Episode 4: Gaizka Crowley • Pre-House GM vs. Post-House GM

Intro

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Gaizka Crowley, the General Manager at Arizona, joins "Moneyballers: Inside the College Front Office" to discusses the evolution of the GM role in college football, particularly in light of the changes brought about by COVID-19 and the looming revenue-sharing era.

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He emphasizes the importance of adapting to the changing landscape of recruitment and roster construction, the impact of agents on the recruitment process, and the necessity of aligning financial decisions with team success. Crowley also shares insights for aspiring GMs, highlighting the importance of people management and being open to change in the industry.

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Our Takeaways

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• Fundamentals of player evaluation remain constant, if not more important, in the rev-share era.
• Managing & training your staff effectively is crucial for a successful program.
• Off-field alignment between the head coach and GM is critical for on-field success.
• Financial decisions must align with team goals, and acquiring players that fit your culture, scheme, city, and community.

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Full Transcript

Luke Bogus (01:02)
Gaizka Crowley, GM at Arizona. I'm pumped to have you on the podcast. Thanks for taking the time.

Gaizka Crowley (01:07)
Of course, thanks, Luke, for having me. Really really appreciate the invite.

Luke Bogus (01:09)
Yeah, man. Well, what's really interesting is, GMs are like all the rage right now. Everyone seems to be hiring for that position, but this is actually your second GM stint. You were GM at Western Michigan. Maybe walk me through how has the GM role changed when you got that title a couple years ago even to what it is now. Walk me through that progression between those two schools.

Gaizka Crowley (01:28)
Yeah, think the biggest thing is just the way the landscape of the sport has changed, right? Like fundamentally, like our job will always be, you know, identification, evaluation, recruiting, and then roster evaluation, right? No matter what school you're at or your title. What I think has changed is the format of how the sport's set up, you know,

pre-COVID, COVID, and then post-COVID is kind how I look at how the landscapes have changed. I really enjoyed my time at Western Michigan. Lance Taylor was a head coach there. He's a fantastic young coach. Think the world of him and obviously Brent Brennan is our head coach here at Arizona. And I'm really gracious and grateful of the opportunity I have here. But they are very different, right? Obviously different schools, different conferences, different parts of the country,

It's really a year to year thing based on until we get some little more firm guidelines and be able to repeat processes year to year. You gotta keep your knees bent and get ready to change whenever we need to.

Luke Bogus (02:23)
Yeah, for sure. like you kind of mentioned like the pre, during, post COVID, that kind of lines up with your career path too. Like you've been in this DPP roster evaluation role pre, during, and post. And so like, how has your day to day changed? Obviously the titles change, but has your approach to evaluation changed? Has your approach to, obviously your job duties have expanded, but just maybe walk me through like how you thought about roster construction pre and then during the collective era and now thinking about the Rev-Share era.

Gaizka Crowley (02:34)
during post.

Yeah, I think the fundamentals are the same, right? And the way you evaluate prospects, you know, so for us, like a lot of teams, but we're going to be extremely focused on our critical factors. We're going to be extremely focused on multi-sport athletes, extremely focused on the character of the kid and what we're bringing into our culture. I don't think that's changed. What has changed, you know, the biggest thing is just the volume where, pre-COVID, you were really only looking at high school players.

junior college and then potentially, a grad transfer here and there where now it's the college markets, the JC market, and it's the high school market. So the volume is way different. The fundamentals will always be the same in the evaluation, but then also, your roster building, you know the joke used to be with the coaches, right? It's how many running backs am I taking or how many offensive linemen am I taking? Or pre-portal, you kind of had an idea based on graduation and NFL enrollees.

But now it's like, I tell my coaches, hey, I can give you a projection and that's going to change probably tomorrow and it'll probably change again the next day. So that's kind of the biggest differences, the fundamentals being the same, but the way you build a roster, you project a roster is different, is way different than it used to be.

