Why GM Jim Nagy is Confident Oklahoma Will 'Start Winning SEC Championships'

Oklahoma general manager Jim Nagy is confident he’s hired the right staff in Norman, and he’s confident that when the time comes — that is, when other schools come along to hire his guys — he’ll have the right replacements ready.

“Well, it's going to be a good problem to have,” Nagy said Monday night on “The Huddle” with Chris Plank and Gabe Ikard. “And hopefully we do have the problem. Because … I think football is just a copycat sport, so when this structure takes form and we start winning SEC championships, they're going to look to Oklahoma and they're going to be picking off the guys.”

Not only is Nagy in his first year as a college GM and his first year at OU, but the Sooners are less than two years into even having a GM.

Earlier Monday, OU’s 2025 media guide was published online, and Nagy’s bio and the GM position was placed second in line — right behind the head coach, Brent Venables.

Of note in this year's media guide: GM Jim Nagy's full-page bio appears immediately after head coach Brent Venables, and ahead of OC Ben Arbuckle's, which begins the coaching staff. https://t.co/UT6r9vwoAI pic.twitter.com/QkbsJBNSEH
— John E. Hoover 🌮 (@johnehoover) August 25, 2025

Plank asked Nagy about the ultimate goal and the role of the GM at Oklahoma.

“I would say this: the GM role, it’s growing across college football,” Nagy said. “But it means something different, really, at every school.”

Before taking over as executive director of the Senior Bowl, where he procured talented college seniors to practice and play an all-star game in front of NFL scouts, Nagy spent the first part of his professional career in the scouting departments of several NFL teams.

Ultimately, after starting the role with former Sooner linebacker Curtis Lofton in 2024, the Sooners’ decision to expand its GM staff was attractive to Nagy.

“I said this to a lot of the families on the official visits: you look at the National Football League, there's 32 owners. They're all billionaires for a reason. They're all smart business people,” Nagy said. “They've looked at how they operate and the efficiencies and the best way to do it. And 32 out of 32 have our structure.

“And then you look at college football, before Oklahoma made this move, there was, you know, 136 out of 136 were doing it the same way college football had always been done, and that was basically just, you know, run by the coaching staff, and they just recruit and scout whoever they want.

“I credit our leadership at Oklahoma for really having a vision for this thing and having it be really like a true split structure where there's a, you know, a scouting side and a coaching side.”

Nagy looks forward to getting his staff and his scouting and evaluating system in place for a full recruiting cycle.

“This is going to be an awesome collaboration,” he said. “That's probably been the most fun part so far, is really getting with the coaching staff and really getting our hands dirty together and building that relationship. So yeah, I'm just really excited to get going and get get into the season.”

And when it works — when the Sooners start winning SEC titles, as Nagy put it — it’ll be a sign that success breeds success.

“That's great,” Nagy said. “We'll have — I already have, like, ‘next man up’ in each position, ready. But that'll be a great problem to have.”