Up Close in Personnel is back after five years — and this time it’s the definitive playbook for front offices across college football.
Host Alex Brown opens Season 5 with the full story: 17 years in football, from volunteering at the bottom at Houston to Director of Recruiting at Rice, GM at SMU, Director of Player Personnel at Ole Miss, and Mid-South area scout for the Atlanta Falcons. Then, the day after the draft, he was told it was time to move on.
This episode covers all of it — the SMU full-circle story (told no as a volunteer in 2014, hired as GM nine years later), replacing eight draft picks at Ole Miss, what an NFL area scout’s calendar actually looks like, and an honest conversation about getting fired: the grief, the reframe, and why he finished every BLESTO report anyway.
Plus: where the show goes from here — leadership, team building, cap strategy, department structure, retention, and how front offices really operate at both levels. Guest #1 will be Texas Tech General Manager James Blanchard.
Time Stamp of the Show:
- (0:00) Mic check — five years later
- (0:21) What this show is, and 17 years in football: Houston → Rice → SMU → Ole Miss → Atlanta
- (3:09) Why now: from a “survival kit” for a first-time director to the definitive front office playbook
- (4:30) Guest hall of fame — where 56 episodes of guests are now: Carrington, Price, Hodges, Crowley, Kovach, Washington, Yray, Cherington, Johnson, Merritt, Thamel
- (7:28) Rice, 2021: the foundation that made everything after it possible
- (8:30) SMU full circle — told no as a volunteer in 2014, GM nine years later
- (10:30) Building a “startup Power Four”: AAC title, the ACC jump, and learning to lead
- (13:00) The Ole Miss call, and the Moneyball problem: replacing nine draft picks
- (15:30) July 4th weekend and a phone call from Shelly Harvey — the NFL dream
- (17:00) Inside the area scout job: the accordion calendar, BLESTO, life on the road
- (19:00) The day after the draft
- (21:00) Marcus Aurelius and the third thing: finishing the reports anyway
- (22:30) Nobody tells you how it feels — grief, denial, and owning it
- (24:00) The reframe: a month without film, a marathon, AI, and building something new
- (26:00) Eric Galko, the Shrine Bowl, and going back to where it started
- (27:30) What’s coming: shorter episodes, mailbag questions, leadership content
- (29:00) “Leave it better than you found it”
- (30:00) Season 5 kicks off with Texas Tech GM James Blanchard
Send any and all mailbag questions to UpCloseInPersonnelPodcast@gmail.com & enjoy the show!
