Mizzou Basketball Looking to Hire First General Manager

The Tigers are following a national trend and are on the hunt for someone to guide roster construction, recruiting and more.

Feb. 9, 2025; Columbia, Missouri, USA; Missouri Tigers head coach Dennis Gates applauds his team against the Texas A&M Aggies at Mizzou Arena. | Amber Winkler/ Missouri On SI

The Missouri Tigers men's basketball program is looking to hire a general manager for the first time in program history. The athletics department posted a job opening for the position, as first reported by Eli Hoff of the St. Louis Post Dispatch.

According to the report by Hoff, head coach Dennis Gates and the Tigers are looking for a person to "oversee talent acquisition" of the team. The role will also help manage and oversee the NIL process, along with recruiting and roster management. Budgeting and scheduling will also be a part of the job.

The men's basketball team will be the first at the University of Missouri to add a general manager to its program, potentially setting a model for other programs to follow. Programs across the country, Saint Bonaventure of the Atlantic-10 conference being a good example, have begun hiring people for the general manager position.

The university posted a job opening for the general manager position recently, opening up last week and how fast the process will move is a giant question mark. The role is becoming more common throughout college sports, however, which might help expedite that process.

It's also beginning to be a common theme that schools are hiring alumni to fill those positions. Former Indianapolis Colts and Stanford Cardinals quarterback Andrew Luck is now the general manager for Stanford and current Atlanta Hawks Trae Young is an assistant general manager for the Oklahoma Sooners basketball team.

Whether that's an option for the Tigers or not is yet to be determined, but there certainly will be a pool of former Missouri players that could fill that void.