The Oklahoman
Mar 13, 2025
NORMAN — Weeks before the unveiling of the Senior Bowl’s annual roster, Jim Nagy frequently rounded up all his scouts from across the country onto a call to assemble their big board of prospects.
Constantly pouring over tape, scouting and evaluating talent, Nagy, the game’s former executive director, pulled out every stop to find the best players.
Not only was Nagy focused on each year’s Senior Bowl but he’d already have players in mind for future years. Now, he’ll carry over his endless database of current college players and his vast array of contacts — including agents — throughout the industry with him as OU football’s general manager. Just like at the Senior Bowl, Nagy isn’t just thinking about how he can improve the Sooners’ roster this spring but he’s, likely, already years ahead.
“He’s been a talent evaluator for a long time, his reach and his net is wide,” Kathleen Wood, a scout for the Cleveland Browns who worked under Nagy for the Senior Bowl, told The Oklahoman. “He’s been dealing with agents, he’s been dealing with players. He understands football, he has a football mind and he’s super sharp.”
With the hire of Nagy late last month, OU is all-in on transforming its front office into a true NFL model and plans to hire a bevy of staff for a new scouting department. Nagy will oversee talent evaluation and recruiting, negotiate name, image and likeness contracts and manage the budget.
Former GM Curtis Lofton provided the Sooners some stability while they adapted to the fast and unpredictable changes in college athletics over the past year. But OU was searching for someone with NFL roster-building experience to oversee its next era.
By committing to Nagy, OU president Joseph Harroz Jr. and athletic director Joe Castiglione are thinking about the long game.
“I thought it was fantastic,” 1Oklahoma Collective CEO Jeff Weber told The Oklahoman. “Literally, could not have been more pleased. He’s obviously a great football guy, which is what we want in that role. I thought it was a very innovative view of the role, exactly what is needed and puts OU at an advantage.”
Nagy is a seasoned professional.
Before his time with the Senior Bowl, he served in various scouting capacities in the NFL for nearly two decades with Kansas City, New England, Seattle and Washington. During his 18 years in NFL front offices, his teams played in six Super Bowls and hoisted the Lombardi Trophy four times.
“This is an incredible challenge,” Nagy said during his introductory press conference. “Growing up as a kid, I wanted to get into scouting. I was so focused on the National Football League and now these jobs are evolving in college football. I wanted to go somewhere where I could win championships, [where] we could win championships. And this is certainly that place.”
As spring ball commences and schools prepare to share revenue with athletes, which is expected to be ushered in this upcoming season, the Sooners feel like they’re moving in the right direction.
Hiring Nagy has been analyzed as a home-run hire by national pundits, a positive shift from an offseason that has largely consisted of backlash from fans following a second 6-7 season in three years. The Sooners, one of the winningest programs of the last 25 years, have endured just two losing seasons since 1999.
Persuading Nagy, who interviewed for the New York Jets’ GM opening this offseason, to leave his Senior Bowl job and choose OU also speaks to the enduring prominence — and unrealized potential — of the Sooners.
“No stone is going to be unturned when it comes to Jim,” Jack Gilmore, the Senior Bowl’s director of football operations, told The Oklahoman. “He knows the strengths of the evaluators that are underneath him, what to listen for and how to develop those people underneath him.
“He’s an excellent evaluator and he’s very well connected.”
GMs and head coaches working together is ‘the right model’
Brent Venables took the OU head coaching job just as the sport underwent historic shifts.
The career field Venables jumped into over 30 years ago — solely coaching football — evolved to where the 54-year-old traditionalist managed a roster full-time, juggled retention, high school and transfer portal recruiting, and negotiated NIL contracts, all while trying to rebuild a program and coach his players. Not to mention supporting his wife, Julie, through her battle with breast cancer, with two of their four children still not out of high school.
Nagy emphasized how he and Venables’ relationship will be critical.
“Brent doesn’t need to be negotiating all these contracts,” Nagy said. “I don’t think that’s a coach’s place at all.”
While framing rebuilt college front offices as “NFL-style” is not unique to the Sooners, it appears they’ve gone further than most, offering Nagy increased influence on roster decisions. Castiglione and newly named chair of football, Randall Stephenson, led an extensive search, along with partner Jake Rosenberg, former vice president of administration for the Philadelphia Eagles.
