ladder. When Meyer took over at Ohio State, he hired Pantoni to run personnel, and Pantoni remains in Columbus as Ryan Day\u2019s GM.<\/p>\n Without many peers in the industry, Marynowitz and Pantoni leaned on each other, trading notes and building a bond. In 2018, they spearheaded the first personnel and recruiting symposium in Nashville, a convention for staffers in the industry. The first edition had roughly 70 attendees, Pantoni said.<\/p>\n Last year, the symposium drew more than 700 people, including NFL scouts.<\/p>\n For personnel directors to break through from behind-the-scenes recruiting staffers to front-facing influencers, they needed head coaches who empowered them. As important as Saban and Meyer were to the personnel movement, their autocratic styles meant no one would rise quite that high.<\/p>\n Ed Orgeron had a different vision. Taking over as LSU\u2019s coach in 2016, he had his strengths: recruiting and coaching defense, specifically, the defensive line. For everything else, he needed a confidant, and Austin Thomas fit the bill.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019d watch film in staff meetings and every coach would go through and give his opinion and the guy who had the last voice was Austin Thomas,\u201d Bellaire said. \u201cWe knew that wasn\u2019t normal \u2026 and it was clear how much he meant to the operation.\u201d<\/p>\n Thomas viewed his GM title holistically, helping run the program from input on staff hires to operating budget and roster management.<\/p>\n \u201cCoach O had a vision for understanding how big the college football world and management of an organization had become,\u201d Thomas said. \u201cHe allowed someone to handle the off-the-field aspects at a high level.\u201d<\/p>\n
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