Bill Belichick grew up around college football. As a child, he followed his father Steve to an assistant coach assignment at the United States Naval Academy.
But his 50-year coaching career didn’t take him back to the college game until recently. The sport has changed tremendously during that time, especially over the past few years.
There are now name, image and likeness rules (NIL) that allow for payments to be made directly to players, sometimes reaching millions of dollars. Players have unlimited access to the transfer portal, which has led to them visiting schools every few seasons. The NCAA has been completely undermined.
So when the 72-year-old Belichick, one of the most notorious misers in a sport full of them, was named head coach at the University of North Carolina last December, there were some who were skeptical about whether he would fit into the world. College programs essentially have to re-recruit their own players each year and often help secure larger NIL payouts while also keeping deep-pocketed donors happy.
Kliff Kingsbury, offensive coordinator for the Washington Commanders and former head coach at Texas Tech University, said: “I’ve never had a friend of mine visit my house or have a cocktail hour after a visit. I just don’t.”
Of course, Kingsbury added, “Maybe we can make it happen like an NFL deal.”
Indeed, this is exactly what Belichick will do. Michael Lombardi, who worked with Belichick as a front office executive with the Cleveland Browns and New England Patriots but has spent much of the past decade as a writer and broadcaster, will take over as North Carolina’s general manager. It’s a title that has existed in professional sports for decades, but it has been anathema in the collegiate world, where the head coach oversees all the details.
But now the general manager (or other titles, such as director of player personnel) is the most sought-after position in college athletics. Eight of the 12 teams that qualified for the College Football Playoff this season have a head coach. This is because football programs and other major sports programs, such as men’s and women’s basketball, continue to adjust to an environment where many of their players are less focused on traditional students. Player experience, etc. provides information on which teams will offer them the most playing time and the most money.
“College football has become a professional game,” Lombardi said. “There has to be a correlation between how much you pay a player and their value to the team structure, and that’s very exciting.”
In the past, college coaches mostly had to assess how good their players were and how good they could become after a few years on campus. But roster building now involves more than assessing a player’s skill level, it also involves assessing their monetary value to the team.
The general manager’s job is essentially to do most of the work of evaluating and signing players, as well as coordinating with the donor organizations that pay the players, allowing the manager to focus on tactics, the team and the game.
“To do this the right way, you have to have a rating system and be able to put dollar signs on each player,” Lombardi said.
If you’re a longtime fan of college sports, it may be shocking to hear a college employee speak so candidly about player pay, a practice that could have resulted in NCAA punishment for decades.
“Relationships were important back then,” said Courtney Morgan, general manager of the University of Alabama football team, referring to recruiting players in the pre-NIL era. “Relationships are still important, but so is education. One thing I can say is that there are fewer conversations about degrees and education now than ever before. “I haven’t been asked about graduation rates in a long time.”
Every day brings a new reminder that the water is uneven.
University of Miami men’s basketball coach Jim Larrañaga announced his immediate retirement after 12 games of the season, saying he was tired of “the system, or lack thereof.” Six former Florida State University men’s basketball players have filed a lawsuit against Coach Leonard Hamilton, saying they were each promised $250,000 in compensation but never received it. A former college football player has been ordered by a court to sit out his sixth season of football.
And that’s just for the last three weeks.
Some of the people who complained the most about the changes in college sports, especially coaches, were the ones who benefited most financially when players didn’t get paid or couldn’t easily transfer schools. But coaches and administrators nearing retirement age are often forced to navigate a career whose outlines change from month to month due to court decisions.
“I always joke, I wish I had a law degree,” said Baker Dunleavy, head coach of Villanova University’s men’s and women’s basketball teams. “I’ve read too many legal documents here.”
Villanova basketball coaches Kyle Neptune (men) and Denise Dillon (women) have final say on personnel decisions. But Dunleavy is the main point of contact with Friends of Nova, a name, image and likeness collective that pays players. Evaluating finances, establishing a philosophy around acquiring new players and “building new infrastructure that didn’t need to exist five or six years ago,” he said.
The biggest difference between being a professional sports general manager and a college sports general manager is that in professional sports, the general manager often hires and fires coaches. In college, the head coach still has a higher rank than the general manager and often answers to the athletic director or college president.
Regardless of who technically has the power to fire and hire, general managers and coaches must have a “philosophical agreement,” Lombardi said. Otherwise, “dysfunction within the organization” will occur, regardless of hierarchy.
Morgan said high school recruiting will continue to be important at Alabama as it has been in the past. While rosters can be rebuilt from year to year thanks to the transfer portal, these additions are often “transactional” and make building a culture difficult. And about the fact that finances aren’t unlimited even in Alabama, he added, “It’s cheaper to maintain your own roster.”
Still, modern college coaching staffs and athletic departments are almost unrecognizable. Morgan said he needed to work with progressive athletic directors who think outside the box, strong legal teams and non-traditional marketing teams because creating hype videos and graphics to help players make more money was an idea of yesterday.
Thoughts for today…custom sandals and a wrestling belt?
After the surprising decision to leave ESPN last September, basketball scooper Adrian Wojnarowski returned to his alma mater, St. Louis. Joins Bonaventure University as general manager of the men’s basketball program. Now he’s helping raise awareness and money for a mid-level Division I college basketball team.
Instead of tweeting about breaking news about free-agent signings or shocking NBA trades, he talked to the St. Louis Blues. He’s thanking one of his former agents (and current president of World Wrestling Entertainment) Nick Khan for helping create a Bonaventure-themed WWE title belt. Sell it or beg X’s 6.4 million followers to buy you a Woj Bomb slide.
This is the daily life of a college sports general manager.
