Hopefully, Ole Miss coach Pete Golding took some time off to celebrate Christmas. Because the day after has featured two new personnel hirings.
Earlier today it was reported that Jai Choudhary, associate director of player personnel and NFL liaison at LSU, was going to join Ole Miss as Director of Player Personnel.
Now it’s being reported that Ole Miss is adding Jacob Sugarman, UCLA’s director of scouting and high school relations, to serve as the Rebels’ Director of Scouting.
Ole Miss is also adding UCLA Director of Scouting Jake Sugarman to its front office, sources tell @On3sports. https://t.co/MFzBeswAjW https://t.co/Ydn8iOzCPG pic.twitter.com/eW3qODGfqS
— Pete Nakos (@PeteNakos) December 26, 2025
As college football continues to evolve into something more akin to the NFL, the people with titles like “general manager” or “director of scouting” will become more and more important.
By all accounts, Golding and Ole Miss are bringing in good people for those roles. However, don’t expect Golding to confirm much of this at his next press conference. He, rightfully so, has tried to keep the focus on the players and this current College Football Playoff run.
The future
College football is morphing into more a professional environment than it has in the past. It kind of has to and, no, there’s no going back.
The similarities between the NFL and college football are obvious.
Revenue sharing is (an attempt) at setting something of a salary cap. High school recruiting is the NFL Draft, just with roles reversed. The transfer portal is free agency, including the tampering part.
College programs need someone to lead the off-field aspects that are growing in scope. Head coaches can’t do everything (even if they think they can) and their schedules were already packed. It’s asking too much to add more responsibilities.
That’s led to the creation of the general manager role and more significance given to scouting positions.
The timing of the hirings, however, isn’t aligned with the NFL.
NFL teams making changes to its scouting and personnel departments usually wait until after the NFL draft takes place. The scouts and others are the best sources for information about the incoming draft class and are needed to make decisions.
Ole Miss, and others, are making these hirings just before the start of the transfer portal. How much impact can these hires have in the upcoming transfer portal window?
Maybe some. Scouting knowledge is transferable between programs, but relationships are already made by now.
We’re in peak tampering season right now. Players who have announced they’re entering the transfer portal probably have representatives at the least communicating with teams.
If you’re in denial, just wait until next Friday morning with some of the best transfers have already committed and/or signed with new teams. That stuff doesn’t get done in a couple of hours.
The point is that the reported hirings of Sugarman and Choudhary are great for Ole Miss, but might be more impactful in future seasons.
It’s the type of things big name programs do.