Luke Bogus (03:53)
Yeah, yeah. And as you

mentioned, like the volume has changed and I assume to manage the volume, the staff has changed too. Walk me through the evolution of the departments that you oversaw or I guess who you reported into and you were a DPP. Then what'd you oversee at Western Michigan? And then what'd you oversee or what are you overseeing currently at Arizona? Cause like, how are you managing the scale? I assume it's more people, more orgs, more structure, but maybe like walk me through how you, how you're planning for that scale.

Gaizka Crowley (04:19)
Yeah, so I kind have a small school background. like you said, I started at Southern Illinois, FCS, really small staff. I was the only person right off the field. So it was just me, right? Me and the head coach. So, in my kind of career, as I've grown, you do get used to the staff size change. I think the biggest thing though is really setting it up so that people have a clearer understanding of what their jobs are. And who does what, when do they do it, what's the expectations. I think that's the biggest thing and no different than managing

team in any other business where I feel like maybe the DPP or the director of scouting five years ago or 10 years ago, it was more the work, the actual football aspect now. I pride myself and somewhere I try to improve always is being a manager, handling people, personalities, being organized, being resources. We have a team of awesome young interns in the back here at U of A that

you know, we do scout schools with our director of scouting, Fletcher Kelly, and try to take care of those young people and help them in this business too. So, that's something that I really take pride in. But, truly being a manager, truly overseeing and being a resource for the whole department is something that I think is really, really important. Not just, hey, I'm a good scout, or hey, I'm a good recruiter, you know, or hey, I have a lot of high school connections. You know, that's part of it, certainly. But, making sure that you can manage the department is also critical.

Luke Bogus (05:37)
Yeah, and I mean, that's just always an interesting battle in organizations. Just like you were DPP, you were thinking all about this really nitty gritty scouting and watching tape. And then now you're overseeing those people and you want to probably continue to do that, but you don't have time. Have to scale your talents. And by doing that, you have to kind of empower the folks below you. You kind of mentioned the core values and stuff that like the fundamentals are the same about recruiting talent. Like now that you're kind of in that high in the sky role and you have direct reports, how are you translating those

Gaizka Crowley (05:54)
Thank you.

Luke Bogus (06:05)
core values and those core tenets because you're not going to watch all that tape. It's going to be your team. How are you kind of translating that as your roles evolve and you can do less of the tape watching? How do you translate that to the teams that you oversee?

Gaizka Crowley (06:16)
Yeah, I think the biggest thing starts with the head coach, right? The alignment between the head coach and myself. And what I always tell our people is we need to watch players with the coach's eyes. Like that's our job. Right, my job isn't to find the best players that I like the most. My job is to find the best players for the University of Arizona that fit our culture and what our head coach wants. So then what I try to do is tell the people underneath me and then hopefully it goes down throughout the levels

is that these are the things we're looking for. So when I first got here February last year meeting with all the coaches, getting a feel for what they want, so that then I can tell my people from director of scouting all the way down to a first day student assistant. And that takes time, it takes trust, and it takes some time to get on the same page with what we're seeing. But I do really think that's critical, that alignment from the head coach to the coaches, to me, to my staff

is really critical. So something we spent a lot of time on with Scout Schools and developing those people because at the end of the day, if you know, we could have 100 staff members, but if we're all watching different things and we all prioritize different things we'll have more guys watch. But at the end of the day, that's not what it's about. It's about finding the right players for us with our culture, scheme, city, community.

Luke Bogus (07:25)
how much of that teaching and trying to find the culture, the community, those fits, how much of that is training the eyeballs and the brain to think that way versus injection of certain types of data? Like, I guess like how much do you balance the R&D versus just the pure place, film plus scouting report?

Gaizka Crowley (07:40)
I tell people and I tell my guys all the time, like we don't draft players, like we recruit them. So, at the end of the day, you're gonna have to convince someone to give their child to the University of Arizona, right? And so whether that's grandma or mom or dad or whomever. So, there will always be a recruiting relationship component to this. It's something that I think our staff does really well. It's something I think Coach Brennan does really, really well. He's been known as a great recruiter his entire career. So, that's critical. I tell my guys like,

you can watch film all you want, but at the end of the day, if you can't go out there, create relationships with people and be impactful to them on a visit or over the phone or Zoom, that's critical. So, I tell them, Hey, take 30 less minutes watching film in the back and spend that time calling high school coaches or calling recruits developing those relationships. So, that's always the human aspect. And then obviously you've got the football aspect, right? The scouting, the film evaluations, the cutups, those kinds of things.