OU spoke with multiple candidates with NFL experience.
Nagy’s unparalleled college and pro expertise made him stand apart.
While he’s the GM, Nagy’s dynamic with Venables will be key to the program’s success.
“It’s part of why I’m so excited about this structure,” said Weber, who will work with Nagy daily to build and maintain the Sooners’ roster. “You’ll have a general manager whose job full time is the evaluation, acquisition and cultivation of talent. It frees up Brent to coach and focus on the relationship with players that he is amazing at.
“And they work together. Ultimately, the GM provides the talent and Brent coaches the talent. That’s the right model. Before, all of that was on a coach’s plate.”
Third-party NIL will separate schools operating under a similar revenue-sharing cap. How Nagy works with the collective will be a significant piece of recruiting and roster-building.
Venables will undoubtedly benefit from Nagy and his staff taking a massive load off his plate, especially in a crucial season where Venables is taking over defensive play-calling duties.
“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 in,” Venables said. “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, 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.”
Those who have worked closely with Nagy over the years know he won’t be afraid to speak his mind or put his foot down. Nagy said he likes to get straight to the point.
Venables operates the same way.
“People have asked, ‘What’s going to happen if you and Brent don’t see the same?’” Nagy said. “There are enough high school players and players in the portal we’re gonna find common ground for sure. I’m not worried about that.
“The coaches are still gonna be involved in the evaluation. I want to know which guys they wanna coach.”
‘Tireless work’ led Jim Nagy to OU
Jim Nagy’s football roots run deep.
His father was a high school football coach. His family’s yearly vacation consisted of traveling to Detroit and attending the Lions’ annual Thanksgiving Day game.
The first jersey he ever owned was a Honolulu blue and silver Billy Sims jersey. Before he was an NFL scout, Nagy had an eye for talent.
“The OU brand goes way back,” Nagy said.
Nagy knew what career path he wanted to take at a young age and was determined to do what it took to get his foot in the door in the NFL after graduating from Michigan, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in business, management, marketing and related support services.
There were no easy routes. Nagy cut his teeth as a longtime road scout, traveling the country mostly living out of a suitcase aiming to find his franchise a hidden gem.
“The unique part of my background, and we talked about it at length during the interview process, is the relationship piece,” Nagy said. “Being in the league for almost 20 years, I had a lot of existing relationships, but made so many more. And then with the NFL league office, which probably won’t play much of a role in this job. But then the agent community in college football.”
Jim Jauch, a friend who worked under Nagy at the Senior Bowl, spent a lot of time with him scouting on the road. He saw Nagy’s dedication firsthand.
“He loves football and everything that goes into it,” Jauch told The Oklahoman. “It doesn’t stop when you go home, you always think about it. You’re always evaluating players, you’re going to make mistakes, and the ones you make mistakes on, then you try to go back and correct it. That’s what Jim was all about.”
Throughout Nagy’s time as a national scout with Kansas City, former OU head coach Gary Gibbs admired him from afar as a pro linebackers coach.
“He was a good scout with a lot of experience,” Gibbs told The Oklahoman. “A lot of people trusted him as far as his evaluation. He had really good people skills, they’ve got their personnel department, and we’re the coaches. He interacted really well with the coaches when we got involved in the draft. He’ll be a great addition for Brent and the Sooners.”
Perhaps Nagy’s most influential scouting tenure came with the Seahawks, working under general manager John Schnieder and head coach Pete Carroll, men he considers his mentors.
Nagy spent five years scouting the southeast for the Seahawks and intensely studied how Schnieder led the organization and built the roster with his staff.
“What I really appreciated about Jim was how even-keeled he was,” Brennan Carroll, son of Pete, and then a Seahawks assistant offensive line coach, told The Oklahoman. “He wasn’t up, wasn’t down, very down the middle. He did tireless work and he always trusted whatever his evaluation was.”
While Nagy doesn’t have much experience negotiating contracts, his comfortability working with agents his entire career will set him apart as a college GM.
After all, he’s spent his career estimating player values and betting on his instincts.
“You always knew he was going to be a guy that was going to elevate to the highest positions just because of his integrity and the work he did,” Carroll said. “He’s going to be great for that OU staff. They’re going to appreciate his insight and his work ethic.”
Jim Nagy is ‘GM material’
When Nagy told his Senior Bowl staff he was leaving to take the Sooners’ GM job, he didn’t catch many of them off guard.
