Episode 7: Trey Neyer • Evaluations Over Emotions

Trey Neyer, Virginia Tech's Assistant Athletic Director of Player Personnel, discusses his evolution of player recruitment in the NIL & rev-share era, and the importance of data in decision-making. He shares insights on the transition from traditional personnel departments to modern front offices, the role of general managers, and the balance between emotional connections and business decisions in recruitment. Neyer also reflects on the future of college football front offices and his personal experiences as a new dad.

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Our Takeaways:

• Data centralization is crucial for effective player evaluation and recruitment.

• Emotional connections in recruitment can complicate business decisions.

• The future of college football will likely include more structured front offices and data-driven decision-making.

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Chapters:

00:00 Introduction and Background

03:08 Evolution of Player Personnel Roles

05:59 Transitioning to a Front Office Model

09:06 The Impact of NIL and Revenue Sharing

12:05 Data-Driven Decision Making in Recruitment

14:55 Future of College Football Front Offices

17:53 Balancing Work and Personal Life

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Full Transcript:

Luke Bogus (01:12)
Trey, welcome to the Moneyballers podcast. How's it going,

Trey Neyer (01:14)
Luke, what's up? Appreciate you having me on.

Luke Bogus (01:15)
Dude, I appreciate you. You were one of the first people kind of in the industry that we had the chance to meet and learn from back in the day when we started Dropback. So this is really full circle to have you on the pod about 10 months later. So, I mean, there's so much to talk about even since we last met. Obviously congrats on the new job. The official title is Assistant AD, Senior Director of Player Personnel. You obviously had stops at Miami (OH), Alabama, et cetera. But I think what's really interesting is that you've been in the personnel department for obviously a long time, but also like...

on all sides of the NIL spectrum. Like when NIL wasn't even a thought through obviously 2021 to 2025, and then now you're being a DPP in a world of revenue sharing. How has your role changed? Has the role adapted? How has your thought process around building a roster evolved kind of, know, pre, mid and post NIL?

Trey Neyer (02:00)
Yeah, no, it's obviously changed a lot. My first year in personnel was in 2018. It is full-time in personnel as a director of player personnel. And at that time, even looking back on it now, it just seems crazy because our biggest concern was building a high school class, right? You had 25 spots to fill, you went out and filled them. At Miami, we were extremely protective of our offer.

So, we didn't give out a ton of those. So, really our offer is kind of what like, the fact that we didn't give out a lot of them is what made us unique at that time. Right. And we were dealing primarily in high school recruiting. You know, we signed up 23 to 24 high school guys, and then we would maybe get one or two junior college guys on the roster. And that was kind of the model. And then all of a sudden the transfer portal

became a thing and we started out and I think on our 2019 team at Miami, we had two grad transfers, right? And at that time, it was even crazy to kind of to get those guys on the roster, how that looked, what that process looked like. Like I remember going into the 2019 season, we had two grad transfers

that we were just trying to get eligible for practice. Like, so fall camp's going on and we're up in the office trying to frantically, you know, get this thing all worked out, but it was so new for everybody at that time. And then as I was finishing up at Miami is when they actually had the portal tool, the actual app or the application that you could go in and look for players. And I just remember like the first time looking at that, like, wow, this is, it's kind of a lot. And then, you know, I get hired at West Virginia.

And we were a three man shop when I first started there and you know between myself and another guy we were doing high school Transfer portal and then you know, we made it through that first cycle in the portal at West Virginia and and we were like man, this is this is this is like a full-time role. This is a job, right?

We quickly realized that it's going to be really hard for us to work both in high school and in the portal because the portal is a full-time job and it wasn't going away. So, I think like everybody in the back of their mind was, you how long is this going to be here? How prevalent is this going to be in our process? And then you very quickly realize, okay, the portal is here to stay and we've got to come up with a solution for it. So, you know,

It didn't happen overnight, but at West Virginia over time, we quickly realized that there's a need for this role. And then we slowly started to build really kind of a modern personnel department. And I think by the time we were done at West Virginia, we had 11 full-time staffers. were able to split it into college, high school, and then a full-time dedicated recruiting department.

