When new Oklahoma Sooners general manager Jim Nagy was hired away from his post as the Executive Director of the Reese’s Senior Bowl in February, he promised a much more aggressive approach to player acquisition and retention in the transfer portal-NIL era of college football. He also promised a restructured front office model that would look more like what is seen in the NFL.
Nagy has slowly made hires throughout the last few months to build the OU front office in his image, and the program formally announced all those new faces via a press release on Monday. The new staff members have their titles as well.
According to the press release, “The University of Oklahoma Athletics Department announced Monday the hiring of several football staff members, pending OU Board of Regents approval this week. Most of the hires are in OU’s new front office as the Sooners move closer to a professionalized model of college football.”
These moves come after news broke this weekend that schools will be directly paying their athletes in less than a month. This is the result of the House v. NCAA settlement, and it will change college athletics forever. It comes nearly four years after it became legal in college sports for college athletes to benefit from their name, image, and likeness (NIL). However, this result was an expected one. It had been brewing for a while, and the Sooners had been planning for this outcome.
“This is an exciting time for Oklahoma Football,” Nagy said via the press release. “It has been a deliberate process building the first front office in program history and I couldn’t be happier with how it came together. We have a great blend of diverse backgrounds and complementary skill sets from both the NFL and collegiate levels and we feel the cumulative evaluation experience will give us a competitive advantage moving forward. Going through an incredibly successful first official visit weekend the past few days has only affirmed we have uniquely positioned ourselves to build elite rosters … I want to credit Coach Venables for his support and leadership during this transition time. The buy-in from Brent and his coaches has been tremendous.”
Nagy has officially added six members to his first front office staff in Norman.
Lake Dawson will serve as the Senior Assistant General Manager. He has spent 25 years in the NFL in both scouting and front-office positions. He has most recently worked for the Buffalo Bills as their senior executive of personnel. He played six NFL seasons as a wide receiver.
Taylor Redd will be the Assistant General Manager. He’s spent the last six seasons in the New England Patriots’ scouting department. Most recently, he served as a senior consultant with The Athlete Group, where he worked with Jake Rosenberg. Prior to his time with the Patriots, Redd was the director of player personnel and NFL liaison from 2017-18 at Wake Forest.
Drew Hill is not a newcomer to Oklahoma, but his title has changed. He’ll now serve as the Director of Scouting. He’s spent the last 11 seasons as OU’s Director of Player Personnel, meaning he worked for Bob Stoops, Lincoln Riley and Brent Venables. He was hired away from Colorado State in 2014.
Tulsa native Kale Pearson is the Director of High School Scouting. He was most recently the general manager for the Air Force Falcons, where he also played quarterback in the 2010s. He served with the U.S. Air Force as a logistics readiness officer from 2016-21 and worked in private industry before returning to Colorado Springs.
Stacey Ford will serve as the Director of Player Personnel and Retainment. He was UCLA’s Director of Player Personnel last year, and worked for two seasons at Washington State as their Director of Recruiting. He coached high school football in the Los Angeles area and played linebacker at Tuskegee University.
Charlie Parkinson is the Assistant Director of College Scouting. He worked for Nagy for a short time with the Senior Bowl and spent three years with The 33rd Team, a site that covers the NFL, before that. He was a scout, content creator, and talent assistant there. He has collegiate front office experience at both Wake Forest and Amherst College.
Oklahoma’s front office model and personnel have changed dramatically this offseason. Hiring Nagy was a big step for this program as they try to get ahead in the ever-shifting landscape of college athletics. He’s worked to surround himself with experts who can help get the Sooners to a place where they can compete in the SEC and on the national scale again.
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