It was only a matter of time before Nagy took on his next challenge.
“We know the competitor Jim is, and this is just a new opportunity for him,” Gilmore said. “He’s leaving the Senior Bowl in a much better place than he found it, and it’s arguably at the highest it’s ever been. And that’s saying a lot, because this game’s got a lot of tradition, and he’s leaving it in the best place I think it’s ever been.”
The only shock, perhaps, was that Nagy didn’t take an NFL front office job.
“There was a lot of interest in him and there was a lot of push to get him into one of those GM roles,” Carroll said. “There’s a lot of interest in him because of his vast array of knowledge of college football and the pro side as well.”
You’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who has crossed paths with Nagy on a practice field or in a war room who doesn’t have a nice word to say about him.
Even agents who frequently disagree with his valuation of their players respect the way he goes about his business.
“I hate to see him leave the Senior Bowl because he did such an outstanding job while he was here,” Sylvester Croom, senior vice president of operations for the Senior Bowl, told The Oklahoman. “I’m happy for him. I’m happy for Jim and for his family. He likes working with personnel, and he’s excited to get back into football, being directly involved, and then, in fact, being in SEC football.
“That’s an opportunity he thought he couldn’t pass up.”
Through his marketing expertise and wealth of relationships, Nagy turned the Senior Bowl into the nation’s most prestigious college all-star game where the top NFL prospects compete. Agents begged for their players to be named to the Senior Bowl roster.
In the past five cycles, the Senior Bowl has produced more than 100 drafted players each year, representing more than 40% of those NFL Draft classes. Last year, the Senior Bowl had a record 110 total selections, including 45 of the top 100 players and 10 first-round picks.
“The guy is GM material,” Wood said. “He is a fantastic leader in my experience with him at the Senior Bowl, a fantastic roster builder. He’s proven that year in and year out at the Senior Bowl, with the number of guys that get drafted that he brings to that game. He’s going to really help the Sooners win football games, really, that’s what it’s going to boil down to.”
Those close to Nagy say he has a unique knack for finding hidden gems.
“It’s easy to bring the guys in the first, the second, the third, the fourth round, but when you’re getting into your late round guys, that’s where Jim separates himself,” Wood said. “Most teams would have them as a priority free agent and he’d bring them to the bowl and next thing you know, they’d be a draftable player, and somebody that would play in the league.
“That’s where his talent came in.”
Perhaps the most famous example was when Nagy tagged Toledo cornerback Quinyon Mitchell for the Senior Bowl — and he wound up a first-round pick.
“His ability to evaluate talent like that is going to be helpful for us in the portal process,” Weber said. “We’re going to have better insight, better evaluation of talent from smaller and mid-major programs, that’s a huge advantage for a place like OU.”
Nagy doesn’t shy away from that talent, either.
“We’re going to advance scout all our opponents,” Nagy said, “which a lot of people at the college level haven’t done before. We’re going to have a really good handle on our own conference, that’s for sure.
“You look at every year at the Senior Bowl, we would have a dozen to 15 small school FCS or lower players on the roster. And if they’re good enough to be NFL draft picks, they’re good enough to play in the SEC and compete at a high level in the SEC. So they’re out there. They’re certainly out there.”
Nagy’s lifelong dream was always to be in an NFL front office. He was born to identify talent, watch game tapes and build elite rosters.
He left NFL scouting for the Senior Bowl to do just that. Now, he gets to build and run his own front office, during a revolutionary time in the sport at one of its blue-blood football institutions.
Just over 24 hours after Nagy, his wife Lindsay and their daughter Lillian landed in Oklahoma, the former NFL scout was already hard at work doing what he does best.
With a roster in hand, Nagy keenly assessed the Sooners’ offense on the first day of spring practice inside the Everest Indoor Training Center, scribbling down notes in between drills.
“It’s a really cool opportunity,” Nagy said. “And again, I’ve heard a lot of people complain about it, but there’s a book called ‘The Obstacle Is the Way,’ and we’ve got to embrace it. This is what it is. The schools and the programs that are ready to adapt and attack are going to be the most successful.
“That’s where I’m looking at it. It’s funny. I had a number of those texts like, ‘Welcome to the mess.’ I just don’t see it that way. Maybe I’m naive, but I’m excited for it.”
