In January, San Diego State posted a job opportunity for a new position within the SDSU football program.
The Aztecs were ing the hottest trend in college football by hiring a general manager.
The job description mentioned that the successful candidate would be someone who “will lead the daily operations of our talent acquisition department, overseeing roster management, financial allocations, and recruitment. You’ll be the primary liaison for all Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) partnerships, handling player contract negotiations, agent communications, and financial packages.”
General managers have been integral in professional sports seemingly forever. They’re necessary now as college athletics, particularly football and men’s basketball, adopt a pro model amid NIL, the transfer portal and, later this year, revenue sharing.
“It’s a smart move and an innovative move,” SDSU coach Sean Lewis said. “I believe having a general manager is imperative. Obviously, we’ve gotten here because the whole landscape has shifted and continues to pivot with revenue sharing coming.
Lewis said a majority of football players “now have representation and that representation requires conversations.”
“It’s important to have someone in-house embedded with the program,” Lewis said, “that can facilitate those conversations and handle the negotiations as you are in the business of retaining and acquiring new talent.”
SDSU has hired Notre Dame director of recruiting Caleb Davis as its GM, according to multiple sources. The hire has not been confirmed by the university because it is not yet official. According to job description details when the position was posted, the starting salary was not expected to exceed $100,000.
Davis, 25, has made a rapid rise in athletics the past decade after starting out as a student assistant at Cincinnati.
After graduating in 2021, Davis followed Cincinnati defensive coordinator Marcus Freeman to Notre Dame when Freeman was hired as head coach of the Fighting Irish. Davis went from unpaid intern to full-time member of the Notre Dame recruiting staff in two years, spent a year at Troy as head of personnel, then returned to Notre Dame last year as director of recruiting.
Dozens and dozens of college football programs have added the general manager position within the past two years. SDSU is the seventh Mountain West school with a GM on its staff.
Boise State added the position a year ago. Colorado State, Nevada and New Mexico all made hires within the past three months. Air Force and Hawaii added the title to their chief of staff and director of recruiting, respectively.
“You’ve got to adapt with the changing times,” Lewis said. “There’s certain pillars that you need in place so that you can do the job and still develop young men and have the transformational impact that collegiate athletics has.”
Hirings have varied. Some schools, like Nevada, hired GMs in their 40s or 50s with decades of experience working in the NFL. Other schools have focused on young up-and-comers.
“I don’t think there’s a certain profile for the GM model at the collegiate level,” Lewis said. “I think each program is unique. For where we are and the flexibility that we have as we’re about to embark on this rev sharing era, and a year later being pivoting to the Pac-12, I thought it was really important that we were flexible, that we were nimble and that we have someone that is green and growing and not exactly set in their ways.
“I was looking for a really smart individual. I was looking for someone who could be a creative thinker. I was looking for someone who was a diligent, hard worker.”
Hiring a GM seems critical in removing the ever-increasing workload of coaching staffs.
Long gone are the days when building a roster centered on recruiting high school seniors, offering them college scholarships and welcoming them to the program on g day.
The transfer portal changed everything eight years ago when it enabled freedom of movement — and immediate eligibility — between schools for athletes. Four years ago, NIL added nitro to the mix.
Coaches find themselves devoting more and more energy to off-the-field talent acquisition and retention tasks than doing what they got into the business to do — coach.
Lewis spoke about the areas of “expertise (required) now when it comes to the negotiation process and the payment structures and percentage of payments and different things that go into all of this.”
“You need someone who gets excited and is ionate about that,” he said. “That’s not why I got into coaching. It’s not to pore over the dollars and the cents. I understand that is a piece of it, and we’ll continue to drive it forward in of my vision and the vision that we have for the program.
“But to be in the weeds and have those conversations with agents and all of that, that’s not what I signed up for.
“You need someone who can be the expert, who can be a forward thinker as we move through this new landscape and kind of hit restart on what everything looks like on July 1 (when revenue sharing is targeted to begin with the 2025-26 school year).”
The GM position is wide-ranging. Most important is determining how best to allocate resources while building a roster.
“That requires a nuanced skill,” Lewis said. “The same way that general managers have been operating in the professional ranks for awhile. It’s like the capologist has become such a crucial role at the NFL ranks to where how do you maximize every single dollar in the cap.”
The GM also will lead the Aztecs’ college scouting, Lewis said.
“So that we can do a better job of advance scouting opponents,” Lewis said. “(We) have to have our portal process refined, because when that portal opens that becomes a major task to take on and do in a systematic way. And while you’re doing that, you can’t let the task and opportunity for high school recruitment slip at all.
“We have to have the right people to maximize the 24 hours that we get in the day. Having this person come aboard will be crucial for us.”
