Mel Kiper gave Oklahoma’s GM one of the highest compliments possible

No one in the know has said anything negative yet about Oklahoma football general manager Jim Nagy.

ESPN's NFL Draft expert Mel Kiper Jr. on Tuesday was a guest on Dari Nowkhah's new radio show on The REF (1400 AM) and spoke extremely highly of Nagy, who the Sooners just hired as their GM in February.

Mel Kiper has big praise for Jim Nagy

Nagy had been Executive Director of the Reese's Senior Bowl since 2018 before OU hired him. Before that, he spent 18 years inside NFL front offices as a scout with the Seattle Seahawks, Kansas City Chiefs, New England Patriots and the Washington Redskins.

Through their roles scouting potential NFL talent, Nagy and Kiper's paths have crossed frequently, whether on shows or at scouting events, so Kiper not only knows the world of evaluating talent, but also Nagy.

"Just a great evaluator of talent," Kiper said. "Just a great man who loves this game as much as anybody does. Grinds. We talk about grinders, right? They get up in the morning, the first thing they're doing is they're on the phone, they're watching tape. What he did at his website there was remarkable. The Senior Bowl has been run by some great people. Really, I thought he'd be an NFL GM before he'd be a GM at the collegiate level, but hey, with the transfer portal and the way things have changed in college football, it led us now to a situation where we have GMs in college football, directors of football operations, basically. NFL front offices are now college front offices. Jim benefitted from that.

"But I really thought he'd be back in the NFL, so this is great. I think it's great for Oklahoma. It's great for Jim. Like I said, I don't think there's a better evaluator of talent out there."

There's no better compliment out there for a man whose job is to evaluate talent. With the Sooners, Nagy has the task of leading roster building, player evaluation, recruiting and compensation for OU's football program. He's also assembled his own staff that mimics an NFL front office.

Nagy eventually caught wind of Kiper's praise and was appreciative of the compliment.

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