What Exactly Does a College Football General Manager Do?
There's no college football draft, no salary cap to massage. Sure, transfers happen, but weekly roster transactions are at a minimum.
So what exactly do college football general managers do? They recruit, of course.
"My main focus right now is the recruiting office and everything that touches, and a lot of people don’t realize how much goes into it," said Ole Miss general manager Matt Lindsey. "It’s evaluating players, it’s handling our database and our structure, how we’re setting our board and our film. But it’s also, whenever we get a chance to have kids back on campus, it’s setting things like that up. It’s social media and the marketing side of it. It touches a lot of different departments."
Lindsey is the first general manager in Ole Miss football history.
Saying that doesn't make the Rebels behind in the game. In reality, they're ahead of the eight ball—it's not a position that exists at most Power 5 programs, but it's been on Ole Miss head coach Lane Kiffin's mind for a few years now.
But before coming to Ole Miss, he simply didn't have the resources to fill such a position at FAU.
"Staffs have gotten bigger. Recruiting is more complicated with transfers and the portal and all of that. Why would we not have general managers? They do in the NFL," Kiffin said. "They give you someone who can help run the building. You have so much to do as a head coach, especially if you’re involved in one side with offense or defense as opposed to just CEO head coach. There’s a real use for this.”
Lindsey spent the past three seasons at South Carolina, running their player personnel department and overseeing recruiting efforts. He went to Columbia following a stint as a scout for the Philadelphia Eagles and prior to Philadelphia worked in the football offices at Alabama, assisting with recruiting as an undergraduate.
When pitching Lindsey the job, Kiffin described a position that would oversee a lot of the support staff and "other stuff." Now, Lindsey jokes, he's still trying to figure out what that "other stuff" entails.
Overseeing recruiting is the primary function. For someone with a background in scouting, that makes sense. But it's so much more than that. It's budget meetings, long-term planning and, unexpectedly, navigating the COVID-19 environment.
"There are a lot of things I don’t have to go do and he can do, dealing with coaches or people in the building," Kiffin said. "Nowadays, your building is so much bigger than it used to be. Used to be, when you had a staff meeting, you could fit it in the staff room. Now you’ve got, I don’t know how many people we’ve got but we’ve got a lot.”
When Kiffin took the Ole Miss job in December, he likened many aspects of program building to the NFL level.
He wants to pocket open scholarships as a sort of roster buffer, just in case someone becomes available or emergencies arise. College programs can't change a roster on the fly like an NFL team could, but they can leave availabilities to add players for the future.
And then there's Matt Lindsey, a college staffer with an NFL job title and NFL background. It's a job that's the most fluid in the program. One day he's breaking down high school film, the next he's in a budget meeting. Sometimes this even happens on the same day.
But all of this gives head coach Lane Kiffin more flexibility.
More From The Grove Report:
Lane Kiffin Surrendering Playcalling Duties, Becoming More of a CEO Head Coach
Who Has Ole Miss Recently Offered in the Class of 2022 and Beyond?
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