There are plenty of players out there, right? There's thousands, literally thousands of high schools and colleges. The most important thing is to find the right players for your organization. So, that's what I'm really, really focused on. That starts with the film, that starts with the physical traits and the production. But, at end of the day, it's gotta be the person that we allow in this building is most critical in that process.

Luke Bogus (08:51)
totally agree. I

You kind of mentioned it, that the fundamentals are the same, even though the approach, and adding money into all this equation with roster building and the Rev-Share era. But, the fundamentals are the same. Is there anything broadly that you do see changing about your role or your approach in a post-house when you are given no percentage of the cap to be able to allocate? what are some other like tactics

or just things that you are thinking about in this post-house era for roster construction.

Gaizka Crowley (09:09)
like that there's service. I think it's always out there.

Yeah, I think you have to, right? Where traditionally you knew what your roster was and you could project it out years over years. And there wasn't that much change. Like you'd have a guy here and there, but where now what we've really tried to pride ourselves in is we want to project as much as we can in our roster, whether that be financially or position-based, but then also understanding that change happens.

So, to your answer, your question earlier about like, what is my day to day? Like that's a huge part of it is, is not just what does my roster look like in the spring or what does our roster look like in the fall, but next spring. And it's not just, Hey, how many running backs, but there is the financial obviously component to it that you kind of have to balance. So, continue to work with the head coach and continue to work with, with the staff. Do think that that is really important so that you can kind of project those things because there is so much uncertainty. You to be ready for

the changes that will come up and my job ultimately is to help our program and put the best team we can together no matter what that looks like from now till August when we kick off.

Luke Bogus (10:13)
Yeah. One obvious change that I see anyway, I think we may or may not have ran into each other at this event, but there was Inside the League hosted a symposium during the combine. It was a great panelist of GMs and in the crowd was a bunch of GMs, aspiring GMs, personnel folks, etc. What really struck me as like we're talking about this like post house change is it was three hour event. First hour panel, last two hours was networking. The GMs marched off the stage and all the agents in the crowd

blocked to the GMs and you know, I don't know what they were talking about, but I can presume that it was talking about clients and trying to get deals done. I think generally speaking, just this emergence of agents, you mentioned that your job is still to recruit to convince a family to have your child go to the University of Arizona. But also there's this additional factor agents. I'm curious just generally, how has that been? Has that changed things about that recruiting workflow and trying to get that? Yes. Like walk me through that, that addition to this whole equation.

Gaizka Crowley (10:39)
Yeah, yeah.

camera.

Yeah, it definitely has, right? I think traditionally in recruiting, people talked a lot about finding the champion of that recruitment. So, that might be high school coach, that might be trainer, that might be mom, uncle, brother, where now you absolutely still need to do that, but there is an agent component to it and balancing the conversations with the agents, but then also making sure that you're having those touch points with the family and touch points with the kid.

So, like obviously, you know, we'll work with the agents when needed, but we obviously want to make sure that the kid and the family are being kind of part of that process as well. So yeah, so I was at that event at the combine and was able to meet people that I had maybe had a phone call with or a text conversation with. So, that was good. Cause a lot of that too is for us, like I want those guys to know what we're looking for. And I do want to have healthy relationships. I do want to work well together. You know, we're certainly not going to always agree on

how good I think a player is or those kinds of things. But I do think ultimately having those relationships, those open lines of communication are important. But, then they obviously have a job to do and I have a job to do. And then making sure that we respect that I think is really important. It's something that I try to do. But, I think those people coming in and there's obviously when you look online, there's all kinds of stories of is it good for the game? Is it bad for the game? And that's kind of not my decision to make.

