Transcript 0:01 Welcome to the Osceola's YouTube channel. Thanks for watching. 0:04 A, uh, very important day, I think, for the future of Florida State football, as we got to sit down and ask questions, listen to thoughts from Florida State Athletic Director Michael Alford, new, I believe it's Associate AD and General Manager John Garrett, as well as Head Football Coach Mike Norvell. 0:24 And maybe the only way to start after thirty-five minutes of a very significant broad discussion, lots of questions, we'll unpack a number of stories on the osceola.com. But maybe, Jerry, I think to start, 0:36 the structure of the front office is going to shift, I think, dramatically more toward an NFL model. 0:45 I do believe communication is very important within this process, but communication should be helped because Mike Norvell and Michael Alford, in the end, have brought in John Garrett, who spent two years here at Florida State, twenty twenty-two, twenty twenty-three, before he went to Duke in an expanded role. 1:05 Um, obviously won a ACC title with Duke just a month ago, right? So that was a surprise run by Duke. Um, Jerry, you've seen a lot of different structures- Yeah... 1:17 of how you've even seen the front office grow from essentially nothing- Right... to what it is now. W- Remember when Coach Bowden didn't have a recruiting coordinator. And now you have more of an NFL mindset. 1:33 Broadly, let's maybe assign tasks to what do we think John Garrett is. I think scout, evaluator. Negotiator, contracts guy. 1:49 And Mike Norvell's saying he doesn't wanna be that guy, he doesn't- Right... wanna be. Well, let's go back. And so, you know, why, why did they do this? 1:57 I think what's happened is, back in the day, I talked with the old coaches about this often, you know, they recruited, and that was a lot. You know, they were away from their families a lot with high school recruiting. 2:09 Now, guys have to, not only do they have to recruit players, because of the transfer portal, they gotta recruit their own team. As, as John said, every semester 2:22 you have to, uh, to know what your roster is gonna be for the future. It's a constant process of, uh, recruiting high school talent, retaining your own players, and then the portal really made a big difference. 2:37 And, uh, it's, it's a lot. I was saying to somebody, uh, today, if you think about it, every one of the players today have agents, and I said that agents plural. Some of them have more than one. 2:54 And, and so if you think about how many agents that is- Yeah... I mean, you got a hundred and five guys on your roster, and then all the kids that in high school that you're recruiting are ha- they have agents. 3:09 All the guys that are in the portal, they have agents. It's not like you're dealing with one agent. You might be dealing with really a hundred. Plus a mom or a dad or another- Yeah... 3:23 person who's, who's got the ear of, of a young man. Yeah. So that's what all that work that goes into that. And, and, uh, and when you think about it, it's not just recruiting. 3:35 But once the kid says, "Yeah, I'm interested," now you're in contract negotiation with his agent, and that's not where you want your head coach. 3:47 You, you want your head coach to say, "Look, I'm gonna coach you and motivate you and help you, you know, become the best person you can be." 3:57 But you're gonna have to work with the front office people to work out the contract details. And, and they're numerous because there's no standardized contract like in the NFL. Right. 4:13 It's every state has different rules. Every school has different. And so it's just a lot. And no union to have a collective bargaining agreement of sorts. Yet. Yet. Um, check back in in a couple years. Yeah. We'll see. 4:29 Yeah. Um, so I, I think we've kinda hit on a little bit of what John Garrett- Why... is, is going to do. Yeah. 4:37 And the why, I think, is, is this job of being a head coach and managing the structure and managing the player development. Yeah. It's become so much. You need, 4:49 you need an NFL mindset, but you need guys who have that expertise. They've been in various roles. And again, for those of you who don't know, John Garrett, 4:58 coached at the college level, was a head coach, longtime position coach. Was in the NFL at multiple, uh, multiple teams. His brother is Jason Garrett, coached with the Cowboys, now with NBC Sports. 5:09 So there's a lot of expertise. John's been a scout. He's been a position coach. I think we were often looking at a, is it a Martin Mayhew type? Is it a Brian Xanders type? 5:22 In the end, it's a John Garrett, who I think has had his feet in both worlds, negotiating contracts probably for the likes of a Darian Mensah at, at Duke of late, right? Right. 5:33 So I think there is a best of both worlds in a guy like John Garrett. Yeah. I, I, I, I talked to Martin Mayhew about that. 5:41 And, uh, and, and, uh, you know, Martin had interest in the job but wasn't sure that he was a fit for it because of that factor. You're dealing with college kids, and they gotta go to class. You know, they get homesick. 