What's college football become? Well, in Curtis Lofton, Sooners just hired their first general manager
What's college football become? Well, in Curtis Lofton, Sooners just hired their first general manager
I think it was Brent Venables’ introductory press conference as the new Sooner coach when, afterward, I approached athletic director Joe Castiglione to ask something along the lines of this:
What’s to prevent a booster from approaching a young athlete and telling him he’d like to host an autograph session and for one hour of the athlete’s time, pay the athlete a cool million dollars.
It wasn’t off the record, but I was mostly seeking information rather than a quote, trying to understand the college game’s new landscape in an age of name, image and likeness (NIL) earnings.
Not looking for a quote, I didn’t record it. Still, I remember the gist and some of the words he told me.
Castiglione said I was using “hyperbole” in the way I asked the question. Also, he added, it remained unknown what “the market may bear.”
I decided the second part of his answer negated the first. How could $1 million be “hyperbole” if the NIL ceiling remained unknown.
Though it may not be paid via a single one-hour autograph session, it’s now believed, for many have said it, that a fantastic college quarterback costs more than an annual $1 million in NIL earnings to keep or bring to your team.
Another thing that remained unknown at the time?
That the advent of big money NIL — now dominated by “collectives” that play a big role in recruiting efforts rather than runaway individual boosters or the entrepreneurial efforts of individual athletes — paired with the transfer portal would require a hire like the one Oklahoma just made with the great Curtis Lofton.
Lofton’s title?
General manager.
Nobody knows what it will amount to absolutely or, really, who he’s working directly for, Castiglione or Brent Venables, though Joe C. has offered a few descriptive quotes, as has Lofton, in stories appearing in The Oklahoman and The Tulsa World.
“It’s no longer college as we once knew it. But it’s not quite a pro situation,” Castiglione said. “We recruit, they draft. A general manager [in the NFL] has much more involvement in the talent acquisition, where coaches have a voice, but it’s the general manager and player personnel staff that has the vision for the team … We’re not in that environment.”
At least not yet.
“You’re recruiting not just high school players, but [transfer] portal recruiting is a huge endeavor right now,” Castiglione said. “And it’s not just something that programs can consider now and then, it’s part of the strategy, like it or not … it’s not business as usual anymore.”
The board of regents that governs the university has approved a $300,000 annual contract for Lofton, who was previously part of the program’s S.O.U.L. Mission staff, a figure that appears quite low given where the game is going and everything that might eventually fall under Lofton’s responsibility.
Like, say, scouting.
Not future opponents, necessarily, but future Sooners, because it’s one thing to keep track of every high school player you might eventually recruit, and still quite another to do it for the entire FBS and various FCS, NAIA and Division III athletes because you never know where you might find the next player you need.
Oh, by the way, there are 32 NFL teams, but 134 FBS programs, 129 FCS programs, innumerable more in still lower levels and collegiate rosters carry many more players than the pros.
It will also be Lofton’s job to navigate the NIL world.
He even said so.
“The job is to make sure that you’re assisting the head coach and really just focus on helping shape the team, especially with NIL,” he said. “Allowing coaches to coach football and taking away any distractions from coaches and players.”
What it feels like is the new college football, with NIL, the transfer portal, potentially the direct payment of players by the university and the Wild West landscape all of it has wrought has spawned a begrudging end to the old facilities arms race and replaced it with a race for staff to stay on top of this brand new world before us.
Remember Thad Turnipseed and the $175 million football headquarters Venables brought him in to champion and build?
Both gone, Turnipseed and his mission, because the booster money that used to be spent on facilities to attract players is now better spent in an entirely direct manner through the collectives.
Now, via virtual free-agency every year for every player, the balancing of how much NIL for this player or that position in the name of putting together a complete roster and pretty much no set limit on the number of auxiliary staff a program may employ, it’s only a question of how far universities are willing to push the new landscape and the shock will be if they take it only as far as they’ve yet imagined.
Why not regional scouting or developmental complexes in foreign lands, a la Major League Baseball?
Why not international and overseas recruiting and scouting, a la basketball, college and pro?
Why not … who knows, but more and more and more.
It may seem like it, but what it isn’t is hyperbole, for we’ve already seen what the market may bear and the positions, like Lofton’s, that have become necessary.
What’s next is all that position may entail?
I can’t imagine.