When Austin Thomas began his first job as a top-level college athletics administrator, he was working in a much different world than the one he’s navigating now.
Thomas, LSU football’s general manager, must now operate like a high-level NFL executive. He has to manage a salary cap. He has to negotiate with agents. He has to scout players on rival teams, just in case he and the program he represents one day encounters an opportunity to sign one of them out of the transfer portal.
“I never thought it would get here this fast,” Thomas said Thursday.
Luckily for LSU, few are more qualified to tackle those new responsibilities than Thomas, the administrator who’s believed to be the first person ever hired to work as the general manager of a college football program. LSU gave him that title in 2016 — in the middle of the first of his three stints in Baton Rouge.
Thomas met with reporters on Thursday to discuss the future of NIL collectives, how he manages the day-to-day operations of a modern college football power and what he and his staff needed to do before it could build LSU’s 2025 roster, a team that coach Brian Kelly believes is equipped to win the SEC.
Thomas also spoke about the importance of a visit he made with LSU athletic director Scott Woodward to the Seattle Seahawks last year and the system he uses to decide how much to pay every player, both of which can be read about here.
Here’s what else stood out from his 20-minute news conference.
Future of LSU's collective
Kelly said Thursday on his weekly radio show that LSU spent around $18 million to build its roster. It couldn’t have distributed that much money without a boost from Bayou Traditions, its official collective.
In the offseason, Thomas and Kelly worked with the donor group to raise funds for the 2025 football roster. Then, they distributed that new money among players in deals finalized before July 1, the date at which collectives across the country had to begin abiding by restrictions meant to curb “pay-for-play" deals.
How much can collectives assist schools in the future? Thomas said he’s still trying to figure it out.
“We don’t have all the answers right now,” he said.
The College Sports Commission (CSC) — the newly created group tasked with enforcing the parameters of the House settlement — initially said that athletes could not sign deals with collectives because those agreements did not constitute a “valid business purpose.”
By July 31, lawyers representing House plaintiffs had successfully pushed the CSC to loosen that guidance. The clarified policy allows athletes and collectives to work together.
But industry leaders such as Thomas are still trying to figure out exactly how heavily they can lean on collectives in the future. LSU, Thomas said, is trying to “test the market.”
The future of LSU's collective is uncertain. The Tiger Athletic Foundation, LSU’s third-party fundraising arm, did not extend its partnership with Bayou Traditions, which began last summer. LSU has planned to focus on arranging third-party NIL deals on top of revenue sharing.
“I think there's some gray there right now,” Thomas said, “and so we're trying to maximize the space that we're able to work in there as far as the parameters that have been given. But at the end of the day, the true answer is we don't know exactly what that looks like yet.”
The next QB
Who will play quarterback for LSU after Garrett Nussmeier? The Tigers once thought they had a clear answer to that question. Then five-star recruit Bryce Underwood flipped his verbal pledge from LSU to Michigan last November, forcing Kelly and his staff to hatch a new succession plan.
“There's gonna be a void there,” Thomas said. “We're gonna have a new starting quarterback.”
The two quarterbacks on scholarship behind Nussmeier could compete for the job next season. Michael Van Buren — a sophomore who started eight games as a freshman last year at Mississippi State — could step into the job, but he’d likely have to fend off Colin Hurley, the redshirt freshman who reclassified and enrolled in 2024 as a four-star prospect.
LSU did not sign a quarterback to its 2025 freshman class, and it does not yet have one committed to its 2026 crop.
The Tigers are, however, hoping to land a high-profile recruit in the 2027 class. Its primary targets appear to be Elijah Haven and Colton Nussmeier. Haven is a Baton Rouge native and the nation’s consensus No. 1 quarterback. Nussmeier is Garrett’s younger brother and the No. 5 quarterback in the class.
“We feel really good about what we have here as well,” Thomas said, “and we’re really excited about the future of those guys. Give them an opportunity to compete and earn that position and then we'll kind of assess as we move forward.”
Working with Kelly
In this new era of college football, head coaches have to work with general managers.
Kelly didn’t think the sport would ever progress to that point. If he did, as he joked on Tuesday, he might’ve taken a coaching job in the NFL at one point during his long career.
“For 34 years, I've effectively signed the checks, the scholarship checks,” Kelly said. “Been primary in the roster and putting together a roster. It's been such a centralized operation for my entire career, right? It all revolved around what my thoughts were and my decisions. I've abdicated some of that to a front office, if you will.”
Now, Kelly said, LSU has staffers who can scout players, manage money and negotiate contracts so he has more time to focus on his coaching responsibilities.
“I appreciate coach Kelly,” Thomas said. “He's extremely bright, extremely adaptable. That's the one thing I'll say about him is he's done this for 34 years as a head coach, and you don't get here without the ability to adjust and adapt in everything that you're doing.
“He and I have a great relationship. We work together on a daily basis.”