The manpower was something that was needed and you needed people that were fully dedicated to grading college players, grading and projecting high school players and then ultimately the recruitment of them. And obviously all of those three areas have to work together and work together well, but you need people that are full time focused on it. I think in the short, from Miami to West Virginia,

to now Virginia Tech, like the growth is crazy and just the way the job has changed, but it's been really cool. And I think at West Virginia, the really cool thing and thing that I'm probably most proud and happy to have been a part of is our head coach, you know, empowered the personnel and recruiting department, right, to make decisions on evaluation, to have a good evaluation process and to really own that. And that's what we were able to do.

I think that the biggest realization that I had from all that outside of, right, we need more people to work in this area. And I worked with a ton of really, really good people who taught me a ton, especially in our personnel and recruiting department. But we need information and we need to centralize the information and gather as much data and have it stored under one place. And the cool, you know, really full circle moment is when

you've got a guy that you've had a profile on in your database through high school. He signed somewhere else and then you're able to go back and pull that information from your high school database and then use it in the portal was kind of like the you know full circle this is working and this is the way it needs to go. We need to collect as much data on every single guy that we're So, then we can use it because we're probably gonna have to use it again. So, I would say that's you know, the the major change that has happened

and just the need for data, the need for manpower, and then to have it all organized and have it flow and run in a good system.

Luke Bogus (06:31)
Yeah, and that's an awesome story that I feel like I might've heard somebody say that on a podcast. Like you actually did it because you were at West Virginia for five years. So, you saw the entire life cycle of scouting somebody unless a sophomore, junior, eventually seeing them in the portal. So like, you not only lived it, but like you built that system, which I'm sure is pretty cool to look back on.

Trey Neyer (06:40)
Yes.

Yeah, and I think that's kind of a unique situation for a lot of people who work in college football. Like I was extremely lucky to be in a place for five years. And I think during that time, you see the things that work. You see mistakes play out in real time. You see the lifespan of those mistakes, but you also see the things that work. So you got to really get a full picture of, and that really allowed me to kind of hone in on some of the things that I thought were important at one time that maybe are.

And then to kind of master the processes and different things that I now believe in because I've seen it all kind of play out, you know, in real time. And so I think I'm lucky just to be able to spend five years in a certain place and you're a hundred percent right. Like to see the life cycle of, all right, you watch, you watch his sophomore film, you watch his junior film, you watch his senior film, like the kid brought him on an official visit. Choose it somewhere else. All right. That other place doesn't work. And then he's back on your roster. So like

it all kind of comes full circle and that was cool to kind of see.

Luke Bogus (07:45)
Yeah, that's cool too, like the story about going from a three man shop. So obviously when you left, you had a lot of different people with different roles and responsibilities. Obviously you're experiencing now this world of everyone's talking about they're building their own front office and people are obviously there's GMs and assistant GMs. Like is the GM stuff just like a reskin on like the personnel department that was, or are there specific roles that

somebody needs to fill that gap on that actually makes, you know, what was the personnel department transitioning to the front office because there's somebody who does X, Y, and Z. I guess like what's maybe the missing pieces from the pre-rev share to post-rev share world that makes the transition go from just personnel department to like actual front office with the GM.

Trey Neyer (08:21)
Yeah, I think obviously every building is run differently. Every program is run differently. Different things work for different people. from my seat and just kind of seeing the evolution, I think it's really hard to bring in a quote unquote general manager and them not to have some sort of football background. And I think like,

just what I've been able to see from 2018 to today, like all of those experiences and how to build a college football roster and the different ones that have worked that I've been around and the ones that haven't worked that I've been around, like all of that experience is extremely invaluable to me. Like, so I just think it'd be really hard to not have a true personnel, especially in college, a true college personnel. Now football is football, but at the end of the day, like,

there are some nuances and small things in college football that like you have to know and have a framework of to make sound informed decisions as you go through building a roster. So, you know, it's different, it works different for everybody for every program. But I just believe that the person who ultimately when you're making these decisions with the head football coach.

It helps to just have that catalog of information of what has worked and what hasn't in the past and to be able to truly put a value on a prospect out of high school, out of the portal. How much are we willing to pay? When to say, okay, it's enough, let's give up and let's go pursue another avenue, pursue another player. So that's what I believe in and that's what I think works, but we'll see.

This is a new thing for everybody. Everybody's trying to figure it out. But yeah, that's what I believe in.

