MIRAMAR BEACH, Fla.—Georgia football lists nearly 70 people on its online staff directory ranging from high-profile coordinators to strength coaches to a performance chefs to recruiting staffers.
One title that isn’t found is that of a general manager on coach Kirby Smart’s staff.
Advertisement
That puts Georgia in the minority in the SEC where 12 SEC football programs list general managers, a growing position with sometimes nebulous responsibilities in the changing world of college athletics where top players can command seven figures in NIL and players come and go with the transfer portal.
“We have people that fill that role,” Smart said Tuesday May 27 at the SEC spring meetings. “It may be three, four people including myself, but we’re very clear in the roles of our staff members and what they do. They learn that throughout the recruiting process.”
Smart said recruits are introduced to people throughout the organization, but as far as a general manager what that role is seems to vary.
“If I ask every coach what their general manager does, they all do something different,” Smart said. “In the NFL, they do different than what they do at our level.”
Advertisement
General manager hires have made splashes in the last year, from former NFL quarterback Andrew Luck at Stanford to former NFL coach Ron Rivera at Cal to Senior Bowl executive director Jim Nagy at Oklahoma.
Some college football general managers have been in place for several years.
Barton Simmons, who was scouting director for the website 247Sports, was hired in 2021 to be general manager at Vanderbilt
Arkansas hired Remy Cofield this spring. He was director of scouting for the Boston Celtics, a franchise he worked for since 2013. Cofield is listed second on the school’s athletic staff directory behind athletic director Hunter Yurachek.
Advertisement
He works with football, men’s and women’s basketball and baseball. He was hired by Yurachek with input from coaches and has been on the job less than two months.
“I think it’s still a work in progress, to be totally honest with you,” Arkansas coach Sam Pittman told the Athens Banner-Herald. “Right now, he’s the communicator of the NIL. That would be the majority of his job right now. As it continues to work forward, I think he’ll have more to do with our current roster, our needs, who we’re recruiting. Right now, he’s the good or bad guy when it comes to NIL. He’s taken that off of me.”
Cofield is in communication with agents and recruits.
Alabama coach Kalen DeBoer brought general manager Courtney Morgan with him from Washington when he took the job after the 2023 season.
Advertisement
“There’s a lot of trust that I put on Courtney to have the authority not just with recruiting, the organization there, but also he’s involved what our big picture looks like when it comes to creative (video and graphics) and how that applies to recruiting,” DeBoer told the Athens Banner-Herald Tuesday.
Morgan also has a hand in roster management and works with a director of player personnel to “help me bring it all together,” DeBoer said. “I think maybe at other programs there isn’t as much involvement or maybe there’s other layers to it, hiring of certain staff members.”
Morgan also is involved in conversations with recruits on NIL figures.
“We try not to have anyone other than one specific person, you know with understanding what the numbers are going to be as we move into the rev share time,” DeBoer said. “Where that really starts is with the collectives and your people with the collective and talking those numbers. Courtney is pretty aware what those numbers are and understanding the questions that are coming to him and why those questions are being asked.”
Advertisement
Florida hired former Falcons director of football administration and director of football operations Nick Polk as its GM. North Carolina brought on former NFL executive Michael Lombardi for that role under Bill Belichick.
“We’ve got a lot of people in charge of roster management, including myself, including our football office staff,” Smart said before spring practices. “Our operations slash player development, player personnel staff, everybody gets involved in that. It’s a team effort. So, we reorganize and restructure some things in terms of what falls under whose duty and whose aspects. But at the end of the day, I’m not ready to run off and go hire somebody that’s just going to make all the decisions for what goes on the football field. I think I’ve got to stay involved in that heavily. We’ve got the capacity and the quality of people in the areas that I think we need.”
This article originally appeared on Athens Banner-Herald: Multiple people fill GM role for Kirby Smart. How others in SEC operate
