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Business|Why General Manager Is the Hottest Job in College Sports
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/09/business/college-sports-general-managers.html
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With players being paid and routinely changing schools, universities increasingly need someone besides a coach to put together a team.
Jan. 9, 2025, 6:22 p.m. ET
Bill Belichick grew up around college football. As a child, he tagged along as his father, Steve, went about his duties as an assistant coach at the United States Naval Academy.
But his own five-decade coaching career never took him back to the college game until recently. And in that time, and especially in the past few years, the sport has changed tremendously.
There are now name, image and likeness rules, or N.I.L., that allow players to be paid directly, sometimes to the tune of millions of dollars. Players can use the transfer portal an unlimited number of times, which has led some to school-hop each season. The N.C.A.A. has been thoroughly defanged.
So when the 72-year-old Belichick, one of the most infamous curmudgeons in a sport filled with them, was named the head coach at the University of North Carolina in December, there were some who were skeptical that he could adapt to a world in which college programs essentially need to re-recruit their own players every year and often help them secure ever-larger N.I.L. payments, all while keeping deep-pocketed donors happy.
As Kliff Kingsbury, the Washington Commanders offensive coordinator and the former head coach at Texas Tech University, put it: “I don’t see my man going in any home visits or doing, like, the cocktail hour after the visits. I just don’t.”
Of course, Kingsbury added, “maybe he’ll set it up like an N.F.L. deal.”
That is, in fact, exactly what Belichick will do. Michael Lombardi, who worked with Belichick as a front office executive at the Cleveland Browns and the New England Patriots but has spent much of the past decade as a writer and broadcaster, will be North Carolina’s general manager. It is a job title that has existed in professional sports for decades, but it used to be anathema to the college realm, where the head coach ruled over every detail.
