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On Wednesday, NJ Advance Media reported that Rutgers coach Kyle Flood is on the verge of an incredibly unorthodox move by hiring a business consultant with no previous football experience to run the program's recruiting operation. Rutgers being Rutgers -- a chronically dysfunctional athletic department with limited success in football -- the news became immediate fodder for mockery. If Rutgers is doing it (as opposed to, say, Alabama), then it must be idiotic.
Admittedly, I don't know any more about Jeff Towers, the business executive Flood is reportedly hiring, than what the newspaper wrote in its story. But assuming Flood's intentions are pure (Tower is a Rutgers booster, which will surely elicit some NCAA red flags), I believe it could actually be a brilliant move. Flood appears to be operating under a premise I've long held myself but few in his profession will ever admit: The skill set required to put together a recruiting class is completely different than that needed to be an on-the-field coach.
A coach needs to know what pass-protection to call against an odd stack defense. Or how to teach a cornerback when to turn his hips. A recruiting coordinator essentially manages a massive marketing and logistical operation. Hiring someone with real-world experience in the latter actually makes a lot of sense.
And I'd even take it a few steps further than that.
The position Flood is filling is, at most schools, a low-level administrative role. One of the assistant coaches still holds the recruiting coordinator title, but behind the scenes, a support staffer with a title like player personnel director actually does most of the coordinating. Given that recruiting is the lifeblood of a football team, you would think the role would carry more gravitas.
I believe major college football programs, like pro sports teams, should employ both a head coach AND a general manager.
No one would dispute that the sport is a vastly different enterprise than it was even 20 years ago, yet the coaching career path and division of labor remains largely unchanged. With few exceptions, coaches get their start as graduate assistants or in quality control roles, assisting and learning under the "real" coaches until landing a position coach job of their own. Put in your dues long enough and you become a coordinator, which serves as the final springboard to becoming head coach.
Yet the skills required of a successful head coach bear minimal resemblance to those of a coordinator. If all it took was watching film and devising a game plan, then Will Muschamp might still be the head coach at Florida rather than a spectacular flameout. The renowned coordinator proved ill equipped to oversee every aspect of a $64 million operation with a state full of demanding stakeholders.
But what if Muschamp could work hand-in-hand with a GM who handled all of the program's managerial burdens so he'd be free to concentrate primarily on what he does best, which is coach? Most importantly, the GM would serve as a true recruiting coordinator, devising and implementing the entire operation.
To be clear, the job would not be an exact replica of an NFL job. The coach and his assistants would still have full input as to which prospects the school pursues, and, barring a change in NCAA rules, he and his assistants would still make all of the actual contact with recruits. But ideally the two figures would coexist the way Seahawks coach Pete Carroll and GM John Schneider do. And since there's no draft by which a college can select its own Russell Wilson, a college GM would need to be more of a marketing mind than a talent evaluator.
Alabama's Nick Saban was among the first at the college level to build up an NFL-style player personnel department for recruiting. Nearly every program now has one to some degree (though few as large as Alabama's). If hired, Towers would be running Rutgers' version.
But Saban's recruiting department still consists primarily of ex-players and high school coaches looking to get into college coaching or former college position coaches. That's primarily true everywhere, with a few notable exceptions. For example, LSU running backs coach Frank Wilson serves as the program's recruiting coordinator, but Sharon Lewis is the Tigers' behind-the-scenes assistant athletic director for football recruiting.
In the old days, recruiting consisted primarily of hand-written letters and phone calls. Today, staffs design full-fledged social media marketing campaigns. Michigan recently posted its recruiting coordinator position online with a job description that included creating and coordinating a Vine account.
Obviously, you don't need to be a former business mogul to create a Vine account. But nor do you need to be an ex-football player or coach. If anything it might be a hindrance. Do you think Starbucks hires only marketing executives who used to be baristas? Presumably, the company hires talented and experienced marketing minds and figures they can learn what they need to about coffee.
Football is complicated but it doesn't require a PhD to understand it, either.
And while the true equivalent of an NFL GM would solely handle talent acquisition (recruiting), a college version would need to be adept at all the other managerial elements unique to that level. Not only would the head coach report to him or her, but so, too, would a compliance liaison and an academic monitor. He or she would be a more hands-on fundraiser than the traditional head coach. And, of course, he or she would hire and fire the head coach, which, as someone whose sole focus is the football program, would probably be much more adept at that than an AD who oversees 17 other sports.
Currently, the closest model to my idea in the college ranks is Coastal Carolina's unique and successful head coach Joe Moglia. Moglia, who's been profiled extensively, was the CEO of Ameritrade before leaving in 2008 to become a volunteer assistant coach at Nebraska. Three years later, Moglia, who'd previously been a coach decades earlier, took over Coastal Carolina's program and has thus far led it to three straight FCS playoff berths in large part by operating the program like a CEO would.
But of course no FBS program will touch him.
So kudos may be in order to Flood for thinking outside of the box. As of Thursday morning, he hadn't made anything official and thus hadn't made any public comments explaining his rationale. If and when he does, hopefully it will be an acknowledgement that there may just be people outside of the Football Coaching Industrial Complex with valuable skills to offer a football program.
Stewart Mandel is a senior college sports columnist for FOXSports.com. He covered college football and basketball for 15 years at Sports Illustrated. You can follow him on Twitter @slmandel. Send emails and Mailbag questions to Stewart.Mandel@fox.com.
