What the Personnel & Recruiting Symposium showed about the present, future of college football recruiting departments 

For three days this past weekend, any trip up the escalator to the second floor of the Omni Nashville Hotel would generally lead you into a swarm of some of the top behind-the-scenes stars in college football.

Figures such as Alonzo Highsmith, the current Miami general manager and former NFL executive, were there. So were staffers from about 100 other college football programs, including several representatives from Georgia, Ohio State, Alabama, LSU and numerous other top teams.

They were there for this year’s Personnel & Recruiting Symposium, which has continued to grow into a top event for people in the college football personnel and recruiting space since its inception in 2018.

This 2023 installment featured special guest speakers such as former Georgia Tech head coach Geoff Collins, On3 founder and CEO Shannon Terry and Senior Bowl executive director Jim Nagy. There were also panel discussions and roundtable conversations with top figures around the college football recruiting world during which they discussed a variety of topics.

As a whole, the event showed and taught a lot about the present and expected future of college recruiting departments.

The evolution of college recruiting departments

When the Personnel & Recruiting Symposium started in 2018, there were 120 attendees. 

Last year, there were 343.

This year, that number was up to 533.

While the quality of the event has helped with that growth, it’s also a product of the continued evolution of personnel and recruiting departments.

Florida, for example, now has at least 10 full-time personnel and recruiting staffers, from director of player personnel Jacob LaFrance, assistant AD for recruiting strategy Katie Turner, director of football recruiting and external engagement Bri Wade, senior director of recruiting innovation Doug Domingue and director of college scouting Bird Sherrill to others such as personnel analyst Joe Hamilton.

It comes as top programs continue to invest more and more into recruiting and personnel staffers that help with the identification and recruitment of prospects at the both the high school level as well as via the transfer portal.

As Geoff Collins pointed out during his speaking session, the investment into recruiting and personnel has changed a lot since he was hired as Nick Saban’s first director of player personnel at Alabama in 2007. 

“At that point, it was me, (current North Carolina general manager) Patrick Suddes, who was labeled as assistant ops, Ashleigh Kimble, who was on-campus recruiting, and then (current Western Michigan head coach) Lance Taylor as a recruiting GA. That was the recruiting staff for the No. 1 class in the country,” Collins told On3. “But it’s completely changed. Now there’s full departments of high school recruiting, full departments of portal recruiting and full staffs and full sets of interns and student assistants for both departments. It’s crazy how much it’s grown and has needed to grow.”

‘The wave of the future’

More change is coming.

During his speaking session, Collins singled out Joey McGuire and his staff structure at Texas Tech. It’s an NFL-style model that Collins likes and sees more teams shifting to in the near future. There are plenty of others in the football world that share that expectation too.

At Tech, general manager James Blanchard and his staff are behind not only the identification and evaluation of prospects but, unlike other places around the country, also lead the way with offering scholarships without needing to get approval from the offensive coordinator, defensive coordinator or some other coach. As McGuire has told On3 before, it “speeds up the process” and has contributed to Texas Tech currently having the No. 2 ranked class in the Big 12 in the 2024 On3 Team Recruiting Rankings.

“I think 100 percent that’s the wave of the future,” Collins told On3. “I think, even assistant coaches, they want that structure, they want direction on who to target, especially now you’re having to go national and you’re having to make real-time decisions with the portal. A kid hops in the portal, well, you need somebody that’s vetting all the film and the background info and giving it to the position coach so they can approve and get to know the player, but I just think the way college football is going is starting to lend itself more to a pro-style scouting department and player personnel department that is tasked to approve and build the recruiting board and make all of those actionable decisions.”

It’s something that could lead to additional growth money-wise for personnel and recruiting staffers moving forward as well.

“During one of the panels, (a high-ranking Power Five personnel staffer) said that the schools, the collectives, the donors, the powers that be are going to start investing more of these six figure numbers into the players and that, by nature, the people that are helping select the players are going to become more and more valuable,” a veteran personnel figure told On3. “So, with the NFL, your top two, three, four ranking people in your front office are always going to make more money than your bottom four or five full-time position coaches. Like tight ends coaches in college probably make more than a lot of tight ends coaches in the NFL.

“But I think at some point colleges are going to have to cost control their staffs. It could be that you basically designate like: Hey, out of my 10 coaches, we’re going to have two that are highly paid, maybe four more that make like the market value or slightly above it and then the last few spots we have on our full-time coaching staff we’ve got to be able to find a young analyst that we’re promoting to his first full-time job and save money that way because we’re going to have to invest in our staff and the people that are helping select these players.”

New recruiting rules

Back in May, I asked Oregon head coach Dan Lanning a big picture question: What’s the biggest thing about college football and the current structure of everything that you’d like to see change in the near future.

His response: The calendar.

“I’m thinking a little bit about our assistant coaches right now,” Lanning said at the time. “These guys are on the road non-stop. I’d love for them to have a chance to breathe and be around their families a little bit more. That’s just a little bit of the nature of the beast. If there’s opportunities to create more time for those assistant coaches to be around their families, I think that’s big.”

Recruiting and personnel staffers have similar concerns and frustrations with the recruiting calendar. Of the multiple new recruiting rules that “suck” according to a Power Five personnel staffer, one that was discussed a lot in Nashville was a change related to first contact with rising juniors.

Prior to this year, first contact with rising juniors wasn’t allowed until September 1. Beginning next year, it will be allowed starting June 15.

“The month of June is so hectic already and now you’re going to add in communication starting at the same time,” a high-ranking Power Five personnel staffer told On3. “I think we’re all frustrated and don’t really understand the validity behind that other than all the other sports do it at the same time.”

However, that’s far from the only rule change or element of the recruiting calendar that’s less than ideal from the standpoint of personnel and recruiting staffers.

“The way staffs are now, a lot of us are having general manager roles,” that high-ranking Power Five personnel staffer said. “And, just like in the NFL, that role should be a pretty powerful role to have a voice and have some decision-making ability, not just institutionally but almost globally. For example, there’s zero people who work directly in football who sit on any sort of committees that makes rules. And it’s just mind-blowing that these people are affecting our livelihoods and they don’t even have experience in our setting.”