With Roger Denny now in charge as athletic director, the Oklahoma Sooners are making moves to prove they're serious about getting the best talent to Norman, and not just to play football.
OU on Thursday announced Jared Boyd as the first general manager ever for the OU women's basketball program, giving head coach Jennie Baranczyk an edge over most programs around the country in building the best roster possible. The Sooners also recently hired Lucas McKay as GM of the men's program, while the football program last February, when Joe Castiglione was still AD, made a home-run hire with Jim Nagy as general manager.
Oklahoma hires Jared Boyd as women's basketball GM in another move that backs up Roger Denny's bold promises
General managers in today's college sports are in charge of building rosters similar to professional organizations. With one now for both basketball programs, the Sooners aren't just with the times, but getting a head start. And it now wouldn't be a surprise if other sports at OU also soon get their own general managers.
Boyd gets to Oklahoma already with experience in the role after serving as Texas Tech's GM last year and was also the Red Raiders' chief of staff for five years prior. With a roster Boyd led the way in assembling, Texas Tech went 25-7 this past season and made it to the second round of the NCAA Tournament.
His roles at OU, according to the press release, will include roster management, player acquisition and alignment with the head coach's vision; player valuation, analytics and market intelligence; NIL and revenue-sharing strategy; recruiting operations and relationship management; player retention, experience and professional pathways; and governance, compliance and risk management.
These hires come as Denny has also promised more resources, particularly financially for better talent. It made headlines when he retained men's basketball coach Porter Moser while stating Moser didn't get a fair shot because of a lack of resources. However, shortly after that move, Denny also said during an interview on Dari Nowkhah's show on KREF radio that the Sooners had problems with multiple sports being undersourced.
Read more: Oklahoma AD Roger Denny vows to fix embarrassing Sooners resource gap
"Coming out of the Big 12, maybe Oklahoma was big, bad Oklahoma that was running program budgets in the top 1 or 2 or 3 in the conference, but the SEC is a different environment, and we've got to be prepared for that," Denny said then. "Looking at the list right now in front of me, we have (six) sports (of 21) right now operating with budgets outside of the top 10 in the SEC. So every one of those is a priority for us. We cannot accept that. And so that's our goal."
Those were bold words from Denny then, but just over a month later -- between hiring general managers, and both basketball programs being able to retain and add elite talent -- he's proving it with action that the Sooners might actually meet his lofty goals sooner than later.
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