Would you like to play WHO'S THAT COLLEGE FOOTBALL TEAM?!?

Good morning, and thanks for spending part of your day with Extra Points.

I’ve got a fun announcement to share. Join us next Thursday, October 30th, for a free video conference chat with me, and Kyle Rowland, our new editor of NIL Wire. This will be an informal conversation where Extra Points subscribers can ask us questions, get to know Kyle a little better, and network with each other. Unlike previous Office Hours, our October event is free to all Extra Points subscribers, not just premium subscribers.

We’ll share the exact link once we get a little closer, but if you know if this is something you’d like to attend, voting in this poll helps a lot.

If you follow me on social media, you might have seen me tease this a few times over the past week. In between projects, I’ve found myself fooling around with Replit and some other coding tools (both vibe-coding and actual coding) in the evenings. Just like how ADS4000 was originally borne out of me trying to learn Python to help with data analysis, I wanted to give another project a shot to see if I was understanding databases correctly.

So I made a little game called WHO’S THAT FOOTBALL TEAM? You can either ask the computer a series of YES/NO questions to figure out what random Division I (FBS AND FCS) program the computer is thinking of, or you can try to figure it out based on five specific clues the computer gives you.

Right now, the game is using FBS/FCS classification, conference membership, school colors, stadium size, historical performance, mascot name, historical coaches, bowl records and geography as possible clues. But as soon as I figure out how to build other data sets (without spending 15 hours making a spreadsheet when I should be doing, you know, reporting), I can add more schools (Division II/Division III?) and question types.

Want to waste 15 minutes when you should be working? I got you. Enjoy the game, and let me know how you did on social media or in the comments!

I’d like to say I’ve gotten pretty good at filing open records requests for college sports financial data. But game recognize game … I’m not the best at this sort of thing by any means.

For my money, the true FOIA KING is Steve Berkowitz of USA TODAY. And his team just dropped another useful database for many of us number dorks: a comprehensive breakdown of salaries for FBS general managers.

I have several of these full GM contracts in our Extra Points Library, along with GMs for college basketball and other sports across D-I, but I don’t have every single deal that USA TODAY has (at least not yet).

And these comprehensive surveys are important, I think, because the “college football GM” job description or profile is very much not standardized yet. Many of the folks on the USA TODAY database were recently promoted out of player personnel roles and are compensated (and sit on the org chart) like you might expect somebody who recently served as a chief of staff or recruiting operations guy. Others, like Jim Nagy at Oklahoma, come from very different backgrounds, and sit in parallel to head coaches, rather than directly reporting to them.

I am personally skeptical that an NFL background is an apples-to-apples comparison to what the college GM actually does, and to me, hiring a player personnel guy from an NFL front office isn’t automatically the best move … but I don’t think we have nearly enough data yet to be conclusive about exactly what works and what doesn’t. Perhaps in five years, we’ll look back at this and decide that lawyers are actually more likely to be more effective GMs … or quants … or somebody else entirely.

One thing we can say, however, is that paying Michael Lombardi half a million dollars more than any other GM in college football was, in retrospect, a pretty stupid decision.

A few weeks ago, Lombardi sent out a letter to Tar Heel supporters, asking for patience and explaining the team’s new recruiting and roster building strategy.

I actually don’t think the contents of the letter itself were very controversial, although it’s funny to imagine the front office braintrust that bragged during the summer about functioning as the 33rd NFL team suddenly needing to explain to supporters that, uh, high school recruiting is important.

I filed a FOIA to see what sort of responses Tar Heel fans had to that letter. And for as many jokes as us Weirdo College Football Internet people made about the letter, UNC sent me just one response from a fan, somebody who was highly complimentary of Lombardi’s explanation and candor.

I do have to say, though, the one thing I think is pretty funny is that the letter itself is in a typewriter font … and also spends the first few paragraphs talking about the Sam Hinkie-era 76ers, which I know Lombardi mentions only as an example of a front office being explicit with fans about a roster building strategy … but this also isn’t the example you ever want to use as a comparison in college football. There are no extra draft picks at stake for getting your ass kicked by TCU.

I agree with the thrust of the letter: that recruiting has become more explicitly transactional and that championship teams need to build via high school recruiting first, and then via the portal. We’ll see if this UNC administration gets a chance to see that vision through.

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I’ll see you in your inbox next week. Enjoy the weekend, enjoy the games, enjoy the fall weather, and we’ll see you all at Office Hours!

-Matt