NORMAN - Jim Nagy’s introductory press conference included words rapidly becoming known to Oklahoma football fans.
“Front office.” “Pro model.” “Contract negotiations.”
OU general manager Jim Nagy
New OU general manager Jim Nagy met the media during an introductory press conference on Wednesday. Mike Simons, Tulsa World
The Sooners’ new general manager hit the ground running in his first public appearance on Wednesday. His role is to work side-by-side with Brent Venables to build a roster in college football’s changing landscape.
OU fans who have been critical of Venables may appreciate the school’s big hire of Nagy. It allows the coach to do precisely that - coach. There’s no more worries on evaluating talent or negotiating contracts.
“Brent doesn't need to be negotiating all these contracts. I don't think that's a coach's place, at all. For coaching, forever, it's been evaluate, right? It's been recruit, right? Then it's been develop and coach,” Nagy said. “Now there's this retainment piece. And I think if schools aren't looking at that and saying, how can we create more time for our coaches to work on the retention piece and build culture and develop a place where players want to stay.
People are also reading…
“Because the worst thing that can happen is we bring in good players and lose good players. Whether that's in college or the NFL, if you draft a good player and you develop him and he gets to his free-agent deal and you lose him, that's the worst-case scenario.”
Nagy will take a heavy weight off Venables’ shoulders.
"To me, the scouting staff we bring in, we're gonna really take a heavy lift off the evaluation side.”
At OU, coaches will still be involved in the final decisions, Nagy said, and he’s not naive to understand there will be times when they don’t agree on prospects
What happens when Venables and Nagy don’t see the same?
“There's enough high school players and players in the portal, we're gonna find common ground for sure. I'm not worried about that,” Nagy said. “So the coaches are still gonna be involved in the evaluation. I want to know which guys they wanna coach. Through the recruiting process, when they get to know these guys as people better than we probably will on the scouting side. OK, that's where we're really gonna come together and blend the talent and the makeup of the player to bring the right guys. Because it's not always finding the best, the most talented guys. It's finding the best fit for OU, especially now in this age. In this era where guys can just get up and go, we want guys that want to be here.”
Venables is self-admittedly a traditionalist. It’s been hard adapting to change and said he’s been “loyal to a fault in many ways but also smart enough to realize things don’t always stay the same and you have to adapt and pivot and adjust to the new things.”
Hiring Nagy will allow him to concentrate on coaching much more. Plus it helps ease the pressure of hard conversations during contract negotiations, which can be stressful with some players.
Venables discussed the difficulty in dealing with some of those talks.
“Emotionally, there’s certainly a business aspect to it, but man, I care about people, and in this space — so you still want to be who you are and be able to make good business decisions,” Venables said. “For me, I’m very open, upfront and honest, so you’re going to get exactly how I feel. Telling somebody — and 18-, 19-, 20-year-olds what their valuation is are not easy discussions. I’ve always been this way, even as a coach, I remember the bad plays, and so I have a hard time with that. When there hasn’t been this blueprint or a model or any type of comparables, this is a very difficult space to be in and a space we had no experience.
Every staff had the same issue, so I’m not complaining at all. It took a lot of time and a lot of energy and I wasn’t the only one. Certainly, (former GM) Curtis Lofton too. We tried to build the systems without understanding what all that should look like, figuring it out.
“This gives you a lot of peace, and it’s going to be able to steal some time back so that you can keep the main thing the main thing.”
Nagy moves forward not only with current evaluations - he wants to get to know the current roster - but future prospects.
He’ll weed through recruits’ film as will a yet-to-be hired group of NFL-experienced scouts in the Barry Switzer Center.
Oklahoma is morphing into the New England Patriots and Seattle Seahawks, two franchises that Nagy has worked with previously. And that’s not a bad thing given the state of college football.
Nagy wants to hire former NFL scouts because they are seasoned.
“Just experienced eyes,” Nagy said. “I think forever college football has been populated by a lot of younger evaluators. I want to bring in proven guys that have seen NFL-quality players. That’s what we’re looking to add.
“So bringing those guys down from the NFL will be important, especially in the portal, because that’s where they’ve been really focused. And so then we have to beef up the department with more guys that have been on the college side.”
Nagy is ready to get to work.
“It's funny. When the hire was announced, I got a lot of calls and texts from guys at the college level and they said welcome to the ‘something’ show. I'll leave it at that,” Nagy said with a smile. “I really don't look at it that way.”
“I think it's a really cool opportunity.”
eric.bailey@tulsaworld.com
0 Comments
Be the first to know
Get local news delivered to your inbox!