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Report: Oklahoma to Hire UCLA's Stacey Ford in Front Office Role

New Sooners GM Jim Nagy continues to expand his personnel staff as OU moves closer to an NFL model to built the roster.
John Hoover|
Stacey Ford
Stacey Ford | Stacey Ford via Twitter/X

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Oklahoma Sooners

Oklahoma general manager Jim Nagy is expected to add to his front-office staff soon, according to 247Sports and CBS college football reporter Matt Zenitz.

Stacey Ford will be brought in from UCLA, where he most recently served as director of player personnel for two seasons.

Before UCLA, Ford was director of recruiting at Washington State, where he worked closely with then-Cougars offensive coordinator Ben Arbuckle, who’s now Brent Venables’ OC in Norman.

Ford coached previously in Los Angeles at Warren High School and his alma mater, Cathedral High School. He spent three seasons as an assistant coach and defensive coordinator at Warren High, where the Bears went undefeated twice and won back-to-back San Gabriel Valley League titles. He coached linebackers at Cathedral.

Ford also played outside linebacker collegiately at Tuskegee University in Tuskegee, AL. He graduated from Tuskegee in 2016 with a bachelor's degree in psychology and a minor in business administration.

According to his UCLA bio, Ford got his professional start in 2016, serving as a player personnel scout intern for the then-Oakland Raiders. With the Raiders, he crafted individual scouting reports, managed departmental databases and made life skills presentations.

OU’s hiring of Nagy from his position as executive director of the Reese’s Senior Bowl this offseason signaled a new director for the Oklahoma program this season to a more NFL-base model. 

Ford is Nagy’s newest addition to the staff, joining assistant GM Taylor Redd, director of high school scouting Kale Pearson and assistant director of college scouting Charlie Parkinson.

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John E. Hoover
JOHN HOOVER

John is an award-winning journalist whose work spans five decades in Oklahoma, with multiple state, regional and national awards as a sportswriter at various newspapers. During his newspaper career, John covered the Dallas Cowboys, the Kansas City Chiefs, the Oklahoma Sooners, the Oklahoma State Cowboys, the Arkansas Razorbacks and much more. In 2016, John changed careers, migrating into radio and launching a YouTube channel, and has built a successful independent media company, DanCam Media. From there, John has written under the banners of Sporting News, Sports Illustrated, Fan Nation and a handful of local and national magazines while hosting daily sports talk radio shows in Oklahoma City, Tulsa and statewide. John has also spoken on Capitol Hill in Oklahoma City in a successful effort to put more certified athletic trainers in Oklahoma public high schools. Among the dozens of awards he has won, John most cherishes his national "Beat Writer of the Year" from the Associated Press Sports Editors, Oklahoma's "Best Sports Column" from the Society of Professional Journalists, and Two "Excellence in Sports Medicine Reporting" Awards from the National Athletic Trainers Association. John holds a bachelor's degree in Mass Communications from East Central University in Ada, OK. Born and raised in North Pole, Alaska, John played football and wrote for the school paper at Ada High School in Ada, OK. He enjoys books, movies and travel, and lives in Broken Arrow, OK, with his wife and two kids.

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