Re: Oklahoma now run like Pros

How Oklahoma Football Became the SEC’s NFL Team

The Sooners’ overhaul includes a GM on equal footing with the head coach, an athletic-director search led by the former CEO of AT&T and a front office modeled after the Philadelphia Eagles

BY RACHEL BACHMAN

Last season, as Oklahoma football was staggering to only its second losing season in 25 years, school leaders understood that they needed more than a rebuilding year. They needed to completely rethink their approach. College football was changing around them and in Norman, Okla., there had only ever been one way of doing things.

But the program the Sooners were going to model themselves on wasn’t Ohio State, or Michigan, or Alabama. In the college game’s era of increased professionalization, they realized that the true blueprint would come from teams that played on Sundays, not Saturdays.

Oklahoma was going to run its football team like an NFL franchise.

“We need to make sure that we keep football viable, healthy and competitive at the very highest levels,” said former AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson, an OU alum who signed on as an adviser. “And to do that, we needed to really rethink how we operated and organized our football operation.”

Stephenson’s arrival last December had been one of the first steps in Oklahoma’s transformation. Though his official title was Executive Advisor to the university president and athletic director, Stephenson’s role was closer to that of an NFL team owner, for which he took no salary. Alongside him, serving as de facto general manager, was Jake Rosenberg, a consultant who had been a key member of the Philadelphia Eagles front office that built two Super Bowl champions.

They immediately set about overhauling the roster. They would treat the transfer portal like free agency in the pros and highschool recruiting as though it were the NFL draft. In a single offseason ahead of the 2025 campaign, the Sooners brought in 45 new players.

None was more significant than quarterback John Mateer, who had thrown 29 touchdowns and passed for over 3,000 yards in 12 games for Washington State in 2024.

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Re: Oklahoma now run like Pros part 2

Oct 14, 2025, 4:43 PM

klahoma was up against stiff competition from Miami and Bill Belichick’s North Carolina. (The Tar Heels even arranged for Belichick’s former quarterback, Tom Brady, to give Mateer a call.) And although he has missed time this season with a hand injury, Mateer’s spectacular play has led No. 6 Oklahoma to a 5-0 record heading into Saturday’s grudge match against Texas.

But the bigger picture is far more profound for Oklahoma and, potentially, all of college sports. The change is an embrace of the player-pay era, and a big bet that successful college football pro-grams will operate more like the Eagles than old State U.

“To me, what better place than a higher-education institution to say, ‘Let’s be honest. Let’s look at the facts and then let’s meet what’s in front of us,’” Oklahoma president Joe Harroz said.

It was Harroz who oversaw Oklahoma’s leap from the Big 12 to the richer Southeastern Conference in 2024, and Harroz who spurred OU’s rebuild. He sought Stephenson’s advice as an outsider with high-level business experience.

Once last year’s portal class was secured, Oklahoma moved to create a new, permanent football structure. It hired former NFL scout and Senior Bowl executive director Jim Nagy as its formal general manager.

Nagy was unlike any other GM working in the college game. At OU, he is equal in rank to coach Brent Venables. The change was a dramatic departure from the archetype of the all-powerful football coach, whose dominion extended from the playbook to highschool recruiting.

Nagy oversees a staff that includes 10 full-time scouts, whose responsibilities include analyzing upcoming opponents, evaluating possible transfer portal entrants, as well as monitoring high-school recruits. In this way, it mirrors the way NFL teams divide tasks between a pro personnel department and a college scouting staff.

“In the NFL we very clearly realized that there’s a benefit to specialization,” Rosenberg said. “And when you talk about coaches who want to do everything or have control of everything, that has proven to not be a model that is successful.”

So far the partnership seems to be working. Nagy’s staff includes front-office veterans with experience in contract negotiations and pro scouting, taking over responsibilities from Venables, freeing up the coach to do more actual coaching.

Under previous NCAA rules, building a roster meant making identical scholarship offers to everyone from quarterbacks to punters. As of this year, schools share roughly $15 million of their annual revenue with football players under a nationwide antitrust lawsuit settlement. “Now, you can’t afford to have 85 of the best players,” Rosenberg said. “Your build needs to be more nuanced, and you need to evaluate players in a much different way.” It’s early, but Oklahoma’s evaluations seem to be on the money. Its 2026 recruiting class ranks in the nation’s top 25 and the 2027 class is hovering near No. 1. Football generates,

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Oklahoma now run like Pros

Re: Oklahoma now run like Pros part 2

Re: Oklahoma now run like Pros

Re: Oklahoma now run like Pros

Re: Oklahoma now run like Pros

Re: Oklahoma now run like Pros

Re: Oklahoma now run like Pros

Im all in on it if thats the new CFB model.

Re: Oklahoma now run like Pros

Re: Oklahoma now run like Pros

And will most likely lose to coots this week!***

Jordan Sorrells is our GM

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