Oklahoma GM Jim Nagy Explains Why OU Won't Overspend for 5-Star Recruits

In this new age of college football spending, Oklahoma general manager Jim Nagy says he and the Sooners’ scouts and coaches will trust their own evaluations rather than chase someone else’s.

Appearing Wednesday as a guest on the Triple Option Podcast with Fox Sports’ Rob Stone, Urban Meyer and Mark Ingram, Nagy explained why he and head coach Brent Venables will use their own grading scale and salary structure to pursue talent, rather than external labels like “5-star” or “3-star.”

“We've got a grading scale we're going to stick to,” Nagy said. “In the NFL, there's a numbers-based grading scale. There's a color-based scale; I think the color-based is a little easier for everyone to get on the same page on. So that's what we're going with here — and that's going to also dictate how we spend on players as well.”

It’s been four years since the NCAA turned Name, Image and Likeness rules loose on college sports, and in many ways NIL spending had become the Wild, Wild West: few rules, even less oversight and almost no enforcement. That allowed big-dollar schools with deep-pocket boosters to set their own market for paying players whatever they wanted.

NIL remains in place, although there are more guardrails now. But with schools also officially on the hook as of July 1 for a hard-capped revenue sharing model (this year $20.5 million), Nagy explained why OU isn’t going to be out there slinging bags of cash at someone just because Rivals or 247Sports has designated them a 5-star recruit.

“I think 5-stars want to get paid like 5-stars.”
Jim Nagy

“If you don't have a structure in place, you're going to be all over the place with paying players, and then the next thing you know, you're going to be over the cap,” Nagy said.

Nagy comes to OU after seven years as executive director of the Senior Bowl, where his job was to locate the best college football talent and convince those NFL prospect to spend a week of real practice (and the game) with an NFL coaching staff working out in front of 32 NFL teams. Essentially, he was an NFL headhunter, putting eager young candidates in touch with future employers — and he elevated the stature of the Senior Bowl to new heights by recruiting the best of the best.

Before that, Nagy spent 18 years in the front offices of four NFL teams, finding and evaluating players for various personnel departments.

His job description at OU includes roster management and talent acquisition, including player recruitment, evaluation, retention, and compensation.

Like everyone else, he’s navigating the compensation part in real-time, because it’s brand new — literally three days old.

“Just like we would in the National Football League,” Nagy said. “And that's where you find your value.”

Nagy asked Ingram — the 2009 Heisman Trophy winner as an Alabama running back who eventually emerged from a talented and crowded backfield — about his own recruiting experience.

“Mark, what were you coming out of high school? Were you a big-time 5-star?” Nagy asked.

Ingram explained that he was a little-heralded 3-star prospect, but after a big senior year, Nick Saban and Alabama offered him a scholarship, “and that’s how I got my fourth star.”

That illustrated Nagy’s strategy perfectly.

“I respect everyone that works at those services to put the stars on guys. I really do,” Nagy said. “I mean, they have hard jobs to do as well. But we're not going to pay any attention to that.

“You know, I think what we saw this spring, which I think was a really good way to do it, is we graded the players on our new scale, and then when you get to OV (official visit) season, is when you see where you can get value, right? Because I think what's going to set the market for a lot of these players in terms of what they're being paid and what agents expect to be paid, is the ‘star’ system, right?

“I think 5-stars want to get paid like 5-stars. So when you get into the OV season, we might have the same grade on a 5-star and a guy that's a 3-star. And when you look at where they're taking their OVs to, if they're going to Ohio State and Oregon and Texas and Texas A&M, that's going to be a certain market, right? But then if the same graded player is getting offers from some Group of 5 schools, you know, we know … what direction we're probably going to go, you know? Because you're looking for that value.”

Oklahoma has certainly produced some all-time talent with 5-star players, such as Adrian Peterson, Tommie Harris, Gerald McCoy and Joe Mixon. But the Sooners also have a long, disappointing history with 5-star recruits like Rhett Bomar, Caleb Williams, Jackson Arnold, Spencer Rattler, Jadon Haselwood, Jermie Calhoun, Brandon Williams and Trey Metoyer, among others.

For his money — better yet, for OU’s money — Nagy seems unwilling to pour unrealistic resources into a prospect just because someone has labeled him a 5-star. Getting into a bidding war with Texas or Ohio State or Alabama on too many of those players is not the most efficient way to build a roster — for various reasons.

For one, OU’s checkered history with 5-stars is its own cautionary tale. Two, chasing the most-hyped recruits could leave gaps at too many other positions with too many other prospects from too many other quality high school programs — which hurts overall roster depth and can lead to hurt feelings and burned bridges. And three, in an era where the transfer portal and under-the-table tampering are rampant, who wants to overspend for a player that might enroll at a rival program six months down the road?

“And if you look at National Football League rosters, and dig back into their high school backgrounds, man, that league is littered with 2- and 3 -star players,” Nagy said. “So they're out there, you know? Again, it's just, we need to identify those guys and, you know, trust our evaluation. So that's really — not to share too much of the, too much of the trade secrets there — but that's how we're going to attack it.”