College football general managers have jobs more complex than their NFL counterparts as they navigate a changing, unregulated ecosystem.
In 2024, we’re not just in college football‘s NIL era but its salary cap era, with revenue sharing coming to collegiate athletics as soon as next July. The 134 colleges and universities that field FBS football teams now have to treat these programs like pro sports organizations that need to manage rosters and rapidly increasing payrolls.
It’s why since NIL became legal in 2021, more schools have hired general managers to oversee an increasingly complex, minimally regulated college football landscape, with the transfer portal granting college players free agency every single year. In many ways, the job is more difficult than a top executive position in the NFL.
So it was only logical that after helping build a strong roster for head coach Kalen DeBoer at Washington, he brought GM Courtney Morgan with him to Alabama on a three-year, $2.5 million contract. Morgan even reportedly turned down a $1 million annual offer from USC to roll with the Tide. Meanwhile, Texas Tech‘s James Blanchard makes $400,000 per year, On3 reported, nearly double his previous salary.
College football teams will have to build out a staff under these increasingly paid, increasingly essential general managers to mirror an NFL front office to keep up in this wild modern landscape.
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“You can bury your head in the sand and say I’m not going to play that game,” Louis Riddick, an ESPN NFL and college football analyst with 13 years of experience as an NFL scout and front office executive, told Boardroom, “but if you don’t have someone in that position with a team of people who can navigate what’s at your disposal from the collective, who’s in the portal, and who fits your football team, you will fall behind.”
The transfer portal is open twice a year, giving players the leverage to come and go as they please if they feel they’re not in the best situation for them for any given reason. While NFL general managers can offer their players multi-year contracts, college execs don’t have that type of stability right now. Teams have to quickly determine how high schoolers or 19- and 20-year-olds in the transfer portal are going to fit in with your team and be productive under a certain fiscal budget.
“You have to organize things in a similar fashion to the NFL as a college GM,” Riddick said, “but the rules and guidelines aren’t even close to being the same.”
To muddy the waters even further, Riddick said, these impressionable kids aiming for six and even seven-figure contracts could be advised or influenced by people who don’t always have their best interests in mind.
“Some of these people in charge of these NIL deals at colleges are not certified professional agents,” Riddick said. “You could be getting a call from anybody saying they’re speaking on behalf of a player and they need more playing time or he’s entering the portal. So not only do you have to trust the kid himself, you have to trust the people that are in his ear. From everyone I’ve talked to, things can get way off the rails.”
Players redshirting or entering the transfer portal and sitting out the remainder of a season for lack of playing time or not enough NIL money is now a regular occurrence in major college football. While NFL rosters are limited to 53 spots, plus several more on practice squads, most FBS clubs have as many as 120 players. Only 11 can play on the field at the same time.
It’s why, Riddick said, a general manager has to constantly work with the team’s coaching staff to have their fingers on the pulse of every player and his inner circle. What happens on the field is now just a small part of a coach’s daily responsibilities.
Another fundamental difference between pro and college general managers is who actually pays for the players. While NFL teams have set ownership groups, all 134 major schools have vastly varying NIL collective and donor and booster structures. A GM could be dealing with any number of stakeholders who all believe they know what’s best for the team.
“You’re now talking about all kinds of wealthy donors who you’re now having to answer to if their player isn’t on the field,” Riddick said.
Given the payroll sources a team can have and how much money they’re working with, a general manager now requires a salary cap analyst who probably has a couple of their own assistants. The GM will also require other talent evaluators, scouts, and player development personnel. This expanded college front office then needs to be in lockstep with the coaching staff on how to best allocate the funds, which players — both on the recruiting trail and the transfer portal — best fit the team and fill the biggest short and long-term positional needs, which players you want to keep or let go and managing the egos of players who can bolt to the portal at any moment.
All these new layers and elements in the college game are why Riddick believes you’ll see more coaches leave for the NFL until more guardrails and regulations are put in place. But as their roles increase in the modern game and salaries rise to the levels Alabama gave Courtney Morgan, Riddick thinks you may see some NFL execs make their way to college programs.
“If the salaries continue to climb, I could definitely see people start entertaining those positions more and more,” Riddick said.
The only real certainty we have in college football right now, besides games being played every fall Saturday, is that this is only the beginning of an era in the sport defined by seismic changes. NIL and revenue sharing are only the beginning as the College Football Playoff field expands. Conferences seem to realign every week or two these days, with perhaps larger, more systemic, structural changes on the horizon.
Right now, Riddick said, there are wide disparities from school to school on what teams can offer players, and not every team can compete fairly. Will salary cap guardrails or other regulations be on the way? Riddick said he isn’t sure what’s next, but what’s guaranteed in the new college football ecosystem is that the general manager’s importance will only grow over the coming years as the lines between college and pro football become more blurred than ever before.
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