Kenyatta Watson Outlines Vision as New General Manager of Boston College Football

From the very first time he picked up the phone with Bill O’Brien on the other end of the line, Kenyatta Watson saw something in Boston College football’s head coach that ignited his determination to finally act on the Eagles’ sudden—rather distressing—drop-off circa 2025.

They started to communicate approximately three weeks ago. Their discussions have not skipped a beat ever since.

“Bill and I literally talked almost every day, listening to him, his plan and his vision for the program,” Watson said. “And it kind of got me more and more intrigued every day. I was just like ‘Okay, now I know I can come back and help turn my alma mater around.’ Like, I feel it.”

Just north of 32 years to date, Watson, a Deerfield Beach, Fla., native, began the BC-football-player experience.

Watson repped the maroon and gold from 1993-96, where he transformed into one of the best punt returners in Big-East history.

As a junior, in 1995, Watson led the conference and ranked second nationally with two punt-return touchdowns. He amassed a total of 2,252 return yards, eight touchdowns and 1,215 receiving yards in 40 appearances as an Eagle.

The highlight of Watson's career, he said, was beating Notre Dame on the road in 1993 on a last-second, 41-yard field goal. The 41-39 upset marked BC’s first-ever win over the Fighting Irish and ruined Notre Dame’s perfect season, including its bid to the 1993 National Championship.

Photo Credit: Kenyatta Watson (@therealkwat) via X. — Kenyatta Watson (@therealkwat) via X.

“The whole experience there was just amazing,” Watson said. “I love the city of Boston. I love Boston College.”

On Monday, Watson was hired by the BC Athletics department as the football program’s next general manager—a position which not only spearheads, but defines the recruiting department in this era of college athletics.

His background in college football front offices runs deep—prior to Watson's recent hiring, he served as the assistant general manager of recruiting at Auburn, the director of scouting at Georgia Tech and the director of player relations at Florida State.

But even before FSU head coach Mike Norvell snatched a once eager-to-work-anywhere Watson to provide his services within the Seminoles' player-development side, he dreamt of returning to Chestnut Hill, Mass someday.

Watson’s homecoming was simply meant to be.

“This is actually my third time [applying for a Boston College position],” Watson said. “So I interviewed with [Steve] Addazio, he didn’t hire me. I interviewed with Jeff Hafley [and] he was gonna hire me, and then Florida State beat him to it. So now, the third time’s a charm.”

It might have taken a detour to ultimately bring Watson to the Heights, but his arrival could not have come at a better time for the program.

After a season in which the Eagles won just a single FBS game—on Saturday, BC defeated Syracuse, 34-12, in its season finale to finish the year 2-10 overall and 1-7 in Atlantic-Coast-Conference play—there is only one direction for the program to take.

According to Watson, it will only improve from here on out.

“I’m driven by building things,” Watson said. “Every program that I’ve been through, when I left, I thought I left it in a better place.”

Though a bold statement, there is an immense deal of truth to that.

Florida State was 5-7 the year before Watson joined the program, in 2021, but went 10-3 and 13-0 over the next two. At Georgia Tech, the Yellow Jackets went 7-6, 7-6 and then 9-3 after Watson joined.

At Auburn, in his most-recent stint, Watson helped the Tigers construct back-to-back top-10 recruiting classes in the country.

“And so now here we are at Boston College, 2-10, and I’m like licking my chops because there’s nowhere to go but up,” Watson said. “It’s the perfect situation.”

Just in a 24-hour period since the news was announced, Watson has received messages from former BC football alumni such as Mike Reed, Al Washington, Mike Campbell, Mike Panos, Damien Woody, Matt Hasselback and Scott Mutryn.

“I mean, my phone has not stopped ringing,” Watson said. “Just people asking ‘How can I help?’ Former players, you know, saying ‘How can we help? What do we need to do? How do we get involved?’ And so I’m gonna lean on all those guys.”

Watson said that the instantaneous support has been overwhelming, but even more so, exhilarating.

“They’re just like ‘Bro, if anybody can do it, you can do it,’” Watson said. “Like, ‘We’re so proud of you. We appreciate you. Let’s get this thing turned around.’ I can’t put into words how much this opportunity means to me. It’s definitely a legacy hire for me, it is. This means everything to me. To be able to help get us back to, you know, where we were, it’s just amazing.”

As surreal as the current moment feels, Watson does not take this opportunity lightly.

He is already fully engrossed in O’Brien’s vision of the program, and when his role officially kicks into gear on Monday, Dec. 8, he will be firing on all cylinders to start improving the roster with an emphasis on high-school recruiting, which is O’Brien’s priority, while additionally delving into the transfer portal to supplement the roster’s strengths.

“There’s so much that a college football head coach has to do now,” Watson said. “It’s no longer just, you know, let me recruit and then let me coach and then I’m going home. Now, man, you gotta worry about high-school recruiting with signing day coming. Most important was always the roster, retention of your current roster, because the transfer portal is open and you got to deal with agents, and you got to deal with so many things now that come into it.”