Luke Bogus (09:56)
Yeah, I mean.

to point, it is recording this on July 2nd, revshare just happened yesterday. Like, yeah, who knows? mean, props to all the people taking swings and trying it. And we were talking a little bit before we started recording of just like, there's so many different archetypes of GMs. You you have some GMs that are in charge of the football coach. You have some GMs who were business people and now they're expected to do all the money contract stuff, which doesn't always overlap really well with how to have to look at a player and know how that transitions to their value. So to your point, it's like, you still need all these like pockets of expertise let alone the title. But I think like the

glare that comes in is like personnel departments traditionally haven't had to think about that translation from, we want this guy, we really want to recruit him hard to, okay, well, what does it take to get him? And then how does that amount of money basically have different limits and constraints on the rest of our budget and the rest of our position rooms? As a personnel person, has your process or philosophy around constructing a roster change because of not only budget limits that

in the NIL world where they'll put on you by a collective or something else. But now in a post

rev-share post house world, there's two big limits. There's the obvious roster limits. There's also the limits of either a salary cap, of course, 22.5 or the cap put on by your manager or by your athletic director. Like walk me through the evolution from let's hustle and get this guy to love us. And we'll just like throw a scholarship at him to like, have a finite amount of resources, both scholarships and money. Let's construct the best roster. How has maybe your approach changed?

Trey Neyer (11:20)
Yeah, and I think you made a really good point there in like the whole idea of what we do is we identify, we evaluate, and then we communicate and recruit. So during that process, if you're doing the recruiting process correctly, you become emotionally involved and everybody in the organization, they come into the building, they meet with a lot of different people. You've got area coaches, you've got position coaches, you've got

people are looking out for their own room, rightly so. But the recruiting process, it creates an emotional connection and emotional tie to certain prospects, right? And when you spend from, in some cases from their freshmen, sophomore, you spend that much time, like you become invested in it, right? And I think that's where

people in my role come in and we have to do a really good job separating the emotional piece of it versus what's the responsible thing to do for our roster, right? And I think sometimes for coaches that's hard because we ask them to go out on the road and we ask them to develop relationships with moms, dads, guardians, high school coaches, and it makes

the ultimate decision and money and business part of this become very complicated because you do develop that emotional connection with a prospect and that makes you want to go out and say let's fight and it doesn't matter how much we need to pay, let's go get the guy, right? Because we believe in him. But that's not the responsible way to build a roster in a salary cap rev-share era.

So that's the hard part, but I think that's where people in my role become more valuable is I'm able to sit here and say with the head coach, with the people that are in the office making the final decision, obviously the coaches still play a massive role in that. But to say, coach, I don't know that this guy's worth that much and maybe we need to go in a different direction, right? So that's where it becomes complicated. But again, like,

there's an emotional connection that happens in recruiting. So it makes it a little bit difficult, but again, that's where people like me and in my department where we have value.

Luke Bogus (13:22)
Yeah. And I mean, and you mentioned it, but like, that's also the magic of college sports is like recruitment still exists. Like even in this world of a salary cap, like you're not going to be forced to be traded. The suits aren't going to talk and then force you to go to your team. It's like, you got to also convince them and their kids at the end of the day. So it's like, there is still that like magic and human touch and emotion is like, it's a feature, not a bug of the world of college sports, which is amazing. And I think the second part that the personnel

Trey Neyer (13:28)
Yes.

Luke Bogus (13:46)
mind can bring to the table is like when we started drop back, we learned from a bunch of front offices in the NFL and the NBA and such. And like everyone talked about this triangle. It's like the triangle between like the coach, how we fit the scheme. Do we like how he plays the scouts? Like, all right, like let's look at his film. Let's look at his toughness, gray, all the things that mattered to us. But then there's a third prong of the triangle that is RND. It's the data. It's what the raw facts say. And we decide what facts we like. We know what kind of grades we're looking for just from a very statistical standpoint. And those are all those three voices at

table and emotion again should stand out in the of college sports. That's the beauty of college sports, but to your point having that analytics and that data to at least provide a perspective while it doesn't have to be the decision, it is important. And so maybe my question to you is how has data

introduced into your workflow over the five years at West Virginia, now Virginia tech and like, how much does it guide your decision-making? Is it like a, nice to have we look at it as like a final check? Is that like at the beginning, we only look at guys in the first place that meet these marks. Like maybe walk me through how you've kind of factored in personnel driven data into your decision-making.