5:56 When you're just in the NFL, you're dealing with more grownFinished products after college. You know, by the time they get to you in the NFL, they're, they're not homesick anymore. 6:08 [chuckles] And, uh, and, and that's what these coaches here, the general managers, are gonna have to deal with, kids that they're kids at this point. And so, uh... 6:20 And they gotta go to class, and if they don't go to class, there's consequences in their contract. 6:26 And so I think Garrett having both college and pro experience was important, it sounded like, in the way Alford introduced it, that he wanted a guy with both, both, uh, experiences, and, and, and Garrett definitely has that. 6:43 And Garrett has had to hit the ground running. Um, this hire was in the works, but really not announced until right around New Year's. And oh yeah, the portal opened up on Friday, January second, 6:54 and guys can jump in the portal. They've had visitors here at Florida State, uh, again, DJ Lagway, Anthony Calandria. Florida State's had, uh, a number of guys come in on offense and defense. 7:04 We've had a lot of those stories on theosceola.com, notebooks chronicling various prospects who have come in. Jerry, let's, let's maybe hit on a couple of takeaways. Again, it was thirty-five minutes. 7:14 There was a lot to unpack. We'll have some stories, columns. We think three or four. Yeah. Yeah. There, there could be, there could be enough to keep us busy for a week. Yeah. 'Cause it, it is nice. 7:23 This is a Monday press conference, and, and it could set sort of a, a story calendar for the week. Right. But let's maybe, maybe think about a story that, that's top of mind for you that, that you, that you wanna attack. 7:34 Well, I was curious about, and I, I... One of the reporters, uh, asked the question about who ultimately makes the decision on an evaluation, and they were very clear about that's the head coach. 7:49 That's what Garrett said. The head coach has the ultimate decision. So for you, those of you who are wondering about that, uh, they were very clear that, uh, Mike sets the, uh, objectives for the program, 8:04 uh, the standards, the... and he has final say on, on the players. Uh, Garrett made it clear, "I'm here to assist him and help him in the process, but he sets the direction." Um, uh, that I thought was, uh, significant, 8:22 uh, and, and I think a lot of people kind of wonder about that, you know? 8:27 And, and, oh, one other thing about this structure, Bob, I think is really important, is they're trying to build a, a structure that's evergreen, that g- lives beyond the, the head coach. 8:40 So it doesn't matter who your head coach is, that front office is the front office. So when you go to hire a head coach, uh, the front office is just part of the athletic department like it is in an NFL team. Right. 8:55 And so, uh, what you're seeing, if you're following the, the portal right now, is when a head coach leaves, you'll see forty, forty-five players go into the portal. 9:07 And I think with this structure, you'll probably see more stability of, of, uh, staff. Uh, not a staff, but a personnel. 9:16 And I, I think the, the question I wanna kind of flesh out for another story down the road is, uh, this sport, college athletics, needs multi-year contracts. It... 9:24 I, I think fans crave some type of stability in watching the programs that they love, and this is not just a football discussion. It, it's really all sports. 9:34 And with the portal decisions, you know, again, you've written about the intention to transfer. A lot of that, I feel, is leverage. I think you feel the same way. But, but 9:45 part of it, I think, is just working toward more stability, uh, within your structure a- and we'll see how some of those things play out. 9:52 I'm not sure I'm, I'm gonna get to see multi-year contracts with a lot of players for, for quite a long time. Uh, John Garrett, I think, had maybe one of the best lines of the press conference. 10:01 He said, basically, whether somebody is in the portal or not, they're in the portal, and I think it's, it's a- Absolutely... constant. 10:09 It's, it's not just a semester or that portal's open for a fifteen-day window once a year, uh, which the coaches wanted, right? But it's open every day. You have to constantly re-recruit. 10:21 And there's rules that tell a coach that you're not allowed to contact a player unless he enters the portal, and the portal... 10:29 I mean, the players are told, "You cannot have contact with another coach un- until after you've in the portal." 10:36 So you have to go to your compliance director and say, "I wanna enter the portal," and they have forty-eight hours to put you in, and then you can talk to coaches, but nobody's following those rules. You know? 10:49 [chuckles] It's the, the coaches, they, th- they may not reach out to the kid, uh, directly, but they'll do it through a surrogate. You know? So John Garrett's point is correct that even if you're not in the portal. 