When Zach Grant got to Western Kentucky in 2017, he was the youngest director of player personnel in the country at 23 years old. But there weren’t many people to direct.
“To say I ran the recruiting department probably doesn’t fit,” Grant said, “because there was no department.”
Much has changed since for Grant, now 29 and running the personnel staff at Cincinnati. As he has grown up, so has his industry. He oversees a recruiting staff of five full-timers plus a handful of student workers and interns. His head coach, Scott Satterfield, values a well-stocked, efficient personnel department. Grant and Satterfield must be in sync. If those sound like responsibilities and relationships more fit for an NFL front-office executive, that’s why Grant’s formal title with the Bearcats is a familiar one: general manager.
“My job is to manage and build the roster and evaluate players and find players through the lens of the head coach,” Grant said.
In modern college football, most programs have a recruiting staff dedicated to identifying, evaluating and acquiring talent. Leading those departments is a director of player personnel, colloquially known as a “DPP.” As roster management evolves in the era of the transfer portal and the one-time transfer waiver, these roles are more vital than ever. Pick a championship-contending program, and chances are there’s a DPP or GM (most programs use the terms interchangeably with minor differences in role) who played a key part in constructing it.
“You have talented people in this industry that, if you let them do their jobs, it will elevate your program,” Texas Tech general manager James Blanchard said.
It hasn’t always been this way. Fifteen years ago, most coaches assigned the title “recruiting coordinator” to one of nine full-time assistants. Early in his Alabama tenure, Nick Saban began investing more resources into recruiting. Geoff Collins, who first assumed the director of player personnel title at Georgia Tech, became Saban’s first DPP at Alabama in 2007. Collins organized camps, recruiting correspondence and visits and hired student workers to assist with cataloging recruiting film.
Collins left after a year to become linebackers coach at UCF. His successor, Tim Davis, also departed Alabama after a year to become Minnesota’s offensive line coach. In 2009, Saban hired Ed Marynowitz, who took it to another level. He hired a student worker for each of Alabama’s position coaches, training them on “critical factors” and what coaches want to see in a prospect’s film.
As the Crimson Tide rose, signing No. 1 recruiting classes and winning national championships, others sought Saban’s secret sauce. Several former Alabama recruiting specialists, including Marshall Malchow, Drew Hughes and Matt Lindsey, became DPPs elsewhere. Others went into the NFL scouting ranks.
“That’s one of the reasons (personnel departments) really took off,” Grant said. “Saban had that vision, and the Saban model has been copied over and over again.”
Grant also points to Mark Pantoni, the general manager at Ohio State, as one of the industry’s pioneers. Pantoni led Florida’s recruiting efforts under Urban Meyer and has overseen the Buckeyes’ operation since 2012 under Meyer and Ryan Day. He also developed staffers who went on to lead other recruiting departments.
After working with Pantoni last year at Ohio State, Grant came away impressed by Pantoni’s discipline, attention to detail and recall.
“He was extremely consistent day in and day out,” Grant said. “The list they go through is so big. You wouldn’t think that, being at Ohio State, they’re only really recruiting the best of the best. But to get to that, they’re watching all the tape on all these guys.”
Wes Fritz, director of player personnel at Tulane where his father Willie is head coach, oversees a handful of staff members that handle recruiting operations, on-campus recruiting and other tasks. There’s plenty on his plate each week: managing the program’s recruiting board, going through future roster projections to know how many spots the Green Wave must fill at season’s end, ensuring recruits get to home games and of course, watching tape.
“During the week, I’m watching every snap of about 70 guys that are on our board,” says Wes Fritz. “Cutting that film up so that our coaches can watch it quickly and efficiently.”
Fritz said two others who work with him watch and make cut-ups of 30 prospects apiece weekly.
The days of programs signing 25 high school recruits per year are mostly over. Roster management has evolved into a much more layered system thanks to the prevalence of transfers, and with that shift comes a more intensive workload.
There was a time when position coaches were the ones contacting high school coaches, identifying the players and making evaluations. Much of that legwork is shifting to the personnel staff, especially for portal prospects. When the winter transfer portal window opens in December, teams are preparing for bowl games or going on the road for in-person recruiting.
“There’s 1,000 kids going in the portal in one day,” Grant said. “There’s just not enough manpower for (position) coaches to sit there and watch all of them.”
Recruiting services, like Pro Football Focus’ PFF Ultimate, allow for quick access to film of every FBS player and most FCS players. That’s critical during portal windows because transfers often make quick decisions. If a team wants someone, it must let that player know as soon as he enters the portal.
“Some things happen fast in real time,” said SMU coach Rhett Lashlee, whose staff has signed more than two dozen transfers since December. “There’s no way you can micromanage everything if you want to be good.”
Even in high school recruiting, utilizing off-field staff for evaluation saves time for coaches.
“There’s not enough hours in the day for our coaches to gameplan against Ole Miss and then watch 100 snaps of 10 different recruits at their position every week,” Fritz said.
At the pro level, there’s staff dedicated to college scouting and staff focused on scouting other NFL rosters for free agency. The portal and the volume of players in it — more than 2,400 FBS scholarship players entered from August 2022 to August 2023 — created the need for a similar setup in college. Some programs have specific staffers dedicated solely to high school recruiting and others dedicated to the portal players. One key difference between college and the pros: an NFL general manager usually makes the personnel decisions. In college, the head coach makes the final call.
