Georgetown Basketball Needs a GM. Will They Hire One?

As NIL continues to reshape the college basketball landscape, programs are increasingly turning to general managers to adjust. Georgetown has yet to follow suit.

One thing that has come up in the last month in multiple conversations with people about Georgetown men’s basketball is the lack of a general manager to support the team.

It might feel weird to talk about a college basketball team needing a GM, as if it were a professional sports team—but that’s the reality of modern college athletics these days.

Programs have been hiring general managers for several years now, but the position really gained national attention when St. Bonaventure hired longtime ESPN NBA insider Adrian Wojnarowski as GM of its men’s basketball program.

Active NBA players have also taken interest in the position: Stephen Curry recently became the assistant general manager for men’s basketball at Davidson, and Trae Young was named to the same position at his alma mater, Oklahoma.

Other programs that have hired GMs include Duke, Villanova (under Kyle Neptune), Boston College, Syracuse, Butler, Texas Tech, and George Washington. UConn is also currently in the process of hiring one.

UNC head coach Hubert Davis has acknowledged that the traditional model of building a coaching and support staff is no longer sufficient.

“The old model for Carolina basketball just doesn't work,” said Davis. “You need a bigger staff so I can do what I'm supposed to be doing, and that's coaching basketball.”

Davis isn’t alone in feeling this way.

UConn head coach Dan Hurley put it more bluntly.

“In college basketball, it’s an organization,” said Hurley. “With re-recruitment of players in the program, the portal, there's a lot of things going on. If you're a top-level organization in college basketball or college football, you need someone who looks at themselves as a GM, for dealing with scheduling, the conference, NIL, raising money. It's almost more important than critical staff members.”

Team-building and roster management used to be the head coach’s responsibility. But in the NIL era, those responsibilities have multiplied. Coaches now negotiate NIL contracts with agents—or “advisors”, or “handlers”—oversee massive roster turnover year after year, and fundraise almost as much as they recruit.

Head coaches and their assistants simply don’t have time to do it all anymore while also doing what they were hired for—coach basketball.

That’s why the general manager position is on the rise in college basketball. Yet Georgetown still hasn’t hired one.

A general manager could streamline Georgetown’s roster management, recruiting coordination, and fundraising efforts. Continuing without one is like playing with one hand tied behind your back.

According to multiple sources connected to the program, Georgetown has been trying to hire a general manager. But one source said the program hasn’t been able to align with a candidate on salary yet.

There’s no shortage of interest in such a role at Georgetown. Two advisors to student-athletes told Hilltop Hoops that a GM position at Georgetown would be attractive because of the team’s sizable NIL budget—and because the program isn’t constrained by NIL revenue-sharing agreements with a football team, like Maryland is.

To be clear, plenty of programs still don’t have GMs. But that number is shrinking—not growing. Georgetown would be wise not to get caught flat-footed on this trend.

When Ed Cooley first assembled his staff at Georgetown, he hired Mark Fox as Director of Student-Athlete Relations and NIL Partnerships—a role similar in scope to what a GM might handle.

But Fox left last summer to join Mark Pope’s coaching staff at Kentucky. Since then, Georgetown hasn’t filled the position or created a similar one. Even if the program doesn’t hire a GM, going a full year without replacing a key staffer like Fox is a missed opportunity.

Georgetown’s NIL fundraising is in good shape right now. But the program must not forget that it needs to invest in its infrastructure too—and that means ensuring the program is properly staffed and, by extension, spending the money needed to do that.

During an offseason that has already seen the program go through some turbulence with its roster construction for the 2025-26 season, having a dedicated staff member having a dedicated staffer to manage recruiting, contracts, and fundraising could only be a good thing.

We’ll see when—or if—Georgetown steps up and gives Ed Cooley and his staff the same level of support that a growing number of high major programs are giving their head coaches.