What I Learned From General Managers and Player Personnel Directors About Building a Roster

Behind every roster decision is a mix of coach control, budget pressure, and personnel staffs being asked to do far more with less

Over the last week, I spoke with multiple general managers and directors of player personnel about how college football rosters are actually being built.

From the outside, titles like general manager and director of player personnel can make it seem like college football is moving toward a true front office model. Fans hear those titles and assume these roles are operating with broad authority, shaping the roster with a long-term vision, and making independent personnel decisions much like an NFL structure.

That is far from the reality at many schools, especially across the American.

What became clear in these conversations is that these roles often have far less autonomy than people think. Head coaches are deeply involved in roster decisions and, in many cases, they are involved in every meaningful one. Personnel staff may help build the board, identify fits, manage communication, organize recruiting and portal strategy, and guide the process behind the scenes. But the head coach is still central to the final decision-making.

That matters because it changes how fans should think about roster construction.

There is often an assumption that if a school has a GM, then the GM is the architect of the roster. In reality, many of these personnel leaders are operating inside a coach-led structure where their influence is real, but their authority has limits. They can shape, recommend, organize, and advise. They are rarely operating with the kind of control people associate with a professional front office.

Then there is the biggest force of all: money.

In almost every conversation, that reality sat at the center. Money dictates nearly every part of the process. It dictates how much a school can invest in recruiting infrastructure. It dictates how large or small the personnel department can be. And, most importantly in today’s environment, it dictates what a program can offer players and how aggressively it can pursue them.

That means roster building is not simply about identifying talent or evaluating the portal well. Schools may know exactly who they want. Staff may have a strong plan. Coaches may agree on fit and value. None of that changes the financial limits that shape the board before decisions are ever made public.

That pressure is especially pronounced in the American, where many programs are still trying to compete in a high-stakes roster market without the staffing or financial structure to fully support it.

Another consistent theme was how many hats these personnel leaders are being asked to wear. At some schools, these roles are far broader than the title suggests. They are evaluating talent, helping manage recruiting operations, coordinating portal logistics, supporting relationships with prospects and families, handling internal communication, and filling gaps that exist because the program does not have enough infrastructure around them.

That creates a difficult reality. These jobs are growing in importance, but in many cases they are also being stretched thin. Schools want better roster strategy and more sophisticated personnel operations. At the same time, many of them are still asking a small number of people to carry a workload that would be spread across a larger front office in a more resourced environment.

That is why I keep coming back to the future of these roles.

There is a growing belief that college football will eventually mirror the pro model, with roster power shifting more clearly toward a true general manager structure. After these conversations, I am skeptical that this becomes the norm.

For that to happen, programs would need to move the GM higher up the org chart and give that role a level of authority that would directly challenge the traditional power of the head coach. In college football, that is a major structural and cultural shift. Most programs are still built around the head coach as the central figure. In many cases, the athletic director is helping shape the broader roster environment anyway through budgeting, staffing, and institutional priorities.

So while these personnel roles will continue to matter more, I do not think that automatically means they will evolve into pro-style front office jobs across the sport.

And that brings us to the real point.

If fans want to understand how their program’s roster is being built, they need to look beyond the title. They need to understand who controls the decisions, who controls the money, and who is actually empowered inside the building.

Because when a roster succeeds or fails, the answer is rarely tied to one person alone. It is tied to the structure behind the program.

That is the part of roster building fans need to understand. And that is where accountability really lives.