Texas Tech is somewhat of an exception. When Joey McGuire took the job, Blanchard was his first hire. When the two were at Baylor together, they discussed the possibility of joining forces if McGuire landed a head coaching job. McGuire vowed to give Blanchard autonomy. When he was on the verge of landing the Tech job, he told Blanchard, “If you come to Texas Tech, the only person who can tell you ‘no’ is me.”
If Blanchard finds a player that fits Texas Tech’s desired athletic traits — speed, length, height, weight, specific movements — he has the green light to offer the player, even if McGuire hasn’t immediately signed off.
Blanchard will always let McGuire know who he’s offering, simply by firing off a text message. But if McGuire is in a meeting or otherwise occupied, Blanchard is free to move forward because McGuire values being the first to offer a recruit whenever possible.
The countless hours they spent watching film together at Baylor — and only rarely disagreeing on a player — created the trust that allows for this unique setup.
“I know Blanch is not going to offer a kid that doesn’t fit our model,” McGuire said.
At Tech, McGuire wants his assistant coaches to spend as much time as possible on the current team, game planning and fostering relationships with current players while Blanchard and his staff — which includes three more full-timers and four student workers — spend their entire days on film evaluation and information gathering on recruits.
“Why would you give the most consideration to the people with the least amount of information?” Blanchard said. “College coaches are very good at a lot of things. They might watch 10-20 guys a week. Personnel guys, by the end of the week, we’ve watched 100 to 150 guys. It’s not necessarily that I’m that much better than you, I just have that many more reps.”
McGuire didn’t get immediate buy-in from everyone on staff when he first implemented this. For coaches who have done it differently for decades, he understood the hesitance. So he ensured the entire staff watched film together with the personnel department and discussed what they saw to provide clarity. But McGuire doesn’t expect most programs to adopt the setup any time soon.
“There’s not enough coaches who will 100 percent trust the guys in that group,” McGuire said. “There’s too many guys that are guarded and in line with the traditional way of doing things. And they’re also worried that ‘If I don’t get the right guy, I’m gonna get fired.’ I totally get it and I’m not discounting those thoughts.”
Nebraska coach Matt Rhule sticks to the metrics and traits he values but also uses a collaborative approach to welcome new ideas. He’ll have 30-40 staff members in a room, watching recruits together. After seeing a player, he’ll ask every staff member to rank them, then ask for their input.
“We try to avoid groupthink,” Rhule said. “If you have an opinion, we’re gonna listen to it.”
Ultimately, Rhule has the final call.
“There’s not a player we would ever take that I would not have OK’ed,” he said. “I’m responsible for the people (we recruit).”
Grant acknowledged a similar dynamic at Cincinnati.
“Obviously, my position is the GM, but Coach Satterfield is the general manager,” he said. “He makes the final call. It’s never gonna be the other way around.”
It’s not an adversarial relationship. Grant tries to spend as much time as possible with coaches, evaluating players so that “we’re agreeing 95 percent of the time” but discussing differences and owning mistakes without emotions involved.
“At the end of the day, we’re trying to get the best 85 players on the roster each year,” he said.
Blanchard and Fritz say that as roster management continues to evolve, they believe more programs will delegate decision-making to personnel departments.
“I think it’s going to continue,” Fritz said. “The next step will be letting people in our position go on the road (to evaluate in person).”
“The NFL is a billion-dollar industry. It runs like a machine,” Blanchard said. “The way they do it is probably the right way to do it.”
Regardless of the power structure, college football GMs are here to stay. For years, it was often said that the strength and conditioning coach was a head coach’s most important hire because of how much time they spend with the players year-round. GMs and DPPs could be headed in that direction.
McGuire sees them working hand in hand.
“It’s all about the players,” he said. “You better have a guy that has an eye for talent and you better have a guy in the weight room who can develop those players.”
Texas is a case study in the value of properly constructing a roster. In Steve Sarkisian’s first season, the Longhorns went to Arkansas and got bullied by a bigger, stronger team in 2021. Two years later, after strategic recruiting and deft portal use, the Longhorns took down Alabama with a roster that looked SEC-ready.
The collection of talent and depth, spearheaded by Sarkisian and director of player personnel Billy Glasscock, turned an also-ran into a contender.
In August, Sarkisian said he targeted Glasscock because of his history of identifying players who turned into NFL Draft picks at previous stops.
“I had an idea of what I wanted it to look like, but there’s follow-through to ideas,” Sarkisian said. “And I think Billy did a nice job with his (recruiting) team, I think our coaches did a nice job of evaluating the players as well.”
The industry has grown exponentially in recent years. In addition to GMs and DPPs, scouting directors, on-campus recruiting directors, recruiting operations directors and creative teams all hold widely understood roles. When Marynowitz and Pantoni spearheaded the first recruiting and personnel symposium in Nashville in 2018, more than 100 people showed up. This year’s edition of the event in August drew more than 500.
As money continues to flow into college athletics, the importance of getting the right players increases. In the NIL age, Grant says, teams want to make sure the players they’re recruiting are the right ones, “otherwise you’re recklessly spending money.” That’s why a good GM and personnel department is invaluable.
“From nutrition, strength, training, equipment, we invest so much in our players when they get here,” he said. “If we’re not investing a lot in making sure we’re getting the right ones, we’re doing the university a disservice.”
