In the new world of college athletics, schools are beginning to learn the importance of off the field personnel and Mississippi State has built its staff accordingly. When Jeff Lebby took the job in Starkville, one of the people that he wanted on his team and handling many of the day-to-day tasks was General Manager […]
In the new world of college athletics, schools are beginning to learn the importance of off the field personnel and Mississippi State has built its staff accordingly.
When Jeff Lebby took the job in Starkville, one of the people that he wanted on his team and handling many of the day-to-day tasks was General Manager Marc Votteler. A budding star in his field, Votteler has learned under great coaches and worked for iconic brands in the sport like Alabama, Tennessee and Ohio State.
Now, Votteler is locked in with Lebby and at State. He’s been a key part in the Bulldogs restructuring the roster in one season and navigating all of the changes in college football. He spoke to the media recently about all of those changes and his role with the Bulldogs.
Question: We all think we know what a GM is in college football, but you tell us what your job is?
MV: “It changes daily. You can probably tell from all of these executive orders and changes in the rules, but it’s all encompassing with roster management. That’s everything from high school recruiting to transfer portal and everything with revenue share. Just trying to manage and oversee our entire recruiting staff which we have a great group of nine other guys and girls that help me oversee everything with roster retention, roster management and high school recruiting. It kind of changes by the day with all the new rules. It’s a new job in college sports, but people have been doing similar stuff to this for years but now you add revenue share and payments.”
Q: How does it work from a budgetary standpoint and who makes the decisions?
MV: “With the rev share, that’s a piece internally that we have the flexibility to adapt how we need to and decide who needs what. If we have a bunch of seniors in one group, they might be a little higher up because they’ve paid their dues. You have that $20.5 million that was part of the settlement and you divvy it up by sports. I kind of went through how the NFL broke down their position groups in years past to get a baseline for it. That’s probably the most challenging part in all of this stuff is it’s so new for everybody. Each year you’re feeling it out and it’s the first time you have 105 on your roster. You’re always constantly adjusting. It’s just like the NFL – if you have a really good quarterback, you need to pay to keep him and adjust other places to make it work. Once you have that money, you can divvy it up however you want to.”
Q: How has the first month of rev share gone?
MV: “It’s been good. We were set up well before, we just kind of transitioned from the collective to the University. It didn’t change a ton for us, now the checks are just coming from the University. It’s been business as usual. Some schools have new contracts and we didn’t get into any of that. It’s been a smooth transition, we’re just adapting to all of the rule changes. Not a ton of difference for the players here. We make it as seamless as possible. It’s been good so far.”
Q: What’s it been like working with coach Lebby?
MV: “I was with coach Lebby in 2018 at UCF and we had said back then if he got a job like this, I would follow him. I love working with him. His vision, his passion for it and how his players respond to him, you would never know that he was a first year head coach. We’ve got to keep building on it, but he’s an incredible guy to work for. I’ve said it a bunch of times, I’m with him until he kicks me out. I have been fortunate to work with some good ones and coach Lebby is up there with the best of the best. Big things for him in the future, but he’s awesome to work for and I think players and staff would say that as well.”
Q: Is it fair to say you take a lot of the heat off of the head coach and position coaches?
MV: “Yes. A lot of it is, ‘hey go talk to Marc about it.’ The biggest thing is the agent stuff and the coaches don’t need to be dealing with that. Come talk to me and I’ll handle a lot of that stuff with our off-field staff. It’s a lot of not letting the small issues get to him and take it to me so he can focus on ball. We work hand-in-hand and there’s nothing that happens with me that he doesn’t know about. We have a great working relationship.”
Q: What is your staff like?
MV: “A lot of them were here when I got here and I think we’ve adjusted. Courtney Williams was promoted to an Assistant GM and that was a big piece going through that first year of really preparing for this rev share world to have another person that is tuned into the salary cap, what we’re paying and how it’s all working. We’re kind of giving him more responsibilities with that and he earned every bit of that.
“Then we have Lee Wilbanks, Andrew Lutz, Ryan Roberts and Rod Gibson who handle all of the high school recruiting and making sure we’re getting everybody evaluated, constant evaluations and constantly digging for new names. On the on campus side you have Andrea Hollis, Hayley Goldin and Kaitlyn Robinson who handle a lot of the visits and handling everything on campus for when the guys get here.
“It’s really shifting to where you used to be worried about watching film and now you’re grading your current team and guys that go into the portal to see hey can we retain this guy, do we look somewhere else? It’s constant changing and you can’t do what we do without a phenomenal staff and we have good people here in place.”
Q: Why was the NFL model the approach for your revenue share?
MV: “I wouldn’t say it’s NFL model, what I did is look at the percentages of how they broke down each position just to get a baseline of where they’ve been at. Roster numbers are a lot different in college where you have 105 and you have 52 in the NFL. It’s not all going to correlate completely, but my thought was look at the best teams and see where it broke down. You’re not always going to be in those but just to get a baseline to stay in those percentages for each position to give you a range to work with.”
Q: Do you think we’re getting close to rules being set in college sports?
MV: “Man, I hope so. I think we’re close. Every offseason, you get a little bit closer to it. Everything is a lawsuit now and you’re never going to make everyone happy. You get on Twitter and you find out the new news of what the new executive order is. It will get there soon, but for now you keep rolling with the punches. I hope we’re close.”
Q: You guys had some time to prepare for this era, how much did those preparations go through?
MV: “When I got here in January 2024, we were preparing for this the whole time. The tough part with all of these rule changes is you plan for something and then there’s a new rule that goes into place and it tweaks everything you’ve planned for. You go back to the drawing board and adapt what you had. I think the planning of it and the foresight of our administration putting everything in place allowing us to do this was huge. You put the plan in place and roll with the punches when things adjust. You make necessary changes and keep moving forward.”
Category: General Sports
