As everything continues to change in college football, the makeup of personnel departments with people behind the scenes has continued to evolve as well. It's become more and more like an NFL model and it's been a rat race to grow departments and get as many people as possible.
The traditional personnel staffers that work on scouting and recruiting high school prospects still exist. But they also work on scouting the current roster and deciding on things like roster retention. Then there's the opponent scouting, which duals as transfer portal scouting and taking a look at potential future players should they depart their current school. Not to mention building out a salary cap in the new revenue-sharing world.
So when Hugh Freeze had some freed up staff salary this offseason with some folks leaving, he shifted it towards adding to the personnel department. Rex Hogan was hired as director of college scouting, with Hogan a former assistant general manager in the NFL. Jovon Hubbard was hired away from being Arkansas' director of player personnel to be the assistant general manager of player personnel at Auburn.
The whole department operates under Will Redmond, touted as one of the best rising stars and general managers in college football right now.
"You know I had a little turnover in a few areas, and I took all of that turnover and I put all of those resources into personnel," Freeze said. "(I) was able to get Jovon Hubbard, who was director of player personnel at Arkansas, who was that for me at Liberty who I'm very comfortable with to assist with Will and to get Rex out of the NFL to assist us in that also along with the other guys we already have that I really think do a nice job. So we've strengthened that portion of it because I just think evaluations are gonna be huge."
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