One of the latest trends in college football is adding general managers (GMs) to their coaching staff. GM is a term sports fans are familiar with when it comes to their favorite professional sports teams, but this is a brand new role that has been created in college football over the last few years.
One of the interesting things about this role is that there really isn’t a defined set of job duties the GM will perform for their program. Their duties could range from helping with NIL, the transfer portal, recruiting or even hiring other positions in the coaching staff.
While many programs have added GMs over the past could years, Georgia is one team that has not done that yet. This may be somewhat concerning because hearing other schools are adding GMs kind of sounds like they’re getting an advantage, but Georgia Athletic Director Josh Brooks recently spoke about why UGA has not added a GM yet.
Kirby Smart is Georgia’s GM
“I think first of all, you have to know the term gets thrown around a lot, and it means different things at different places, so there’s not just one cookie cutter way to do it,” Brooks said via dawgnation.com.
“We have a highly intelligent, highly involved head football coach,” Brooks continued, “(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. We’ve ben together a long time — I’ve been working with Coach Smart now nine years, and now I’m a fifth year AD with him who has staff members who have been with him four, five or six years. So there’s a lot of great continuity there, so I don’t think any of us want to just bring someone in from the outside and say, ‘You’re the GM, lead us.’”
Georgia doesn’t need to change what’s working
Based solely on the timing of when GMs became a thing in college football, it is clear that NIL and the transfer portal led programs to add this position. The timing of this however is why Georgia doesn’t feel the need to add a GM to their program.
Georgia has been the best program in the country during the NIL era. They have won two SEC Championships and two National Championships as well, which is something no other program in the country can claim during this timeframe. So if UGA has found this success without a GM, there is no reason to add one now.
According to the above statement from Brooks, he also feels that Kirby Smart does a great job filling the role of what a GM does anyways. So if he feels that way, then that just adds to why Georgia doesn’t need to add a GM.
This doesn’t mean that Georgia won’t add a GM in the future, but it does sound like if they ever do they will select someone from within the program. And that sounds like a much better option than adding an external person like other programs have done.