Matt Hibbs is back at Georgia as roster strategy director

College football's front offices are starting to look a lot like the NFL's, and Georgia just made its latest move in that arms race. According to Pete Nakos, Matt Hibbs has rejoined the Bulldogs program as director of roster strategy, with Tuesday marking his first day back on campus.

Pete Nakos

@PeteNakos

Matt Hibbs has returned to the Georgia football program as its director of roster strategy. Tuesday marked his first official day back with the Bulldogs. Was previously at Pathway and, before that, worked for Georgia's NIL collective. t.co/Xe3YK5KtFI

Hibbs isn't a stranger to Athens. Before this move he was at Pathway Sports and Entertainment, and before that he ran Georgia's own NIL collective, Classic City Collective, as its CEO. He's also spent time as an agent at Athletes First and, notably, as the Director of Barstool Athletes here at Barstool Sports. Add in stops at Miami, Tennessee and Ohio State earlier in his career, and you've got a guy who's basically seen every side of the roster-building business — collective money, agent representation, and now, back in-house with the Bulldogs.

The title itself is the real story here. "Director of roster strategy" is part of a wave of new front-office jobs colleges have invented over the last few years as programs try to manage NIL budgets, the transfer portal, and revenue-sharing all at once. Programs used to just have recruiting coordinators. Now the top-tier schools are stacking staffs with general managers and roster strategists who treat the 85-man scholarship limit like a salary cap.

Kirby Smart's staff has already been aggressive about building out that infrastructure, and bringing back someone who helped run the Classic City Collective gives Georgia a guy who already knows exactly how the money side of the roster works in Athens. That institutional knowledge matters when you're trying to retain your own guys and go win portal fights against Ohio State, Texas and everyone else spending eight figures on rosters.

Don't expect this to be Hibbs' last stop, either — the roster-management gold rush across college football shows no signs of slowing, and programs that get ahead of it now are the ones best positioned once the next wave of transfer portal and revenue-sharing rules kicks in. For Georgia, landing a familiar name with real NIL and agent-side experience is a low-risk, high-value swing at staying ahead of that curve.