I posted most of this on another site here. Steve Young sat right in front of me, an older gentleman asked if I could save a couple seats for him and his wife. Turned out to be Carmen Policy and his wife (he's a really nice man, I can say it even though I root for Dallas and hate the Niners). Roger Goodell, John Lynch, Jed York, Ty Montgomery, and Ryan Murphy (Cal swimmer superstar) were there. Chatted with Rivera and his wife as well as Murphy.

1) RR is very busy doing donor engagement. He did say that he is at practices a lot, but will miss this weekend because of donor commitments. Go get em RR.

2) From Luck, the coaches don't handle NIL at all, he and his team have taken them over. He mentioned he has a gray hair on his beard for every time he has had a negotiation with a prepubescent teen. My reading is he doesn't always love the job.

Both said that the jobs are both new and being developed on the fly. RR did mention that they will probably rely on NFL past practices for how to structure their GM teams. I think I see my retirement job as I see the GM roles expanding with bigger staff headcount.

1. With RR mentioning that he would look to the NFL for how to organize as a GM, it's obvious to me that professionalization of college football is the path this is going. With that, expect college front offices, requests to be released (kind of like the requests to be traded in the pros), holdouts, more staff for recruiting, salary caps experts, etc. Both kind of emphasized that the college degree means something, but I hardly see it as congruent anymore. RR mentioned that part of the job is now to tell kids, "Look you are getting paid, but get to class. And you want a car? Where are you going to park it in Berkeley? And do you think you should park it in your neighborhood?"

2.There was emphasis on female as coaches. RR had actually hired one in the NFL as noted by Fishy. I would expect that we may see more with Cal soon. RR, of course, would be a great mentor.

3. Not much else on the Furd side, though Luck noted they are fortunate to have great coaches and he really appreciates Tara VanDerVeer.

So, a fun time, but not a ton learned and not sure what the future is.

Go Bears Forever