When it comes to GMs, college football is 'catching up like Usain Bolt on the fourth leg of a relay'

INDIANAPOLIS -- College football's biggest game changers aren't wearing headsets anymore -- and that transformation was in full force at the NFL scouting combine. As NFL general managers analyzed 40-yard dashes and on-field drills inside Lucas Oil Stadium in February, a different kind of front office summit quietly unfolded down the street.

More than 300 attendees -- including 15 general managers, along with player personnel directors and recruiting staffers from 34 college football programs -- crowded into a corner room on the second floor of the Indianapolis Convention Center.

There, they unpacked the forces driving college football's newest arms race: the rise of the general manager and expanding front offices.

"It's the fastest growing industry in college football," Texas Tech GM James Blanchard told ESPN. "We're hitting the golden age of the personnel world, as far as college football goes."

Blanchard spearheaded the first of the two panels at the "Inside the League" combine symposium, which covered everything from soaring GM salaries and the rapid expansion of support staffs to negotiating with agents and the budding trend of NFL scouts moving to the college ranks.

Blanchard, who will make $1.58 million over the next three years, is part of a growing community of college GMs that now includes former Indianapolis Colts star quarterback Andrew Luck (Stanford), two-time NFL Coach of the Year Ron Rivera (Cal) and ex-Cleveland Browns GM Mike Lombardi -- Bill Belichick's first hire after he stunningly accepted the North Carolina head coaching job in December.

Unlike in the NFL, coaches still run the vast majority of college programs. But that could be changing. At Stanford, the head coach reports to Luck. Though the roles differ, Blanchard believes many of the recent GM hires could outlast their head coaches, mirroring the NFL. In the coming years, he expects college GMs to match coordinator salaries -- and face similar pressure.

"That's the way it's trending," Blanchard, a former pro scout, said. "The NFL has been doing business at a high level for a long time. ... But now, college is catching up -- and it's catching up like Usain Bolt on the fourth leg of a relay."

Going forward, college front offices will shoulder more responsibility than ever before. They're overseeing 105-man rosters, scouring the transfer portal, negotiating with agents and persuading recruits to join their programs.

Soon, they'll have to help manage a salary cap, too.

Assuming the House v. NCAA settlement goes into effect this summer, schools will have roughly $20.5 million (with increases annually) to spend on their athletes, shifting college sports to a revenue sharing model. Football is sure to receive the largest share at most programs, ushering in an NFL-style approach to roster building.

Once merely a behind-the-scenes support role, college GMs are quickly becoming the difference between winning and losing -- as much as any coordinator or even head coach.

"They're doing more than just putting together a team -- they're wearing a lot of different caps ... like a head coach because they're in charge of the roster, the [salary] cap, incoming freshmen and portal players," said CJ Cavazos, a former Nebraska director of football relations who is now a consultant and agent and co-moderated the combine symposium alongside Inside the League founder Neil Stratton. "Half of college football general managers will be making close to a million dollars. That's where the market is taking them."

And that has the NFL's attention.

AFTER FAILING TO swipe Blanchard away from Texas Tech, Notre Dame turned to the pros to fill its GM vacancy. Chad Bowden, the son of former Cincinnati Reds GM Jim Bowden, had left the Fighting Irish for USC. So coach Marcus Freeman hired Detroit Lions director of scouting advancement Mike Martin in February.

This offseason alone, several major programs hired GMs with deep NFL roots, including Nebraska's Pat Stewart (New England Patriots), Florida's Nick Polk (Atlanta Falcons) and Oklahoma's Jim Nagy (Senior Bowl).

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.'"

Several college GMs noted that NFL executives bring useful expertise, especially in scouting and evaluating players. But they also suggested the learning curve is steep, notably in forging relationships with recruits and those around them.

"You can come down and scout all you want," a Big 12 director of player personnel said. "But the kid still has to select your school. Recruiting is involved. Regional ties are involved. ... I think they're biting off more than they can chew. It's totally, completely different."

But an eight-year NFL executive who recently interviewed for a college GM job called that thinking anachronistic, now that the looming House settlement is set to reshape the financial structure of college football with the introduction of a de facto salary cap.

"I'd say that just focusing on recruiting does not pay the respect to the gravity of what revenue sharing and the House case are going to have," the executive said. "It's going to change all of college football. Investing in something that worked previously, I'm just skeptical that's going to matter as much in this new environment."

He pointed to the high-profile case of Nico Iamaleava, whose camp reportedly sought a more than $1 million raise from $2.4 million after quarterbacking the Volunteers to the playoff last season. Sources close to the quarterback deny they were seeking $4 million.

When Iamaleava skipped a spring practice without permission, Tennessee coach Josh Heupel announced the team was moving on without him. Iamaleava joined UCLA in late April, prompting UCLA quarterback Joey Aguilar to transfer to Tennessee in return.

"In the pre-House world, being a great recruiter was everything," the executive said. "Now, you have to think like the NFL: long-term decision-making, targeted resource spending, strategic investment by position -- all to stay close to optimal."

Stewart, a longtime Patriots staffer, acknowledges that evaluating the potential of teenagers and building out a high school recruiting board is a new type of challenge, but nothing has surprised him as he enters this rapidly evolving world of college athletics.