11:06 Yeah. And we're seeing more. Think about all the years we've been out there, uh, meeting transfers on these visits. We haven't seen agents like we've seen- This year... 11:17 this, this feels like the year where agents are out there. Um, agents were out there for Anthony Calandria. He had two. Yes. He had two. [chuckles] They were both there. And they went back in the building. 11:30 There was some negotiating, and then they came back out, and they left without a deal and went to Georgia Tech. Um, and we should say DJ Lagway, I think his dad is representing him. His dad was on the visit. 11:41 Um, there may be an agent behind the scenes, so to speak. DJ's going to, uh, to Virginia next. Might have some other visits. So the agent, um, 11:51 the concept of dealing with these agents is just more of, of the professional sports, I think, dipping into college athletics, at least on the football side of it. 12:02 Let, let's go back to your point on the two, on the multi-year contract.Like a lot of fans ask this question, can't the coaches sign them to a multi-year contract? And they address that a little bit in there. 12:14 But the, [clears throat] but the problem with it is because you don't have a players union, and you don't collectively bargain, right? 12:24 Uh, what it would be a acceptable multi-year contract, it's up to you as a school to negotiate a multi-year contract with the player. And if they don't... 12:37 agent or them, don't wanna sign a multi-year contract, then it becomes a matter of whether you're gonna get that kid or not. If he doesn't wanna sign a multi-year contract, you just lost him. 12:50 And so they have all the leverage. The players have the power now. And it makes me wonder as my wheels are spinning on this, Jerry, I almost ask myself, what if Kirby Smart wanted to do it? 13:03 He might be able to get away with it. Right. I'm not sure Mike Norvell can, can get away with it. It- Not with the high-profile players. And you might be with some guys. I- Yeah. 13:13 I remember talking to Luke Lacks about this. He says he wanted to do that with a lot of his younger guys. A lot... You wanna do with a freshman because you wanna have two years- To develop... 13:21 to invest into the relationship and develop. I think coaches crave that time of understanding, "I'm gonna have you for two years. I want that." Yeah. I imagine with some kids who- Yeah... 13:34 wanna come to Florida State, a Luke Lacks can say, "Look, you're not gonna help me the first two years you're here. You know, we're gonna invest a lot of time and money on you to..." Especially like offensive linemen. 13:48 "So I want a three-year commitment from you, and if you don't wanna sign it, then go on." Yeah. Yeah. Um, but then you get into the next question is, are they enforceable? And that's... 14:04 Until we get to collective bargaining [chuckles] again, and it'll be years, uh, all these can be solved. So I think people that are frustrated with college sports right now, 14:16 be patient, and I think we're gonna get there, but it's gonna take a while. It, it is tough to be patient. 14:23 Um, one other note as we've-- before we go out the door here, um, Mike Alford, I think, was asked about, are there more hires to come with the front office? He, he did not state a number. 14:35 Obviously, he's not gonna state any specific names, but he did say, uh, wanting to get John Garrett, wanting to get, uh, I believe Taylor's last name is Edwards, uh, wanting to get Taylor in place with John. 14:45 So I think that in terms of an organizational chart, um, maybe being horizontal, right? 14:52 Um, some of those pieces are there, Taylor under John, and Taylor being a little bit of that, I think, cap guy who's doing some of the financial structures, what does it look like? 15:03 Um, but yes, I think you can see Florida State making some more hires, potentially on the scouting side, I, I would think, Jerry- Oh, yeah... um, to help out the assistant coaches. Yeah, I think so too. 15:13 That was the question I asked, was about the, the, uh, what's the process look like of evaluation? 15:21 And, uh, John said it, it, it begins with the head coach, not the head coach, but the, uh, position coach and his liaison. And I had to double back with him to ask him what he meant by liaison. 15:34 And a liaison is a guy assigned to him. 15:38 Like, uh, when Nick Saban was at Alabama, his position coach had a quality control coach who did film breakdown, and then he had a high school relations coach who studied all the high school film and would present it to the position coach. 