Money, AI and the race for talent: Inside college football's Build-A-Roster convention

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NASHVILLE – The biggest ballroom in this downtown Nashville hotel is overflowing — standing-room-only — and College Football Hall-of-Famer Mack Brown is holding court.

Brown — the last coach to win a national championship at Texas and North Carolina’s winningest coach — is explaining why fifth place beats second.

On the talent-acquisition trail, that is.

At this moment, he's the champagne cork to the seventh annual Personnel and Recruiting Symposium — a 48-hour event spanning parts of three days. For 1,600 staffers from 160 schools it's the networking equivalent of the NCAA transfer portal they navigate and the social equivalent of the record-label parties that dot this city during Country Music’s awards season.

“I've been doing this 50 years; they've been doing it (the recruiting process) six months,” Brown tells the crowd. “And so many times, people in this room or assistant coaches didn't want to ask hard questions because you are afraid you'll get the wrong answer. I wanted to get an answer. I'd a lot rather be fifth than second. If you are second, you lose the next two, so I either wanted to get him or get out.

“So, I ask questions. We had at Texas once, a mother said she was from Indiana. Sally (Brown’s wife) said, 'What about distance from home?' She said, 'Oh, he's not going to go far.' I said. 'Well, ma'am, we're not moving.' So, he's out. What are we wasting time for? You just asked her and she's not going to let him go. We’re out. That’s just facts.”

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Some of the sport's top firms and agencies host everyone from college football general managers to showcase-game representatives to media and rival agents. Some gatherings occupy large tables during lunch inside the city’s sprawling Assembly Food Hall — large enough to have its own interior bridge linking its 30-plus dining joints.

Firms with brick-and-mortar spots in the city, such as both CAA and WIN, utilize their prominent downtown locations.

Other groups secure Nashville’s top clubs and rooftop bars. Events turn the night of Monday, Aug. 3, into the morning of Tuesday, Aug. 4, and they repeat that pattern into Wednesday, Aug. 5.

The event’s substance tracks at a similarly satisfying level, like a Deep South meat-and-three.

A year after touting representatives from all 32 NFL teams, 25 franchises return for the 2026 iteration.

The hallway outside the ballroom is lined with dual-sided vendor booths, spanning longer than a 100-yard kickoff return and spilling down the stairs into the registration area. Ghost Mail. Hudl. Monarch. Sportability. Tracker. Nutritional offerings and travel services.

A.I. in football is literally centerstage when former Pittsburgh Steelers executive, Karim Kassam, now vice president of sports intelligence at event-sponsor Teamworks, presents the latest developments.

There are more players than ever for these college programs to scout in this transfer portal era, but stretching finances – in some instances, reducing staff sizes — also maximize demands on personnel.

“With 5,000 players in the transfer portal, there is not enough time to do this thoroughly; NFL teams can get away with this because they only look at draft-eligible players,” says the Harvard-educated Kassam, founder a decade ago of the Steelers’ analytics and research approach. “They ignore FCS altogether, and for the most part, they know everyone they need to scout a full year in advance.

“I can extrapolate this trend for you. You are responsible for anyone who steps foot on a college football field anywhere in the country. The transfer portal can't be scouted the same way. You can ask your A.D. for a 25-person scouting department. Good luck. Or we can look to technology to find more efficient ways. It's worth thinking about what this future is going to look like.”

He has suggestions.

“What if scouts spent an hour a day giving autonomous agents little scouting tasks?,” Kassam asks. “Digital scouting assistants. Agents that can perform scouting tasks not as well as a seasoned scout, but some of them pretty well.

“You're not going to stop watching film. You will have to check their work. If you're a scout, if you're a recruiter, what would you do with a dozen digital assistants great at some things and faster than you can dream of? I think it's worth asking the question. And I'm painting this picture and I can see it because it's not that far away. It's grounded in what we're doing today.”

Panel discussions rule the event — particularly on contract negotiations, trends and player evaluations.

General managers from Arkansas, Clemson, Florida, Georgia, Georgia Tech, Texas, Texas Tech are among panelists; moderators from agencies and search firms, with backgrounds in football, such as Sean Magee, Ed Marynowitz, Pat Suddes and Clint Stein among them.

Mini-breakout sessions implore these personnel pros to pose questions:

  • “How does the front office manage the relationship between the head coach and the athletic department when their priorities diverge?”
  • “How involved should the assistant coaches be in deciding what to pay players, and how is that communication with the front office managed?”
  • “How do you balance the urgency of closing on a recruit or a portal target against the discipline of making sound fiscal decisions within budget?”

The University of Cincinnati holds a standing meeting every Tuesday to discuss contract developments, trends in the marketplace and what that school’s administration is hearing in regards to potential rules changes, modifications or other potential legal issues.

An executive from another school, name withheld due to the sensitive nature of the discussion, sheds insight on trouble-shooting approaches.

“Administrations will always find ways to say no,” says the SEC executive. “You have to help them find ways they can say yes.

“So, don’t just bring problems, bring solutions, come with compromises. Be ready to meet that middle ground so that you can take care of your priorities while understanding their perspective as well.”

Billy High, Tennessee’s top roster-construction expert and former North Carolina personnel head, explains the Vols’ approach in securing intra-departmental alignment.

“We talked at the beginning, really defining what the goals are in that athletic department and football program,” High tells the Competing Stakeholder Interests panel. “From a budgetary standpoint, being clear early and often. The communication piece is so key.

“There are so many, especially now with revenue-share, so many different entities that are involved. You have to have that regular communication.”

High issues one final message about finding common ground.

“Coaches are always going to want more money, athletic departments are always going to want to pay less money,” he says. “But at the end of the day, the goal or shared interest is winning.”

With every college program’s team in camp, and most NFL camps already two weeks old, the Aug. 5, schedule finishes before lunch.

Still, it’s an overflow-crowd for the Tips for Young Evaluators session featuring NFL insight and the perspectives of top college personnel executives, Clemson’s Kevin Kelly — a 20-year NFL personnel veteran — and Georgia’s Will Myers, a national award-recipient for his work on the Bulldogs’ 2025 roster.

During sessions from the previous day and that morning, attendees learn that in the past two years of the NFL Draft, “there have been more zero-star players drafted every year than five-stars; 76 0-stars to 49 five-star drafted in that time.”

“About 550 to 600 signed as undrafted rookies each year; we see out of them 280 were 0-star prospects,” a panelist says.

Kelly goes in-depth on arm length, how it factors into both NFL Draft evaluations and positional recommendations; he notes Clemson also measures hand-sizes for all of its prospective players.

Myers points to the Rueben Bain exception — the ex-Miami Hurricanes consensus All-American and 2026 NFL Draft No. 15 selection.

“Georgia, we are a height-weight-speed team,” Myers says. “A short-armed defensive lineman, why does it matter if it’s Rueben Bain if he’s explosive? A short-armed D-lineman loses faster, his pads are captured faster from a long-armed offensive lineman. He wins dirty, his pads are dirty; Rueben Bain is the exception.

“That .031 seconds longer it takes because his pads are hard to capture [because his arms are longer], that matters. I’ve learned a lot about exceptions; we have some outstanding players that don’t fit the criteria and threshold. Luke Kuechly is probably the best linebacker I’ve watched. He had short arms. D’Angelo Ponds at Indiana, outstanding.

“But, you have to ask: Does it stop them from doing something he needs to do?”

Perhaps that answer rests in 2027, when this symposium convenes football’s roster-building leaders yet again.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Money, AI and the race for talent: Inside college football's Build-A-Roster convention

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