College Coach Versus College GM – Who Will Wear the Pants?

More and more schools are creating general manager positions within their athletic departments, with this new role stealing autonomy from coaches, personality clashes will follow.

Giants head coach Bill Parcells gets doused with Gatorade with linebackers Lawrence Taylor, left, and Carl Banks, right, after the 20-19 win over the Bills in Superbowl XXV in Tampa, Fla. on Jan. 27, 1991 Xxx Parcells S Fbn Fl / Robert Deutsch, USA TODAY, USA TODAY via Imagn Content Services, LLC

During an abrupt exit from the New England Patriots organization, head coach Bill Parcells minced no words: “If they want you to cook the dinner, at least they ought to let you shop for some of the groceries.” Parcells had been successfully operating as the organization’s head coach and general manager; however, his disgruntlement stemming from owner Robert Kraft’s overinvolvement in personnel decisions led the Hall of Fame coach to depart immediately following a Super Bowl appearance in the 1996 season. In Parcells’s and many other coaches’ eyes, implementing their unique systems requires them to hold complete control. Without it, they cannot do their job.

This is not a singular phenomenon in professional sports. Tensions between coaches, owners, and general managers are common. For the greatest chance of on-field success, a professional marriage is necessary to ensure more harmony than conflict and define the roles for each position. When egos in the room become too big, strategic thinking becomes too divergent, or goals are not mutually aligned, it is usually the first sign of an organizational collapse. 

College sports have largely remained unimpacted by this uniquely professional dynamic. Collegiate head coaches have managed every aspect of their programs: recruiting, roster construction, and game strategy. Now, as college sports move closer to a professionalized model of athletics, this power struggle may end in an ugly way in schools that don’t prioritize a symbiotic relationship between coaches and general managers. 

The GM role is still largely experimental in college sports, and institutions are filling this need differently. Every week, schools post new positions within their athletic departments, either explicitly named General Manager or under a different title with functions similarly associated with professional GM responsibilities. 

With NIL collective payments serving as defacto salaries in college athletics, teams have begun to see the need for a general manager to analyze player ability, roster budgeting, and navigate a more complicated recruitment system from the transfer portal and high school ranks. All of these systems align closer with their pro-sport corollary. Much of the work NIL collectives currently do in recruitment and retention mirrors a professional GM’s responsibilities.

Institutional revenue sharing is anticipated to start in the 2025 academic year; many schools have realized a need to move these GM positions in-house to distribute athletic compensation to their players. Each school will operate with a roughly $22,000,000 annual salary cap to pay their athletes across all sports. While most power conference schools will hit the max payout, many schools opting into the new system will not pay out the full amount.

Regardless of maximizing the payroll, programs across the nation will be delivering serious payments to athletes, and, more importantly, the decision-making on how to maximize this finite payment pool will emerge as vital to achievement. In the current paradigm, success has been focused on fundraising; the more NIL resources a team has, the better; in the upcoming landscape, how you spend your money will be the differentiator. 

This is a unique challenge for athletic departments. How do you staff an organization that hosts many unique sports? Many professional sports teams hire from their ranks; the typical path to becoming a GM is involvement in the sport at the professional level. Some schools are preparing to hire generalists to support multiple sports, mainly as payroll administrators who work alongside coaches to assist in procurement and advise on the NIL budgets. 

Other institutions, however, are opting for highly specialized GMs with expertise in a single sport, which could signal a shift in power dynamics. With a specialist, a school gains a person deeply embedded in that sport’s recruiting networks and strategic needs. However, that same specificity could lead to friction with coaches, particularly if differing philosophies or competing visions emerge.

This specialist dynamic will often come at DI-AAA schools whose only revenue sport is basketball, where the lion’s share of rev-share money will be directed. However, it is not limited to basketball; if an athletic department chooses to hire a football-specific GM, this dynamic could also be created. 

To an athletic department, a GM whose experience has revolved around the intricacies of recruiting, team-building, and strategic program development shows a significant upside in a new era of college sports. This individual likely brings invaluable experience and a wealth of connections, positioning the program to compete at a high level. However, unlike a generalist who oversees multiple sports from an administrative perspective, a sport-specific GM has expertise that can overlap significantly with the traditional purview of a collegiate head coach. 

While the GM is tasked with enhancing team operations, they may also have strong opinions on roster construction and recruiting strategies, which would inherently challenge the head coach’s long-held autonomy.

Two weeks ago, UC – San Diego hired Bill Carr as General Manager of the men’s and women’s basketball programs. Carr, who led the UCSD men’s team from 2004 to 2007 as head coach, holds extensive knowledge in collegiate basketball and has nineteen years of head coaching experience. He now steps into a highly specialized role geared around athlete compensation and roster construction. 

Carr’s deep expertise in basketball is exactly why UCSD brought him on board, as the program aims to get a head start in a new college sports system and separate themselves from their Big West Conference peers. The issue, however, is that his skill set also exemplifies the factors that could lead to tension. 

I do not know Carr, nor do I know Coach Olen at UCSD. I am confident that they can work together in tandem and harmony. But, any specialist GM tasked with the intricacies of building and sustaining a basketball program might, at times, bring a perspective that differs from those of head coaches who have worn the pants, bought the groceries, and cooked the meals for their entire head coaching careers. These disagreements have led to the collapse of professional teams, and it would be foolish to think they couldn’t impact the college game. 

For institutions that embrace the specialized GM model, like UCSD, the challenge will be fostering a collaborative relationship between coach and GM, allowing each to leverage their strengths. Many athletic departments are either in the recruitment process for GMs or drafting job postings. The characteristics of those they select to fill these roles will be interesting. 

Will athletics departments search for “yes men” to do the dirty work and number-crunching for the coaching staff, or will athletic departments look to source individuals with elite scouting talent that could risk the creation of challenging power dynamics within teams?  

There is no correct answer to this question. The responsibilities, involvement, and personality of the perfect GM will depend highly on the incumbent coaching staff. While the Parcells of the world exist, so do the coaches who only care about the Xs and Os. Coaches in college sports have wide-ranging approaches to their involvement in recruiting, delegating more or less responsibility to assistant coaches and other staff members in these pursuits. 

For college coaches, having someone else shop for the groceries does not always carry a negative connotation. While some may look at a GM and become upset at a loss in autonomy, other coaches may rejoice that their focus can be on the game itself. Give them the pieces and let them create a masterpiece. For athletic directors tasked with hiring a GM, overlooking these positions’ interpersonal and structural dynamics could be disastrous. Evaluating the egos of your coaching staff and a potential GM could be far more important than many realize.