Ultimately, like I said, my job is to find the best players that we can find for us. But it's definitely part of it, and it's new. To me, it's exciting also because it is new that you're able to find your way in and do things the way that you want to do them for your school. And there's not 25 years of precedent. So I find that exciting as well.

Luke Bogus (12:44)
Yeah, that is definitely the exciting part. And I think as far as new goes, there's a lot of new agents and we're not at the point yet where we have an NFLPA certified process for those agents. which again, that's another conversation on how and when that should happen. But, just generally speaking, like of the agents that you talk to, what tips do you have for agents listening to this podcast about the best ways to interact with GMs? What would you recommend?

Gaizka Crowley (13:06)
Yeah, I don't think they realize how small like my world is, right? And at different schools and my, whether you're a GM or a DPP, again, whatever your title is, that doesn't really matter. Like we have a really small circle. You know, we talk all the time, players, coaches, agents. I think, my nickel's worth of advice for agents is to realize when you have a conversation with school A and a conversation with school B, those two people probably know each other.

And, and know that like, if there's information that's not being, spoken, that's not true, like we're going to find out pretty, pretty quickly. Um, so I think that's a part of it. I think the other thing too is, I have people reach out to me, majority of them may not even know but I think having a feel for what the team wants or what the team's looking for and not just, Hey, here's my list of guys that are in the portal. I think it goes a long way. Cause I get those lists all the time when portal season opens up. But, the biggest thing is if you want

your guy kind of at the top of the stack, if you will, if there's connections, if there's certain relationships with coaches or there's, scheme fits, those kinds of things. That definitely helps rather than just no different than a high school coach, right? If you can, if you're a high school coach, which, which I was, in a different life, if you're a high school coach and you've got a feel for what the college is looking for and you can fit that prospect to that college, that goes a long way rather than just sending out your bulk list and seeing what sticks.

Luke Bogus (14:21)
So, agents is definitely one piece that's changing post-house. I think another interesting facet to all this is, you know, post-house, there's a cap. In that cap, teams are given a percentage of that cap. And your job is to make every dime of what you're allocated count. And so what's really interesting is that there's gonna be this correlation between how the team spent and how it went at the end of the year.

Gaizka Crowley (14:24)
Thank you.

Luke Bogus (14:45)
Are you thinking about that slash is there any like new KPIs or new things that you're thinking about about how at the end of the year you need to report back to the AD or you need to report back to the fans or to the donors even that are helping kind of fund this engine. Do you think about that aspect of this whole part or are you more focused on just money as a means to win on and off the field and who cares what other people say? Cause this is our philosophy and you're either ride or die with Arizona. Which on the spectrum is it?

Gaizka Crowley (15:09)
Yeah,

well, I think that goes to alignment like we talked about earlier, right? So the initial alignment between me and the head coach, Coach Brennan, but then also the alignment with our athletic director, Desiree Reed-Francois, her kind of team. You know, if you have that kind of bunker mentality, I do think it's limiting in a lot of ways. At the end of the day, if you look at the best organizations, there is alignment from top to bottom and left to right. So, they do a great job. Desiree is really, really

progressive in a lot of different ways in this space. She's kind of ahead on a lot of the committees and groups. So, she's able to really have information to us that kind of helps our day to day. So, I think that's really important. I'm really appreciative of her in that way. But I think we have to, because at end of the day I work at the University of Arizona. I really enjoy it here. Like my family's here. Like I want to be here for a long time. But, at the same time, I do believe that we're stewards of this program for

the fans and the community and the alumni and the former players. So yeah, so I want to make sure that we're doing things the right way. And I think you have to be ultimately self-critical, right? If we're making financial decisions or we're making personnel decisions, no different than 50 years ago, like you're going to evaluate your own roster. You're going to see where decisions were made that worked or decisions were made that didn't work, why that happened, and then try to see how, hey, how can I apply that to the next recruiting class or the next team? So, I think that's really critical

different things we're doing, I said, evaluating our own roster. We're in the middle of spring ball right now. So, that's a daily thing, talking with our coaches and talking with our strength staff and our training staff and figuring out how all these different departments can come together to evaluate our roster to help make the best decisions for it to ultimately be successful. So, I do think that that's really important. Like you said, not having the bunker mentality. And the other thing too, is we're so new into this. I'm trying to learn conversations like this and

events at the combine or the senior bowl or with NFL executives meeting with different NFL teams that I've had a chance to do in the fall and the spring has been really, really good for my personal growth, but then also the growth of the department of trying to figure out what's the best way to do this. I'm certainly not saying that I have the best processes, but I think we're all trying to figure it out. And there's a lot of different ideas and there's a lot of different ways to do things, whether you're

