ATHENS — Kirby Smart made it clear he doesn’t want or need one person as an official “general manager” overseeing his personnel dealings at the University of Georgia.
“We have people that do various things,” Smart said at the SEC spring meetings last week in Miramar Beach, Florida, “instead of appointing a general manager.”
The addition of a general manager role has been a growing trend in college football.
North Carolina coach Bill Belichick hired Michael Lombardi, a former assistant to the coaching staff with the New England Patriots, into a GM role.
At Oklahoma, former NFL scout, Senior Bowl executive director and New York Jets general manager candidate Jim Nagy was hired into the Sooners’ newly created GM position.
These are two examples of the many now part of the college football landscape.
Georgia athletic director Josh Brooks, himself a former graduate assistant football coach and UGA football operations director, has confidence in Smart’s management style.
“We have a highly intelligent, highly involved head football coach,” Brooks said, “(and) we have a great support staff underneath him, and I think we have a phenomenal executive staff when you talk about the people on my staff that work directly with him.”
Both Smart and Brooks also noted how the “GM” role can vary from place to place.
“I think if I ask every coach what their general manager does, they all do something different,” Smart said last Tuesday. “(No players) have asked me who the general manager is.
“We introduce everybody to everybody in the organization, and we have people that fill that role. It may be three, four people, including myself, but we’re very clear in the roles of our staff members and what they do.”
Brooks is in lockstep with his head coach on the GM question.
“It means different things at different places, so there’s not just one cookie cutter way to do it,” Brooks said of the responsibilities school’s are asking of someone in a general manager position.
“That’s probably true when you look at the NFL, and each school has a different dynamic.”
Under Smart, a 10th-year head football coach with two national championships, Georgia has had more players selected over the past five NFL drafts (55) than any program, including 13 first-round picks since the 2022 NFL draft.
Smart credits a relationship-first approach for part of Georgia’s success — even in this new NIL era of financial considerations among prospective players.
“I don’t want a GM tagged to say, ‘This guy is going to be a negotiator, he’s going to go and close the deal and sign the deal,’” Smart said on Birmingham radio station WJOX last month. “It’s still a relationship business for us.”
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