As we sat at the table, a realization came to mind.
It was Thursday, May 5, and the Alabaster room was still and silent as representatives waited for the meeting of SEC directors of football operations to start, when two members of Oklahoma's DFO staff walked in the room. Sensing the others' surprise, the Oklahoma contingent said they debated whether to attend the Big 12 or SEC meetings before ultimately deciding their hour would be better spent acquainting themselves with the future than discussing the present. Someone broke the ice by joking that they'd lock the door before Texas made it in the room.
As Oklahoma's representatives introduced themselves to their counterparts from LSU, South Carolina, Mississippi State and the others, it dawned on us that FootballScoop may have been on hand for the first official meeting of the new 16-team SEC.
At the National Football Operations Organization's meetings last week at the Omni in Frisco, Texas, FootballScoop spent two days inside the inside of college football.
For the average fan, college football is experienced as a reality television show, where the cast of characters cease to exist from when the clock strikes zero on one Saturday to when toe meets leather the following Saturday. They're much more than that, of course, and DFOs are responsible for orchestrating their small army's every move, coordinating every detail of a traveling party of 160-plus people and managing the off-field movements of an operation that runs 365 days a year.
The main topic of conversation was a familiar one: money.
In 2020, college football teams were some of the only groups traveling, and their treatment on the road reflected that. One Group of 5 DFO recalled the Atlanta Hyatt was so grateful to have their business that the staff lined the halls and clapped for the team as they left the hotel. Two-plus years later, the moment is gone and prices have reflected that: a hotel that was $99 a room and $54 a meal is now $200 a room and $100 a meal. Two-night minimums are now common. Still, the show must go on, and business offices across the industry are not exactly thrilled to hear that costs have risen, so DFOs shared best practices of how they stretch their travel dollars. Many teams have responded by staying further away from their destination. One Big 12 team visiting Baylor this season will stay in Temple, Texas, 35 miles south of Waco, for instance.
Another common issue discussed: vanishing police escorts in major metropolitan areas. A number of cities that previously offered police escorts now don't (see: post-covid economic budget issues), and so best practices were shared in that area. One Group of 5 team visiting a major metro this September has shelled out $4,000 for private security to escort the team for their upcoming visit.
One SEC city does not allow or provide for any escort from law enforcement; three other league programs require the visiting school to provide the hotel rooms necessary at the team hotel for the members of the escort.
Other snapshots from two days spent inside the inside:
-- No detail is too small for a DFO, especially on road trips. One topic: how do you assign seats on the airplane? Best practice shared: offensive and defensive linemen up front, donors in the back. One DFO shared that, on the bus trip back to the airport, he coordinates that the Bus 4 -- the final bus to pull out of the stadium, populated by AD personnel and donors -- passes the other three on the highway, so that group can already be seated at the back of the plane when players and coaches board.
-- DFOs are the G.S.D. linchpins in the college football world. In one session, multiple leaders share their stories about hosting pre-game meetings and meals for a particular league foe at both Baptist and Catholic churches.
-- During the SEC meetings, the room let out a collective, sympathetic sigh when one DFO said their school does an 3-night overnight camp for elementary and middle-school aged kids.
Many other camp elements are discussed; while every school has its own working system, the Teamworks app for communication remains ubiquitous. Whether it's for those three-night youth camps or those adult camps that come with a $3,000 sticker-price at one program, capped at 100 participants, navigating camps is arguably the second-most demanding task for DFOs aside from the logistics of the season.
-- Another best-practice shared: It's of a benefit to the program for the DFO and the coaches' agent to have a good working relationship. One example: a Group of 5 coach's contract specifies that a certain number of off-the-field support staff jobs be filled. However, the contract does not specify when those jobs must be filled, and so the university's business office has deliberately slow-played the filling of those positions. The DFO made the agent aware of this issue, and the agent has pledged to revise that clause upon their next negotiation.
-- Sharrod Everett, an integral cog in Charles Huff's Marshall program who has previously worked at Florida State, Oregon and Vanderbilt, ascends to a vice president role within the DFO organization for its national representation.
-- Vendor: "How you feed your athletes is being used to recruit against you."
-- The ever-evolving Name, Image and Likeness landscape has absolutely had a profound impact on the lives of DFOs throughout the sport.
At an extremely prominent Power-5 program, there’s now a full-time general manager for a third-party NIL company housed in the football offices. The GM is an employee of the firm, which assists its clients in everything from solicitation of NIL opportunities to compliance and marketing strategies designed to further enhance NIL opportunities.
“We’ve got a GM on campus full-time now, there as a resource, and we’ve got several collectives working with us,” the leader noted. “It’s an employee (of the company), but they’re in their offices on our campus full-time.”
Another element of NIL is the widespread concern of how athletics programs can maintain their capital campaigns for facilities projects, upgrades and other planned enhancements versus how much that will be mitigated by donors perhaps choosing to give to collectives instead of school campaign funds.
A prominent Power 5 benefactor told FootballScoop last week that he had been asked for a substantial gift from a university but also had fielded multiple calls from the school’s leading collective as that group deployed a de facto college development model: fundraising for future NIL opportunities.
Yet in the riches of the sport, it hasn’t slowed down either side for some programs – at least not yet. An SEC member is in the process of constructing an 180-yard indoor facility.
--- Because of the innumerable tasks of their jobs, DFOs oftentimes have keen insight to the overall pulse of campus. Not just the football program.
During one panel, leaders discussed the blunt realities of the sport – “Football drives it; we all know that. Not every sport is the same.” – but they also are cognizant of the goodwill-gestures that can help a football program engender campus equity.
One leader discusses his former practice of ensuring his head coach visited every single campus sport to witness a game, even if the coach could not stay for the entire contest; he said he literally had a check-list. An additional leader reveals, “People all know football has to drive it, whether they accept it or not. When the football team shows up to the women’s basketball game, you can’t put a price-tag on what that’s worth. That’s an immeasurable impact they make.”
DFOs are the hardest working people in the building, and that's when things are going right. They don't always go right. Two examples:
One DFO got a call that the first floor of their hotel was flooded while they were on the bus to the hotel. He managed to get his trainers and managers put up at a handful of different hotels across the city.
Another got a call after the game that their plane would be in maintenance until 1 a.m.; the DFO found busses and the team drove six hours back home.
Except, at the Frisco Omni last week, those weren't horror stories. They were just part of the job.