East Coast team or West Coast team or different even different levels that's what's important is how do you how do you find out the way to be the most successful at the place that you are at because every every job is different every city is different every school is different.

Luke Bogus (17:30)
Yeah. And on that vein of like personal

growth, it's really cool that like, feel like a, a big, career aspiration for a lot of folks that are like enjoy business, love sports is like, I want to be an NFL GM someday. I want to be an NBA GM someday. And now we're entering an era where you could be a college football GM. You could be a college basketball GM. So overnight we're getting from 32 potential opportunities to become an NFL GM to a hundred plus perhaps for the folks that are listening that do like have that.

For the folks listening, being that aspiring GM, that's their life and their career goals. You've reached the mountaintop, so to speak. There's a lot to learn, but what would you say to the people that are starting to climb, the folks who are aspiring to be GMs, maybe what's one or two tips of advice from your years of experience, plus your last couple years as the GM title, what wisdom would you and part of the folks try to become a GM someday?

Gaizka Crowley (18:15)
Yeah, that's a great question. I think, it is so new. You know, I started my career, like I mentioned earlier, as a high school coach and I was a teacher. I got into the recruiting service side to the small college and I've kind of worked my way up. So, I have a little bit of a different path than a lot of my peers, which is something that I kind of celebrate and I'm proud of. I think the biggest thing is, is at the end of the day, you're a manager, like I said earlier, and how you treat people, how you take care of people, how you manage people

is critical, right? You can be the best scout in the world, but, like if you don't get along and you can't delegate and you can't work well with others to see the future and see how all the puzzle pieces come together, like you're gonna be limited. Whether that's you if you're a data person or if you're a cat person or a relationships recruiting person, whatever your personal skillset is. So, making sure the management, the organizational aspect is strong, I think is really critical.

And then I think the other part of it is, at least in the college world, obviously the NFL has been around a long time. But, being open to change and open to new ways of doing things. Like if you go on Twitter, you're going to get a million different opinions of the basketball portal and the football portal. And I tell myself all the time I'm blessed to be in the spot. I'm super grateful for this opportunity. And I'm going to change with the way that the industry changes. And do I agree with everything? of course not.

But, this is providing incredible opportunities. Something that I'm really passionate about, right, is these jobs have created more opportunities for great personnel people, great recruiting people, great ops people, like on the chief of staff side, that in my opinion were overlooked traditionally. You they didn't make much money. They didn't have multi-year contracts. They didn't have cool titles. They weren't able to go to the senior bowl, the combine, right? Like that's what I think is really cool is

hopefully one day every college team has a GM and there's assistant GMs and if that creates more jobs and opportunities for me at 25, then that's what this thing's about. So that's something that I'm really excited about. take pride in, like I mentioned earlier, trying to help school up the young folks. But I think that's the big thing is at the end of the day, it's people, right? The football is relatively easy. The people is usually the hard part of your day to day.

So, really pouring into that and then you got to be a master of your craft, whether that's scouting, data, cap, recruiting you know whatever aspect it is.

Luke Bogus (20:30)
I think it's an awesome note to end on Gaizka because seriously this was so fun. Appreciate the opportunity and thanks for the time.

Gaizka Crowley (20:35)
Of course, man, anytime. I appreciate what you're doing and conversations like these are really exciting. So, I appreciate you having me and bear down.

Luke Bogus (20:42)
Cool, we'll do it again soon, thanks.

Gaizka Crowley (20:44)
Thanks a lot.

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