"I don't have a lot of experience in college football right now," he said, "but I could've been in the business for 15 years and I'd probably be on the same plane that everybody else is, right? Because everything's changing and everything's adjusting."

One SEC director of player personnel conceded that he understands why college athletic directors and coaches would want GMs with NFL backgrounds. But he would still advise them to hire GMs with experience in adapting to the constantly changing dynamics of college football.

"That's the thing that pisses me off," another Big 12 director of player personnel said. "A bunch of people talk about all these GMs [from the NFL] and I want to yell from the mountaintops: You know there's a GM in college football at Ohio State who's the best in the game, right? He has been for the last decade. I would take notes from Mark Pantoni and start there."

Other college veterans pointed to Pantoni as the gold standard of the modern college GM.

Pantoni, who has been with the Buckeyes since 2011 and recently inked a new multiyear deal extension, has long embodied the old guard of college front office personnel -- running Ohio State's operation long before "GM" became a formal title.

Alongside coach Ryan Day, Pantoni helped assemble one of the most talented rosters in recent memory last offseason. The Buckeyes retained key players such as receiver Emeka Egbuka and pass rusher Jack Sawyer, keeping them from declaring early for the NFL draft. They landed quarterback Will Howard, running back Quinshon Judkins and safety Caleb Downs via the transfer portal. And they won a fierce battle for five-star freshman wideout Jeremiah Smith.

Those players propelled Ohio State to its first national championship in a decade. Then the Buckeyes had the most players taken in last month's NFL draft with 14.

"There are a lot of lessons to be learned from the NFL and there's a lot of great expertise in the NFL," another Big Ten GM said. "But as the guy who's been in college recruiting for a long time, I think there's just as many and probably more lessons from the college side that are beneficial in what we're going through right now. ... I'm not forecasting that the NFL guys aren't going to be successful. I just don't think they have the advantage that I think people might think they have."

Either way, the NFL-to-college pipeline isn't likely to slow anytime soon. Multiple NFL executives said during the combine that many in their front offices have privately expressed an interest in moving to college.

"We went to the combine and our head coach was like, 'I know you guys are going up there to get into the NFL,'" a Big Ten GM said. "I'm like, 'Coach, all of these NFL guys are leaving to come here!' And these NFL guys are going to keep coming down because the money is better."

Blanchard doesn't mind their arrival one bit.

"I love it, from a competitive aspect. ... From a financial standpoint because it's driving the market up," he said. "I remember when I was in the NFL, guys used to make fun of the college guys who were calling themselves GMs. ... And now, all these guys are calling -- 'Hey man, how can I get in college?'"

As college front offices expand, they're not only evaluating players, but they're also keeping coaches in college football.

ON HIS WAY to last year's Senior Bowl, a prominent Power 4 assistant couldn't get off the phone. After landing in Mobile, Alabama, he was back on his phone, even while grabbing his rental car.

"We're getting burned out," he admitted between calls, speaking for many of his colleagues.

While pro executives and scouts are being drawn to lucrative college front office jobs, college assistants in this transfer portal and name, image and likeness era see the NFL as a path to a better work-life balance, where they can focus on what they do best: coaching on the field and in meeting rooms.

"With how much college football is changing, you have to take some of the load off of the coaches," said Blanchard, who operates one of the country's most autonomous front offices under Texas Tech coach Joey McGuire. "He shouldn't have to be on the phone negotiating a hundred contract deals. ... He shouldn't have to go out and evaluate every portal and high school kid. That's what me and my staff are for."

Other programs, such as Oklahoma, are following Texas Tech's lead in emulating the NFL model, where front offices oversee the roster.

"It's a totally different landscape. ... The coach-driven model, that's a thing of the past," said Nagy, who interviewed for the New York Jets GM job before joining the Sooners. "The workload management for a coaching staff, it's just impossible to do the job. ... I'm here to help them find players, take some stuff off their plate."

If college recruiting departments are going to resemble NFL front offices, that won't just require greater investment in the GM. These leaders are rethinking how they build their scouting staffs, their processes for evaluating players and even how they utilize analytics to keep up.

"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."

As these staffs learn to manage eight-figure roster budgets for 2025 and beyond, they also recognize this heightened level of spending across the sport will bring on a new level of accountability.

As an ACC GM put it, "It's not always going to be based on what I saw on film or gut feel. ADs want to go to their donors and say, 'We're spending money efficiently, look at the return on investment we've had. Look at the better players we've got. We've been right more.'"

Maryland recently hired former Terps great Geroy Simon to be the GM of its entire athletic department. Simon said in his role he can make sure the salary cap is "being spent wisely" across all sports.

"Nobody knows exactly what the right [model] is," Blanchard said. "Whatever the blueprint, schools across the country are racing to invest in their front offices."

Cavazos said in the next five years, he could even see most college front offices having double-digit staffers working under a GM "just scouting and recruiting daily."

In turn, he predicts next year's combine symposium turnout will be even larger.

"Everybody's learning right now from the unknown, and everybody's trying to figure out what's going to be best for their staff and their team," he said. "But the schools that get in front of it are the ones that will be successful."