Trey Neyer (14:49)
Yeah, I think, and I hit on it a little bit before, but one of the things that, I think my time, especially, getting to West Virginia and to today, I saw the need for a database and that's not like some crazy thought, you know, or that's not some crazy idea. And I wasn't the first one to come up with it. Obviously at the NFL level, I became

infatuated with figuring out the way that they build their databases and different things like that. And we're not at that level in college but at the same time too when I go to watch and put a grade on a player, I want to have the full picture of who that person is, right? So, I want to have notes from text messages. I want to have notes from phone calls I want to have what the high school coach thinks of the prospect I want to be able to pull in all the information that we get from the providers that we pay for

I want to have that all in one place to make the decision, right? Track times matter, 40 times matter, height, weight, arm, weight, all that stuff matters, right? And I want the full picture and the full timeline of a player to be able to sit there and put a true grade on it, a grade that's now going to determine how much money a player is worth. Like, I want that full picture right there in front of me and I want to be able to remove the emotion from it.

And say, okay, this is this is the level that I think that this player is at and this is how much I think we should probably pay him and and that all is just that's in you know, that's in our grading scale and that's where like the evaluation process like i'm not 100 all right, if he doesn't run this in track then then cut them off the board like I just want the full picture to make an informed decision. And I want to bring all of those data data points whether it's from a phone call

whether it's the way that the prospect interacts with our on-campus recruiting director when they're booking the travel. Like, I just want to know who the player is to then put a grade on it, right? And sometimes the film grade versus the character grade is different and you got to make the decision of, right, where are we willing to, you know, sacrifice? And ultimately like my job is to build a vision or

to build a roster in the vision of the head coach, right? So, I gotta know exactly what type of player Coach Pry wants on his team. And then it's my job to go out to the best of my ability and find those guys and then allow our coaches to recruit them and put them in the right direction. So, when it comes to data, like I want as much as we can get and I wanna have it all in one place. And I wanna just have, again, a full picture of who he is, what makes him tick.

His film how many years he started on the bars at the varsity level his production How he is on the phone who's in his circle the people that are in his life. What drives it right and and a lot of those things are really hard to figure out. But when you start really gathering a lot of those data points when you go out on the road You know and see him when they're freshmen and sophomore and then kind of watch them grow is they go through their high school career.

You know that all of that stuff is important when it comes to placing a true value and grading and falling into that evaluation process.

Luke Bogus (17:48)
I think that highlights too that it's like everyone's kind of figuring out what is the next competitive edge and for the last three to four years, it's been like, how do we staff up a collective and get enough businesses to do enough fake quid pro quid, whatever, like the NIL era was like, that was just a squeeze to the world that we are now in, which is everyone gets the same amount of money and how do we allocate it? And so the next phase is how are we going to allocate it? How do we move faster in the portal? Like five to 10 minutes matters when everything's moving so quick.

It's just like, we are just beginning in this whole new world of revshare, which is really exciting. Cool, man. I just want to also say, new gig, been in Blacksburg for a few months, also a new dad. I guess, how do you balance the ever-changing world of GM and personnel department and front office stuff with just like actually living a life and being a dude? Like how's life been after the move?

Trey Neyer (18:16)
No doubt. No doubt.

No, the new spot has been good. think it's been really exciting for me to be a part of building a new staff. I was going through and looking kind of as we finished up June, man, I think we were at five new full new employees as we navigated June, had like

16 new interns like everybody was new which was exciting but at the same time it was a little bit scary as we kind of navigated the new place but that's been a fun challenge just hiring and finding the right people for the department on a personal level like managing a move and a brand new baby girl into the situation that has been Yeah, I didn't have experience in that area. So I'm learning and trying to figure out vacation this year looks a little bit different

we're in Blacksburg and we're trying to keep a little baby girl alive. And it's fun and it's challenging, but it's been really nice to kind of leave work, especially in June, during a very busy month. But you come home and any problem that you had, it seems kind of minute, given that you've got a person who's kind of depending on you to

feed them and get them to sleep and all that stuff. it's cool. It's really cool. Don't get to play as much golf this vacation. I just get to kind of do some laundry and give bottles and change diapers. So yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

Luke Bogus (19:49)
Just as fun, for sure.

Amazing. Well, Trey, thanks for taking 25 minutes with me, Always appreciate the things I get to learn from you and good luck this season.

Trey Neyer (20:00)
No, I appreciate it, Luke. Thanks for having me on.

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