Lucas Panzica reveals why the Tennessee Vols are bucking a major trend in the world of college football.
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00:00There was some interesting news in the world of college football last week
00:02that highlighted a trend going around the sport that the university of
00:06Tennessee has not yet jumped in on.
00:07We'll talk about it next.
00:12Hey, Lucas Panzeca here from one of four, five, the zone, and it is e-sport.
00:15So last week, Stanford university made the move to fire head football
00:19coach, Troy Taylor, after back-to-back seasons going three and nine.
00:23If you're a Tennessee fan, you don't really bat an eye at that headline.
00:26It has nothing to do with the Vols program.
00:29And that is certainly true.
00:30But when you look closer at how Stanford made this move, there's
00:33one really interesting component.
00:36It was not the athletic director as it typically is making the decision
00:39and even putting out the statement about why Stanford is moving on and
00:43where they're headed in terms of the direction of the football program.
00:46In fact, it was program legend and current Stanford general manager,
00:50Andrew Luck making that call.
00:53Now we're seeing this become much more commonplace across the sport of
00:57college football in this ever-changing world of NIL and the transfer portal.
01:02More and more programs, including in the sec are bringing in people to be the
01:07general manager for a roster management role.
01:11We've seen Vanderbilt do this.
01:12We've seen Oklahoma do this just a month ago.
01:15The Sooners hired Jim Nagy, the director of the senior bowl to come over and be
01:19the GM of the football program after he had just interviewed for a couple of
01:23vacant GM positions in the NFL.
01:26As college football continues to look more and more like professional football
01:30in terms of the way that it's run more and more college football programs will
01:34bring in general managers to help take things off of head coaches plates because
01:39it is simply too much of a workload right now to keep up with all the moving parts.
01:44Now, Tennessee has not jumped in on this trend.
01:46Why is that a couple of different reasons?
01:48Number one, Josh Hypel, though he does not have a GM helping him
01:52oversee the program has a massive network, a massive support staff.
01:56In fact, one of the highest paid support staffs in the country, whether that's
02:00quality control analysts or people in roster management roles to help him
02:05navigate the world of NIL and the transfer portal.
02:08Number two, we see the extreme of Stanford letting its GM literally run
02:13its football program that will not happen at Tennessee as long as Danny
02:16white is the athletic director.
02:19Danny white is an elite athletic director in the country for multiple
02:23reasons, whether it's fundraising, marketing, being the face of a department,
02:27all of the things that it takes to be an excellent ad, Danny white has all of
02:32those in spades, but arguably most importantly, where Danny white has hung
02:36his hat as a, in his career as an ad, whether it's at Buffalo, UCF, Tennessee.
02:43Hiring and firing coaches has been his specialty.
02:46You look at the moves he's made just as the ad at Tennessee, obviously
02:50Josh Hypel, the one that sticks out the most, the hiring of Kim Caldwell
02:54has had the lady vols in the sweet 16 in year one.
02:58And at his previous stops, Danny white has made hires that have impacted that
03:02program and then others as those coaches have gone up levels in their respective
03:07sport.
03:08So Danny white will always be the one to hire and fire coaches and make those
03:14within Tennessee's athletics department, make no mistake.
03:17And this is not to say Tennessee couldn't go out and get a general
03:19manager to help with all of those roster management responsibilities, but it
03:23certainly won't be as extreme as what we just saw with Stanford.
03:27It will be interesting to see though, how Tennessee continues to navigate
03:31this world of NIL and the transfer portal as the vols chase championship
03:35under Josh Hypel.