Editor’s note: This article is part of our GM Spotlight series, introducing readers to general managers who occupy a relatively new and increasingly important job for college football teams.
Arkansas general manager Gaizka Crowley has just about seen it all in college football recruiting.
Crowley, a Florida State graduate, coached high school football in Florida, worked for a scouting service (XOS Digital, which is now Catapult), was a jack-of-all-trades at the FCS level (Southern Illinois), worked at Group of 5 schools in the Mountain West (UNLV) and the MAC (Western Michigan), moved to the Power 4 level in the Big 12 (Arizona) and is now in the SEC as the recently tabbed GM for the Razorbacks under new head coach Ryan Silverfield.
In college football personnel, Crowley has become a respected name among his peers. Roster construction is a passion he has had since his days teaching and coaching in the Sunshine State, when he was a nerdy, back-of-the-notebook X’s and O’s guy who fell in love with the idea of putting together a team like puzzle pieces. Now the puzzle pieces have values attached with high stakes in an uber-competitive environment.
While running personnel at Arizona, Crowley helped construct a roster that produced one of the biggest turnarounds in the country in 2025, improving from 4-8 in 2024 to 9-3 this season. Crowley’s days are filled with myriad challenges, but he tries to stay true to his roots, setting aside dedicated time at sunrise or late at night to close his office door, pop in his AirPods and watch a lot of film.
“It’s important, no matter what your role is — but especially as you get to a more senior level — to not forget what got you there,” Crowley said. “Make sure you carve out the time to watch the tape.”
The Athletic recently spoke with Crowley about his new job at Arkansas, the roster strategy that produced a turnaround in Tucson, how to manage a player payroll and what’s ahead when the transfer portal opens on Friday.
Note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
So how did the Arkansas GM opportunity arise? Did you have any previous connections with Silverfield?
We had not crossed paths; we just had a lot of the same geographical (background, in the North Florida area). He did an incredible job at Memphis, with the longevity and winning at a high level each year. Didn’t have a direct connection to him, but his folks reached out to me, and the opportunity to work for him and in the SEC and for the University of Arkansas is one I couldn’t say no to.
Having worked your way up from lower levels, what does it mean to have a chance to go to an SEC program and build a roster at that level?
It meant the world. It was a super difficult decision to leave Arizona. Coach (Brent) Brennan and the staff there are an incredible group of men. It was a decision not taken lightly, but it was an opportunity for me to do it at the highest level, to try to build a team in the SEC. It’s something I’ve always aspired to.
Arizona was one of the most improved teams in 2025 after a rough season in 2024. What was the approach to improving the roster and making the team better?
The big thing was — and coach Brennan’s talked a lot about it — being really honest with ourselves, about what we were looking for and the types of players we wanted. And the biggest thing for us is we wanted guys who wanted to be in Tucson.
Maybe they were from a smaller (college) or a smaller high school or weren’t highly recruited, but that culture fit, to us, is something that we really doubled down on in the last year. There’s so many players out there in the portal … it’s about picking the right ones. That’s critical because ultimately, those guys in your building are going to impact your roster every single day. The ones we don’t get, we don’t get, and we don’t spend a ton of time thinking about those guys.
But it’s really focusing on the players that we bring in and the football character, the personal character. I know that sounds super simple. But in this portal world and this recruiting world, unfortunately, you don’t always get that. So we felt like we did a really nice job and obviously had some success on the field because of it.
When looking in the Group of 5 or FCS ranks for transfers, how do you differentiate players who can really impact your roster vs. guys who just happened to be productive at their level?
You have to look at traits, the height, the weight, the speed. That’s a big part. The level of competition they’re playing against is a huge part of it. Not all FCS leagues and not all Group of 5 leagues are created the same. So that’s something that we definitely look at.
And as we get through the recruiting process, you want a kid that’s got a little bit of a chip on their shoulder, a kid that wants to prove it. A lot of those small school kids are like that. So finding the balance between the traits, the production, and then like the mental toughness is that’s the sweet spot that we look for.
Did negotiating with players and agents fall mostly on your shoulders?
We try to meet the kids where they are. For some of them, it might be their dad or their uncle or their high school coach, or maybe they have some sort of representation. We try to be as open and honest with those folks as we can through that process and make sure there’s no surprises and there’s no secrets.
We want to make sure they’re comfortable with all the aspects of what a scholarship check is and what a revenue-share contract is. So we spend a lot of our time just talking families through that from an educational aspect, because unfortunately, since this thing is so new, a lot of them may not have a great understanding of how it all works.
How did you develop your philosophy on structuring a roster payroll?
A lot of it started from my FCS days. I tell people all the time, when you’re talking about splitting up dollars, the FCS and the Division II and Division III guys have been doing that forever (having to distribute partial scholarships). There’s no better person to figure out how much to “pay” a kid than a Division II coach.
I’ve been really lucky to meet with a bunch of NFL teams and grab their thoughts on how they do it. Obviously, it’s way different from how we build our teams because of salary caps and rookie minimums and those kinds of things. Really, it’s become a collaborative approach and figuring out what works for us. What is our personality, our culture, how does that fit? It’s not a cookie-cutter (method) where you just drop the percentage into an Excel spreadsheet and it shoots out what a kid should make. That’s not how we operate.
Where are roster budgets headed? Do you see them continuing to increase or will they eventually plateau?
I think that they will plateau and find their level at some point. Now, is that within each conference? Is that within each division? There’s always going to be levels to spending, no different than facility budgets or coaching staff budgets. But as personnel departments continue to educate themselves and continue to grow and create processes of their own, I do feel a balancing of it (will occur).
Do you think we’ll eventually figure all this out and get a structure with some cohesion for college football roster management?
I don’t think so. When you look at the FBS, there’s 136 teams, everyone is so different. They’re geographically different, budgets are different. It’s not like the NFL. The NFL has 32 teams and very similar ownership structures and a commissioner. There’s not a ton of variance.
At the college level, there’s just so many different setups. Every college football office is different, every recruiting office is different, every football staff is different. So I think there’s going to continue to be more structure, but to be like, “Hey, yeah, we’ve solved it, it’s a perfect system,” I just think the volume (of schools) doesn’t really allow for that when you’re talking about, 130-plus FBS teams, plus FCS, plus D-II all the way down.
When you were doing multiple jobs at Southern Illinois in the FCS, could you have pictured yourself in the SEC?
Not realistically. You hoped one day you would. The job has changed so much, but my love and passion has always been for college football and helping build football teams, successful programs, treating people the right way and winning football games.
It’s been an incredible path to where I am. It’s definitely not done yet. I’ve still got a lot of work to do and trying to show that we can do it at this level and prove that we can get Arkansas football back to where it should be.
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