Penn State's James Franklin Might Look to the NFL for a Next-Generation GM

Franklin says Penn State seeks to find an experienced contract manager to navigate the next phase of college football.

Penn State coach James Franklin watches the Blue-White spring game at Beaver Stadium. / Matthew O'Haren-Imagn Images

College football players soon will be signing financial contracts with athletic departments. As a result, Penn State coach James Franklin wants to hire an expert with NFL contract experience, probably pretty soon. And on the Penn State Coaches Show, Franklin briefly described the job description for the following: Penn State football general manager.

"What we’re looking in this next generation of college football, with revenue sharing and those things coming, is trying to get really a specific contract and money [person], an accountant, somebody who maybe has a background working in the NFL and is maybe a No. 2 or a No. 3 in the NFL to the general manager," Franklin said on the show. "And who maybe has got a Penn State connection or Pennsylvania connection who would love to be working in this role. That's the next step for us."

The subject arose when Steve Jones, Penn State football's radio play-by-play announcer and host of the Coaches Show, asked Franklin about some unique news this week. Adrian Wojnarowski, ESPN's former NBA insider and a premium source of breaking news, retired from his multimillion-dollar role to become GM of the St. Bonaventure men's basketball team. The news surprised leaders in both media and college athletics, though the job itself is becoming essential to college sports.

As St. Bonaventure said in a news release announcing the hire, "Recognizing the rapidly evolving landscape of college athletics, many power conference and mid-major schools have added the role of general manager since 2022, especially for their football and men's basketball programs."

General managers are becoming as vital, and as well-paid, as coordinators. Courtney Morgan, Alabama's general manager, recently signed a three-year extension that will pay him $825,000 annually, according to the Wall Street Journal. General managers organize rosters and scour the Transfer Portal for players. Some, like Wojnarowski at St. Bonaventure, will help broker NIL relationships and fundraise. At elite Power 4 football programs, GMs soon will manage revenue-sharing budgets and perhaps even negotiate player contracts.

"The administrators in the room don't want to hear it," Ohio State GM Mark Pantoni told the Wall Street Journal, "but the professionaliztion of the sport is pretty much here."

Actually, Penn State already has a general manager. Andy Frank played college football at Princeton, earned an engineering degree there and worked for four years as an engineer before pursuing his true passion in football. He worked on Franklin's staff at Vanderbilt and migrated with Franklin to Penn State, where he managed the team's recruiting department as director of player personnel.

Last year, Frank received the title of general manager of personnel and recruitment. He oversees a recruiting staff of 11 that includes a director of player personnel, five recruiting coordinators and a director of recruiting content, among others. But as college athletic departments move toward signing players to contracts and paying them, Franklin said he wants to add experience in that space as well.

"Andy is one of these really smart guys but not so smart," Franklin said, smiling. "What I mean by that is, he’s working in college football but he has an engineering degree from Princeton. So like, what are you doing? He’s been awesome. He’s a numbers guy, he’s a big picture guy, he’s done a really good job for us in terms of managing the roster.

"... We're going to have to find someone in that [financial] role, either working specifically with the football program or even with the athletic department, because there’s going to be a lot of programs who are going to need a similar [manager]. So Andy does a really good job for us in the current model, but we’re going to have to expand on it with what’s coming in college football."

(Frank discussed his role at Penn State, and his journey there, with former Penn State player Justin King on King's podcast, Blue Chip Academy.)

In discussing his hiring strategy on the Coaches Show, Franklin continued his long-running theme of embracing the future of college football. But Franklin has acknowledged some long-running challenges as well.

"I think the challenge right now is, the courts have said any restrictions on players’ ability to earn, any restrictions on players’ ability to move, is illegal. So that that is the challenge, right? That is the challenge, because both of them can create really good opportunities for the student-athletes but also real challenges for them," Franklin said in an interview earlier this year. "We all know that every time you transfer, the graduation percentage and likelihood goes down, because you lose credits.

"So finding a way that allows the student-athletes to still have a great collegiate experience and be able to graduate but there to be some parameters and some guardrails on maybe not stopping the student-athlete from being able to transfer, but maybe there are still some ramifications/penalties for it. So the reality is you want to move, you want to change locations, you want to do these things, in the old days, you'd have to sit a year or something. And I'm not sure exactly what that should be."

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Penn State on SI is the place for Penn State news, opinion and perspective on the SI.com network. Publisher Mark Wogenrich has covered Penn State for more than 20 years, tracking three coaching staffs, three Big Ten titles and a catalog of great stories. Follow him on X (or Twitter) @MarkWogenrich.