Baylor is expected to hire SMU player personnel and recruiting specialist Owen Phares, according to CBS Sports.
Phares has spent the last two seasons working inside SMU's personnel department, a stretch that lined up with one of the more productive runs in program history. The Mustangs went from the American to the ACC and did not skip a beat, reaching the ACC Championship Game and the College Football Playoff in their first year in the league under Rhett Lashlee. That kind of roster continuity does not happen by accident, and the people managing the board behind the scenes are a big part of why programs sustain it through conference moves and portal cycles.
For Baylor, the move is another brick in a front office that Dave Aranda and the administration have been building out aggressively over the last year and a half. The Bears elevated Aaron Hunt to general manager ahead of the 2025 season, a nod to how much of the modern roster-building operation now runs through a pro-style structure. Hunt, a former All-American linebacker at Texas Tech who spent a decade playing professionally, has been on Aranda's staff since 2021.
Baylor did not stop there. The Bears brought in Anthony Mauro as assistant general manager after his run as a player personnel coordinator at Georgia, and added Joe Reynolds from Oklahoma State to focus on transfer portal management. Jadyn Wells took over as director of on-campus recruiting, and Connor Killian came aboard as director of football strategy.
The front office additions come during a critical stretch for Dave Aranda. Now entering his sixth season in Waco, Aranda sits at 36-35 overall after the Bears went 5-7 in 2025 and missed a bowl game. Baylor retained him for 2026, and the response has been a heavy reshaping of the staff heading into fall camp. The biggest on-field change came on defense, where Baylor hired Joe Klanderman as defensive coordinator. Klanderman spent seven years at Kansas State, the last six running one of the Big 12's most consistent defenses and developing multiple NFL draft picks, including All-American Felix Anudike-Uzomah.
Jake Spavital returns for a third season as offensive coordinator after lifting Baylor's scoring from 23.1 points per game in 2023 to north of 33 over the past two years. The Bears also overhauled the offensive line room, naming Austin Woods offensive line coach and adding Craig Watts as assistant offensive line coach. Phares joins that reset on the personnel side, bringing background from an SMU program that recruited and retained at a high level through its jump from the American to the ACC.
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