Watson will have no business on the coaching end of the spectrum for BC, but he fully understands the recruiting formula for the program and does not intend on bending or breaking that identity—even in the slightest.

“Everybody understands there's a lot of money involved now, but you still gotta want the right kid,” Watson said. “Boston College is not for everyone. The kids still have to understand you are a student first. You have to go to class. You have to want to go to class. You’re not just going to come here and take basket weaving and play football on Saturdays. You have to be present in the student body. It’s not a fit for everyone.”

He added: “And you got to make sure that, you know, again, [we’re] recruiting the right kids out of high school, we’re signing the right kids out of the transfer portal that are under the impression and understand the expectation that we have at Boston College.”

Watson fully acknowledges the sentiment from the fanbase that this method of building a program could eliminate talent from the pool of potential recruits, and that BC might be losing an edge in the game because of such strict requirements.

But if BC was not committed to revitalizing its football program and getting it back to the standard he once experienced, he frankly would not have signed on to relocate his entire life for that sole purpose.

“I feel 1,000 percent confident in saying that Boston College, by this hire, hiring me, the conference, the country will notice that we're serious about football,” Watson said. “And so I want to believe, and I think I know the answer, that they’re going to invest in football.”

Watson comes to BC with an abundance of experience on the side of college football that most people on the outside would categorize as high-spending programs with significant Name, Image Likeness (NIL) collectives.

Recruiting is not always as blunt as people may think on the surface, however.

“I know in the day of NIL, people think all these kids only choose their school because of money,” Watson said. “But, like, everybody has money now. And so how do you still win those recruiting battles? You’re genuine.”

Watson said that being both a former college football player and a parent to one gives him a certain advantage when it comes to recruiting meetings and visits that the majority of general managers cannot attest to.

“When parents show up on campus, they really have different types of questions, and a lot of them are afraid to ask," Watson said. "But I kind of already know."

In recruiting, relatability is the best ability, according to Watson.

Being honest, helping recruits’ families make forward-thinking decisions and showing the weight that a degree carries in the outside world are all things Watson excels at.

“Boston College has a history of sending a lot of guys to the NFL,” Watson said. “So I ask ‘Is that what you want to do? Is that the route you want to go?’ We also have a lot of successful businessmen and alumni if that’s the route you want to go. So we’re one of the few schools that can provide the best of both worlds.”

Watson said that he is unable to honestly speak on the NIL and revenue-share piece for the time being, as he is still not entirely aware of the total amount that will be allocated to the football program from the university for the 2026 season and beyond.

But one thing he is certain of is that the program fully intends on signing all of its 2026 recruits once the early period for signing opens on Dec. 3. O’Brien practically swore on it, according to Watson.

Currently, the Eagles’ 2026 recruiting class carries 26 players in it.

“There was never any talk of dropping kids,” Watson said. “I had gotten some messages saying ‘Well, are you guys gonna drop a kid?’ Nobody will be dropped, and that’s just the integrity of coach O’Brien, because I’ve seen it done the other way at a lot of programs when new hires are made, especially from a general-manager standpoint.”

Watson did not get into the weeds of the specific needs of the program from a player-personnel perspective, but he claimed that O’Brien is on a mission this offseason to right the ship after the calamity of 2025.

“He has a plan,” Watson said. “I can’t get into that [fully], but just know that he has a plan. I’m 1,000 percent on board in playing my responsibility, making sure that we bring in talent from top to bottom … young men that understand the importance of academics first and then football. … He wants some playmakers, highway speed on both sides of the ball. And so I’m gonna go out and get him what he wants.”

Watson said that his relationships from Auburn, Georgia Tech and FSU will have an influence on his decisions when it comes to recruiting out of the transfer portal, which is a tricky system.

That also includes the hundreds of relationships he built from his career as a youth and high-school football talent developer in the Atlanta metro region before jumping from the high school to college level with FSU under Norvell.

“It’s hard to do over a 48-hour visit,” Watson said. “So you have to rely on those relationships and do your due diligence to make sure that you’re getting the right people in. … It’s not wholesale changes. It’s just to patch up holes here and there. So we’re going to attack it that way. We’re going to bring in players to help Boston College win football games.”

Watson named programs like Virginia, Duke, Georgia Tech and Vanderbilt as models for what he thinks Boston College can achieve in short order.

All four institutions are high-academic schools such as Boston College, and all four have exhausted a plentiful sum of resources into building what he thinks can materialize in Chestnut Hill. He has done it before elsewhere, but he has never cared for the other programs like he does for BC.

“In my heart, being a former player there, we were successful when I was there, and then watching and just seeing some of the struggles this year, like, it really bothered me,” Watson said.

Watson stayed quiet about the potential of additional former players joining the staff in the future, but he left the possibility open to interpretation.

“You gotta wait and see on that one,” Watson said.

He is positive that he is not the only one with that same ticked-off feeling when he watched the Eagles lose most of their games this year.

“We’re gonna do some things at BC that have never been done before,” Watson said.

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