Baker Dunleavy as Villanova’s basketball ‘general manager’ shows importance of NIL

A Big 5 coach said to me the other day, “We need a general manager.”

This coach was not Kyle Neptune. This head coach was referring to the hectic NIL/transfer portal landscape, and maybe he knew what was happening this week at Villanova … they’ve gotten a general manager.

On Thursday, Villanova hired Baker Dunleavy for that exact job title, which is a perfect indication of how important the role is intended to be. Dunleavy left his job as Quinnipiac’s head coach to come back and essentially be a high-powered liaison for Name, Image, Likeness and other roster management responsibilities at his alma mater, where he once had been the top assistant under Jay Wright.

“Listen, the landscape of athletics and college basketball is changing by the day,” Dunleavy said Thursday afternoon over the phone, talking about why such a post was needed.

» READ MORE: Villanova names Baker Dunleavy general manager of basketball

Adding such a position has been on Villanova athletic director Mark Jackson’s mind for some time, Jackson said.

“That thought got expedited based on the amount of work I saw our coaches having to do over the last year,” Jackson said from Los Angeles, where he happens to be attending Big East television meetings with Fox. “Particularly over the last four weeks. Since the season ended, those guys haven’t had a day off.”

Dunleavy is not replacing Ashley Howard, who was in charge of Villanova’s Friends of Nova NIL collective last season with Randy Foye. But that’s sort of how the chairs are changing, with Howard joining Neptune’s staff, with an official announcement coming any day now.

Make no mistake, this isn’t just about jersey sales and local appearances. This is about adding to Villanova’s collective war chest, which is already in seven figures, according to several sources.

Put it another way: Do you think Justin Moore would be coming back to Villanova if the school couldn’t compete with both G League salaries and other colleges?

If you don’t like the fact that college players now have actual value, you’re going to have to stop following college basketball. This isn’t going away, folks.

“I don’t think it’s something any of us need to run and hide from,” Dunleavy said of this NIL landscape. “It just needs to fit in with who we are as a university.”

Thursday’s press release from Villanova explained how Dunleavy will “support” Neptune and women’s coach Denise Dillon “in managing a myriad of responsibilities that impact both programs” then listing NIL first — “opportunities and education around Name, Image and Likeness; the transfer portal; student-athlete brand-building and marketing; and advancing institutional fundraising in partnership with University Advancement.”

College sports today, in one job description.

In the release, Jackson said, “The dramatic changes in college basketball over the past several years have brought new challenges and forced us to collectively think differently. I believe the creation of the GM role, particularly with Baker at the helm, positions Villanova well competitively for the future. It will allow Villanova to be even more forward-thinking and bring an innovative and seasoned perspective to the ever-evolving college basketball landscape.”

Asked what his relationship with the NIL collective would be, Dunleavy said, “I think the nature of that is a very unofficial relationship. Purposefully, the collective is a separate entity and it needs to be that way.” But Dunleavy added that people “who are passionate and want to be involved in our program” need to have “an internal basketball person” as a point of contact, including to explain changes going on.

Asked about the relationship between Dunleavy and the collective, Jackson said, “The two words I come to all the time — we can educate and we can inform. That means what? He can’t go out and negotiate, or raise money. But he can educate, and pass data — this is what they did.”

None of this is unique to Villanova. Temple has a Tuff Fund collective up and running. However, Dunleavy said Duke is the only school that he knows that already has a general manager title. Coincidentally, St. Joseph’s also put out a press release Thursday, 16 minutes before the Villanova release was sent out, announcing that “a group of passionate Saint Joseph’s University alumni have launched Hawk Hill Alliance as an official Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) entity to benefit Saint Joseph’s University student-athletes.”

The release noted that the collective “will allow businesses, donors and subscribers to support and engage with their favorite teams and student-athletes, or contribute to a general fund that supports student-athletes across several sports. Student-athletes may engage in a variety of opportunities, including personal appearances, meet-and-greets, charitable work, speaking engagements, or commercial sponsorship through the Alliance.”

The St. Joe’s release included notice that NCAA rules do not allow such compensation to be considered “pay for play” or a recruiting inducement.

Those are, in fact, the rules, which require every entity across the landscape to dance around what is really happening here.

“Everything is business now,” one Philadelphia grassroots veteran said of the recruiting and transfer-portal landscape.

Villanova’s release didn’t include the name of the special assistant to the president, but it’s hardly a coincidence that Dunleavy, Howard and Neptune all were top Jay Wright assistant coaches, in that order, chronologically. Part of Wright’s duties are fundraising and let’s assume he remains among the most important power brokers on his campus, and this area is now crucial to Villanova’s future in the sport.

Make no mistake, the dollar figures Villanova is assembling does not put the Wildcats at the top of the sport. In fact, it’s to be determined how strongly ‘Nova can compete over the long term with Power 5 football powers on this NIL front.

What Thursday’s news tells us, Villanova intends to find out.

Don’t be surprised if the basketball general manager becomes a normal job description on other campuses. Pro teams all have them. What’s different here?