15:57 So what I was asking, 'cause that's huge when you're in game planning, that you don't have to be spending all your time evaluating high school film. So there is a liaison that works with the high school coach and, uh... 16:11 Not the high school coach, with the position coach. So there's more than the position coach evaluating film. And then any other coach who has a recruit, say, uh, Bob's the offensive line coach, and I'm the 16:27 wide receiver coach. I, I almost said linebacker. But, uh, 16:33 uh, if I had a, an offensive lineman in my area I want, then we would take that film to Bob, and Bob would have the final say on that kid, and then take him every week. 16:46 John said they would, uh, get with the coaches and review who they were-- where they're at on the board with these kids. So it's a collaborative effort, as they said. The other... 16:58 One last thing I've gotten and I'll stop is I thought Alford m-made a very important statement for a lot of you who are concerned about this. 17:10 Michael Alford has said, he'd been quoted saying that there's a hard cap, and what that is, is in the revenue sharing, each school gets twenty point five mi- million for revenue share, 17:23 and then they can distribute at the university. I mean, Alford can give it whatever percent he wants to football, basketball, and other sports. 17:32 And people have interpreted Alford's statement that we have a hard cap, meaning that he's not gonna go over that. Well, you can't, by NCAA rules, go over the hard cap with the revenue share. 17:48 That doesn't mean you can't have NIL on top of that, and he clarified that point today, I thought, pretty well. And that's the new adventure for Florida State, is how do you get creative in finding those, 18:04 those businesses, those sponsorships who- Right... hey, with Deuce Robinson coming back, it-We saw Tommy Castellanos have a Powerade deal, for example. Is Deuce Robinson going to have a Powerade type of deal? Right. 18:15 Um, who becomes- Well, the one area I've-- I started to write this, and I double-checked myself on it and found out I was wrong. [chuckles] But, uh, but I'm right now. 18:28 At one time I thought that, uh, if FSU was to activate its-- their sponsorship deals through Legends, all the people that buy the scoreboard signage, the coaches shows, the radio broadcast, 18:44 those, those are all assets that Legends sells for Florida State. 18:50 Well, that seems natural to me, uh, that those sponsors might wanna have an NIL deal as well as the, the physical asset of the advertising. 19:04 And the NCAA changed that rule in twenty twenty-four, so they can do that, and FSU is gonna activate on that. 19:12 I've been told that their, their, the, the sponsor of our, of our programs are getting a proposal for NIL deals for the student athlete. So that, that, that can generate a fair amount of money. 19:28 And it's existing relationships, but you just gotta be creative in, in how you- Present it and you a-activate it. And I think if you have the right athlete and you have the right coach present... 19:40 Maybe not the right coach presenting it, but somebody with an administration helping to explain the deal and explain the why, why is it beneficial to Florida State Athletics and your brand, right? Yeah. 19:50 Like Glory Days did this with the offensive lineman. They, they ha-- they were sponsoring, uh, NIL with the offensive lineman, and, uh, Travis decided he was gonna come with them. 20:03 And when the word got out that Travis was there, they had a line wrapped all the way down the street. [chuckles] And so they-- these athletes do have some power, um, that's beneficial commercially. 20:17 So y-you just have to go out, and, and I would make that really priority number one. Um, you can't close a deal unless you've got some NIL money to do it with. Don't matter how good a... 20:31 Coach Bowden wouldn't have been very effective on the couch without an NIL deal. [chuckles] Well, yeah, on that note, lots of stories to come on theosceola.com. Appreciate you watching on The Osceola's YouTube channel. 20:45 Uh, like the video. Like it. If you want to, subscribe to our channel, help us grow. Um, we've got morning emails every day. You can go to our website. 20:53 If you're not getting our morning emails, you may wanna jump on those, get a chance to subscribe. You can also subscribe to theosceola.com, get all of our pay, uh, premium content. 21:03 Jerry's gonna have a column, I'm sure, in the next day or s- two on this. Um, we'll have some more analysis and takeaways for you too. Uh, thoughts on the message board. 21:12 You can t- chat with us, talk with subscribers there. We appreciate you watching, uh, sports writers in a truck talking- [chuckles]...big picture of college athletics. But, uh, this was a special day. 21:24 We wanted to kinda give you, uh, some quick thoughts about, uh, our quick takeaways from, uh, from a pretty major day at Florida State. And happy holidays to everybody. Hope you had a great one. Happy holidays. 21:36 The transfer portal remains open. It will remain active. Still plenty for us to do as far as, uh, talking football with you all, uh, covering basketball and the other sports in the spring that come up very, very soon. 21:48 So again, for publisher Jerry Kutz, I'm editor Bob Ferrante. Thanks for watching. Take care. We'll talk to you soon.
