The Myth of the "President of Football Operations"

[The Cooler King]

I've long held and had plenty of debates about the idea of a head of football ops above GM.

A large part of this was a practical matter because of how the league defines roles (both for blocking purposes and Rooney rule)

Well its going to be put to the test.

Cliff notes is that after hiring Ran Carthon the Titans a year later promoted their assistant GM to a new role of President of Football Operations. This year they fire Carthon and seek to find a new GM.

But the league is reviewing the job title to determine the nature of the job description and whether the Titans GM role is really a "Primary Football Executive" role. If they find it isn't then teams are going to be able to block their "Secondary Football Executives" from interviewing.



In articles released right after the Carthon firing the team indicated that the President of football ops had significant say in final decision making. That leads me to believe they are going to run into issues and will effectively just have the same traditional roles with title inflation.

Beyond the practical league rule aspects I think it just is really hard to marry the accountability and job responsibilities for a additional high level football focused role. And part of the problem is the tendancy to view the GM role as primary a player personnel role only when in fact its a much bigger role. But few leaders will want the big role without the player personnel power with it.

[dplank]

The title itself is a little weird. Having sold product into these teams, I had to understand the lay of the land in terms of who made what decisions over what parts of the organization, and who had budget control. When I hear the title Football Operations, that has a very specific meaning to me (that may be changing, so this was about 5 years ago). Football Operations was the person in charge of the field, the facilities, the equipment, training camp planning, travel coordination, etc. It was typically a VP level job, with directors underneath that oversaw these various functions. And it had almost nothing to do with "football" per se, there was no coaching/scouting/anything of that sort tied to the Football Operations job. The video room was an extension of the coaching staff, so they typically reported (formally or informally) to the coaches themselves. IT had it's own chain of command rolling up to a CIO position. And then on the personnel side, the GM was the highest ranking position, and he would run all the scouts, pro personnel, etc.

Overseeing ALL of that was the Team President. This was a business person, in Baltimore it was Dick Cass who I knew fairly well. Finance, Sales, CIO, Football Ops, GM, Coaching all rolled under the Team President, the Team President reports directly to ownership. This is the role I figured Warren was hired for - mostly business, budgets, and oversight.

Not all teams do things the exact same way, but this was the structure for just about every team I dealt with. Dick Cass signed my check in Baltimore. Steven Jones signed my check in Dallas. Sometimes a person a step below would sign off on it, Les Snead used to sign my checks with the Rams, for instance.

[The Cooler King]

The title itself is a little weird. Having sold product into these teams, I had to understand the lay of the land in terms of who made what decisions over what parts of the organization, and who had budget control. When I hear the title Football Operations, that has a very specific meaning to me (that may be changing, so this was about 5 years ago). Football Operations was the person in charge of the field, the facilities, the equipment, training camp planning, travel coordination, etc. It was typically a VP level job, with directors underneath that oversaw these various functions. And it had almost nothing to do with "football" per se, there was no coaching/scouting/anything of that sort tied to the Football Operations job. The video room was an extension of the coaching staff, so they typically reported (formally or informally) to the coaches themselves. IT had it's own chain of command rolling up to a CIO position. And then on the personnel side, the GM was the highest ranking position, and he would run all the scouts, pro personnel, etc.

Overseeing ALL of that was the Team President. This was a business person, in Baltimore it was Dick Cass who I knew fairly well. Finance, Sales, CIO, Football Ops, GM, Coaching all rolled under the Team President, the Team President reports directly to ownership. This is the role I figured Warren was hired for - mostly business, budgets, and oversight.

Not all teams do things the exact same way, but this was the structure for just about every team I dealt with. Dick Cass signed my check in Baltimore. Steven Jones signed my check in Dallas. Sometimes a person a step below would sign off on it, Les Snead used to sign my checks with the Rams, for instance.

Well in the case of the Titans, Football Operations (President of) is the designation that was assigned to Brinker. So that's what I used. A few other teams currently (Seattle, San Fran, among others) also use President Football Operations to the top role as well. The current list its 50/50 of President/GM titles and director level titles (with some orgs uses Football Ops in both type of roles)

But of these non-Tennessee teams that use a President title with Football Ops in it, almost all refer to the GM (usually designate a split title). I think Chargers are the only one where someone does have it as a non-GM and it's the owners son.

[The Cooler King]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... gue_staffs

This list is kept very up to date (I think it just scrubs every team site). In case you want to see how teams are defining roles.

[The Cooler King]

Welp NFL came to a pretty quick decision. Sounds like it will be considered the primary football executive. I'm a little surprised, though I wonder if any modifications to Brinkers role in relation to GM had to be made...

[The Cooler King]

It will nonetheless be interesting to watch how that FO operates and what type of GM candidate they get. They cleared the procedural hurdle but the description from the Titans press article is pretty interesting:

Ultimately, Brinker, Callahan and the new general manager will work together to make decisions.

Nihill said Brinker will "break ties" with respect to the 53-man roster.

"It is important to Amy to have absolute clarity in the football organization." Nihill said. "And so, while the general manager position will have a primary responsibility on all these things Chad is describing in terms of the day-to-day of overseeing the roster and the coaching staff, Chad is the leader of the football program, so Chad will be the final authority on all football matters, including the roster."

Brinker reiterated the group will work in unison.