Seven Thoughts on UFL’s Reported Move to Centralized Personnel Department

Changes continue to take place in the player personnel department of the UFL. On Tuesday, James Larsen of Pro Football Newsroom first reported the elimination of team general manager positions, with player acquisition becoming more centralized through the league office.

Our own Mike Mitchell added other details, including the move of President and CEO Russ Brandon to the football operations department, and head coaches being put on year-round contracts.

🚨 FOLLOW-UP on the #UFL GM purge:

League sources confirm this is the launch of a total football-ops overhaul:

➡️ Russ Brandon shifts from CEO to EVP of Football Operations—now the central hub for all player personnel, scouting, and roster decisions across the league.

➡️ New… https://t.co/fGOX2LRogC

— Mike Mitchell (@ByMikeMitchell) November 4, 2025

Here are some initial thoughts about these moves.

1. Unanswered questions make this difficult to judge

We all love knee-jerk reactions, and to be honest, my initial thoughts were disappointment that some great football minds in the eight general managers were let go. I am willing to keep an open mind, however, and see how this plays out before I judge too harshly.

There’s just a lot we don’t know about how centralizing each team’s personnel decisions will play out in practice. There’s really no football league of this size that has operated before in this fashion – to my knowledge – and a lot of in-the-weeds type of details that will make-or-break this philosophy, we know nothing about.

2. Some immediate concerns arise, though

All of that being said, there were two concerns that immediately came to my mind. The first is that by centralizing personnel decisions, the league is leaving itself open to accusations of favoritism from fans or others within the league.

Sure, head coaches will play a role in recruiting players but ultimately it seems like the league will have final decisions – including, as Mitchell’s post alluded to, final say over rosters themselves. That has the potential to expose the league to unnecessary criticism.

The second issue that struck me right away is that this takes away the potential for teams to take on their own personalities. You knew what kind of players Von Hutchins was looking for as general manager of the D.C. Defenders. The same was true of the St. Louis Battlehawks with Dave Boller, to a certain extent.

Will the teams feel homogenized and lacking that personality now that everything will run through the league office? Not only that, but general managers took cues from the head coaches in terms of finding players that fit a specific scheme or fit in the locker room. Will those nuances be lost in this new way of roster building?

3. It’s not about money…or is it?

In 2000, pitcher Mike Hampton signed the richest contract in baseball history at the time, an eight-year, $121 million pact with the Colorado Rockies. Hampton insisted his decision was not so much about the money but rather the attractiveness of the Colorado school system. His comment was ridiculed at the time, bringing to mind an old quote: “When they say it’s not about the money, it’s about the money.”

So while Larsen noted that this was not a cost-cutting move from the league, it certainly had the side effect of cutting costs. Getting rid of eight general managers – and their full-year contracts – likely saved ownership somewhere in the neighborhood of high six figures per year.

The UFL is moving personnel decisions to the hands of people already with the league. They may hire regional scouts, but they won’t make as much as the GMs did (Larsen’s article suggests former GMs could end up being hired as scouts, though Memphis Showboats GM Jim Monos is already back with Tyler Dunne’s Go Long Substack with a new podcast).

This ownership group has cut costs at every opportunity and even with the money new owner Mike Repole brings in, it wouldn’t be surprising if saving money, while not a main reason for this move, was an ancillary benefit the league considered. And if it’s not about money, one has to wonder why this move was necessary at all.

Why did the UFL believe that the way that every major sports entity runs its teams is not the best way for this league? What problems or inefficiencies had cropped up behind the scenes that this new structure solves? Because right now, it seems more like a solution in search of a problem.

4. Finally full-time contracts for head coaches

In the transition from the XFL and USFL to the UFL, head coaches were placed on seasonal contracts as a way to, you guessed it, save the league money. Part of the transition into this new structure means head coaches will now be full time. This provides numerous benefits for the league.

First, it will attract higher-level talent in that position as they fill out their head coach roster for 2026 with potentially several new faces in those roles. And if Repole wants the UFL to develop players for the NFL, you need strong leaders at the top of each team to help do just that, while also attracting the best assistant coaches who know what it takes to make it int he NFL.

This also allows the head coaches to be more ingrained in the communities in which they work. We’ve heard for years now the desire to do more marketing in each home city, though we’ve yet to see it play out effectively. The players on these teams frequently change and are not household names.

Some of the coaches are. They may be the best ambassadors to go into these cities and do media, make appearances, and plug the league and their teams. Now on full-time contracts, coaches in the future can spend the off-season doing just that. Head coaches moving to full-time contracts is one of the biggest early positives of this news.

5. Head coaches now basically head coach/GMs

When the XFL returned in 2020, each head coach was also given the title of general manager. They did have directors of player personnel on each team that acted as de facto GM, however. This time around, even if the general manager title is not bestowed upon them, head coaches will basically be acting in that role for their team.

In some ways, this simplifies things, eliminating the middleman that the GM could become. Coaches know best what kind of players they’re looking for to fit their offensive and defensive schemes, and they’ll likely get help from their assistants in looking for talent. Then they run that info up to the league office and get their guys.

Not all coaches necessarily make good scouts, though. Are they going to be responsible for sifting through thousands of draft-eligible players in the off-season? Will they WANT to do that? Or will some coaches defer more to the league for that level of scouting? What kind of negative impact could that deferment have on their team if there’s not someone pounding the pavement looking for potential players?

Then there are the in-season transactions. Head coaches can’t be expected to run a team and also have the time or wherewithal to scout injury replacements and other additions throughout training camp and the season. Again, they’ll likely lean heavily on the league office for that, but to what end? How closely aligned will the team’s needs and the office be in that regard? The involvement of the head coaches in personnel decisions may vary from team to team, but is that a good thing? It’s one of those unanswered questions that we’ll have to see play out in practice.

6. Brandon’s reassignment

Somewhat lost in all the talk about the personnel department changes is the transition of Russ Brandon from league President and CEO to leading the Doug Whaley/Russ Giglio team in player personnel. Though he’s still an executive, it feels a bit like a demotion for Brandon, which was all but fait accompli once Repole was brought in and started taking over a lot of Brandon’s duties, at least publicly.

Though his background is in sports finance and business operations, Brandon did have a short stint as general manager of the Buffalo Bills. It’s important to note that Brandon rose to prominence in spring football by virtue of being an operating partner with RedBird Capital, one of the groups that had purchased the XFL out of bankruptcy.

In searching for a league president, RedBird looked inward and hired one of their own. For that reason, it might be important for them to keep him on in some capacity, even if he doesn’t wield the power he once did.

7. What about Moose Johnston?

It was United Football Media that noted on Twitter/X that EVP of Football Operations Daryl “Moose” Johnston appears nowhere in either Larsen’s or Mitchell’s new hierarchy. Previously, Johnston’s position was that of overseeing Whaley and Giglio; now, that role seems to be handled by Brandon, with Whaley and Giglio adding duties within the football ops department. “Football Operations” does have a wider scope than just player personnel, so it’s conceivable Johnston could retain his position, though focused on a narrower breadth of responsibilities (like rules and game play for instance). That said, his name not coming up in any of this restructuring is notable.