Kentucky football’s new GMs show how college football is changing at breakneck speed

Will Stein isn’t just reshaping Kentucky’s coaching staff. He’s building out a full-blown front office.

It’s now official that Pat Biondo is leaving Oregon to become Kentucky’s general manager, with former Louisville staffer Pete Nochta joining him as assistant GM. On paper, they’re “support staff.” In reality, they’re about to handle a massive chunk of what wins and loses games in 2025: roster, portal, and money.

Across college football, the GM role has exploded. ESPN recently detailed how schools are poaching NFL personnel people, paying them coordinator-level money and asking them to act like pro GMs for their colleges, managing 100+ man rosters, transfer targets, NIL negotiations and, soon, revenue-sharing caps.

How Pat Biondo and Pete Nochta turn Kentucky football into an NFL-style operation

That’s the world Biondo and Nochta are stepping into for Kentucky. Think of their job this way:

• Portal and recruiting board – Who fits Stein’s scheme? Who’s realistic to land? What does the 85-man and future 105-man scholarship math look like two years from now, not just tomorrow?
• NIL and revenue share strategy – Not just “do we have money,” but where do you deploy it? Quarterback vs edge vs left tackle, high school vs portal, one-year rentals vs multi-year development.
• Agent and relationship management – More and more, top transfers and high-end high school kids are working through agents. GMs are the ones living in that space so coaches don’t have to spend their nights negotiating numbers.

Long-term planning is going to be key. As one exec told ESPN, the job now is “long-term decision-making, targeted resource spending, strategic investment by position,” basically, NFL logic applied to the SEC.

Biondo comes from Oregon’s machine, which has been on the front edge of portal and NIL usage. Nochta knows the region and recruiting footprint from his Louisville background. Together, they give Stein something Kentucky hasn’t really had before: a dedicated braintrust whose job is to think 12–24 months out while the coaching staff tries to win on Saturday.

This is how you keep Cutter Boley happy and line up his successor. It’s how you avoid overpaying at the wrong position, or getting caught with a thin offensive line because you chased too many “skill” stars. It’s also how you survive the reality that rosters now churn every December and May.

In the pre-House era, being a great recruiter was enough. In the new world, you need a front office that thinks like an NFL team. With Biondo and Nochta on board, Kentucky is finally playing that game on purpose instead of by accident.