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Today in college football news, did you know one of Saturn’s moons might also have rings of its own? I was gonna put a joke here about even a non-planet being better than (insert your rival) at winning rings, but (insert your rival)’s fans are way too sensitive for that.
Wait, What? The 3 kinds of college GM
A sentence that felt weird to type in Tuesday’s newsletter: “Stanford general manager Andrew Luck just announced the firing of head coach Troy Taylor.”
Since when do college general managers fire coaches? Isn’t that an NFL thing? Isn’t firing college coaches an athletic director’s duty? Where’d all these college GMs come from, anyway?
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Like pretty much everything else, the short answer is: That all depends. For a longer answer, let’s break the term “college GM” down into three archetypes.
College GM type No. 1: What we usually mean when we say “college GM”
Mainly, I think of GMs as classic roster-management staffers who, thanks to NIL, are now legally allowed to know what the salary cap is 😉. Also, college coaches prefer employing somebody called “the general manager” because that sounds very NFL-ish to recruits. But let’s back up.
Though coaches have been getting analytical and logistical help from graduate assistants ever since 1880s Yale, the modern role of the full-time staffer who manages roster stuff (so coaches don’t have to) emerged about two decades ago, and you’ll never guess which coach found a major advantage at the margins by … OK, you guessed:
“Nick Saban began investing more resources into recruiting. Geoff Collins, who first assumed the director of player personnel title at Georgia Tech (under Chan Gailey), became Saban’s first DPP at Alabama in 2007. Collins organized camps, recruiting correspondence and visits and hired student workers to assist with cataloging recruiting film.”
Saban kept pouring more of Alabama’s money into adding squads of polo-shirted Collinses, and other schools sought to replicate Bama’s machine. In 2019, after the creative Collins became Georgia Tech’s head coach, he assigned a staffer the title of general manager. Within a couple years, superpowers like Ohio State and LSU (and Duke basketball) had GM titles, and soon, lots of teams had six-figure GMs who oversaw their own squads of polo shirts.
Gigs like these got more complex as the transfer portal opened in 2018 and NIL began in 2021. Regardless, they’re usually still the coach’s employees who deal with transactional business, rather than calling plays or running practices.
- So yeah. Most people first heard of college GMs when Bill Belichick hired former NFL exec Michael Lombardi at UNC. Lombardi is also the latest to brand a college program as uniquely pro-style (“33rd team“), though that essentially means Saban-style.
- Fun part: Lombardi is at least the third UNC football staffer to hold that title. Sure, he’s a former NFL GM, and that part is new, but do the Browns really count as pro-style?
For more, here’s this section’s second link to Sam Khan Jr.’s story from 2023 on the rise of the college GM.
College GM type No. 2: The type who is too busy to be asking local car dealers to pay for a new punter
Steph Curry, the active NBA superstar, is also an assistant basketball GM for his alma mater, Davidson.
Is Curry going to call timeout during the playoffs so he can text some emojis to a Dallas Baptist University transfer who’s unsure about Davidson’s econ program? No, Curry is “helping to create an eight-figure fund,” which should help boost that salary cap.
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College GM type No. 3: Andrew Luck
When Stanford hired its famous alum four months ago, one detail leapt out. Here’s the opposite of a Saban-style system: “The entire coaching staff reports to Luck.”
We’ve been used to athletic directors putting their names on the decisions to hire and fire coaches, though trustees and chancellors and presidents and whatever also weigh in, depending on the school and which ways the winds are blowing.
So this is jarring. As of now, Luck appears even more NFL-style than many pro GMs do. After all, when an NFL head coach gets fired, it’s often the team owner, not the GM, whose quotes appear in the announcement.
(Perhaps worth noting 13-year Stanford AD Bernard Muir recently revealed his intent to resign this summer.)
- For more: Bruce Feldman has the top candidates in the Stanford coaching search. Ken Niumatalolo would check several specific boxes.
Quick Snaps
🤠 Mike Gundy floated Oklahoma State playing Oklahoma in a spring game. Yeah, if I’d won the (maybe) final game in a 119-year-old rivalry, I’d want to give everyone a reason to remember it each year — without me having to risk the “won the final game” part.
👋 Longtime CBS commentator Gary Danielson is retiring after this season. The network plans to replace him on Big Ten games with Charles Davis.
🏔️ The Mountain West is in decent shape to survive realignment, yet again. Chris Vannini updates.
🐶 “People are like, ‘Are you tired, are you tired?’ No, I’m not tired, I just fell asleep.” Georgia DT Nazir Stackhouse is both an NFL Draft prospect and a person who lives with narcolepsy.
🔢 This draft might have a weak quarterback class, but Cam Ward is the legitimate exception, Derrik Klassen finds in the charting numbers.
🫵 Hey there, Until Saturday reader: Would you like to fill out a quick survey about your newsletter experience? A few of you will win $100 worth of Amazon vouchers. Thank you!
Tourney Doomed? Will March ever be mad again?
I’ve been reading Ecclesiastes my whole life. My favorite quote: “Do not say, ‘Why were the old days better than these?’ This is not a wise question.” (Yep, for at least 2,500 years now, people have argued kids these days are significantly worse than the previous generation’s kids.) This is relevant, I promise.
When we notice the current men’s Sweet 16 has only one double-digit seed remaining (and that lone underdog, Arkansas, is coached by freaking John Calipari), that frightens us into wondering whether this staid condition is now our permanent reality because of an ominous thing referred to as NIL And The Transfer Portal. But let’s look back at whether we had similarly top-heavy tourneys before the dreaded NIL And The Transfer Portal.
- Check out 2009’s Sweet 16: In three of four regions, only one team (No. 5 Purdue) was seeded outside the top four, and No. 12 Arizona was the only team seeded lower than No. 5.
- 1989’s was similar. Almost entirely chalk, other than No. 11 Minnesota.
- At this point in 1995, three No. 6 seeds remained, but nobody lower than that.
- On the flipside, one of the wildest Sweet 16s was in 2021, solidly within the portal era. Four double-digit seeds, including No. 15 Oral Roberts.
The portal and NIL have changed a million things about college sports, but now is way too early to conclude it’s killed underdogs forever. Months ago, longtime football nobody Indiana reached college football’s final 12 thanks to the portal.
Also, there’s an upcoming scenario in which smaller schools choose to dump money into basketball instead of football. Might be more efficient to spend big on just a couple hoops stars, right? More on that in Stewart Mandel’s mailbag, and then I’ll see you next week:
Mandel’s Mailbag
The House settlement will force schools to publicly prioritize their sports. It will be fascinating. Who will go all in on football and who will spread the wealth? — Melissa B.
As of now it appears all P4 schools that play football are going all in on football. Georgia announced in February it plans to allocate $14 million of the $20.5 million cap on football, and that’s become a commonly referenced number.
It’s not surprising. Football accounts for 60 to 80 percent of revenue at most schools. And it drives realignment. Everyone wants to ensure they have a relevant football program if/when the next shoe drops — especially if it’s a Super League. But it definitely stands to put pressure on schools such as Duke, North Carolina and Kentucky, where it’s no secret which sport the fans care about most. I’m particularly fascinated to see what Kentucky does, given it’s going to be incredibly expensive to fund a competitive SEC football roster.
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As for other sports, certainly schools will need to reserve funds for women’s basketball, where the top players are now earning well into the six figures. But I’m not sure about the rest. As much as Vanderbilt cares about baseball and Oklahoma cares about softball, the reality is most of those players aren’t making big money. If you allocate, say, $2 million on baseball transfers, you may be inventing a market.
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(Top photo: Darren Yamashita-USA TODAY Sports)
