FootballScoop is proud to announce that Annie Hanson and Drew Hill are the 2019 FootballScoop Player Personnel Directors of the Year presented by AstroTurf as selected by prior winners.
Oklahoma has long been one of college football's most consistent winners, and especially since Bob Stoops' hiring in 1999. But the seamless transition from Stoops to Lincoln Riley has seen the Sooners' success jump another level -- three straight College Football Playoff berths, two straight Heisman winners and a runner-up in 2019.
That success doesn't happen by accident. While Riley is undoubtedly one of the best play-callers in college football, behind him is a team of visionaries that increased OU's recruiting success while also carving out a new identity within the Sooners' brand.
Spearheaded by Hanson and Hill, Oklahoma's recruiting classes in Riley's first three years as head coach -- 2018, '19 and '20 -- averaged a No. 9 ranking in the 247Sports composite rating, compared to No. 14 in the three years prior. The Sooners have done predictably well landing quarterbacks and wide receivers, reeling in 5-star quarterbacks Spencer Rattler and Caleb Williams, plus 5-star wide receivers Jadon Haselwood and Theo Wease.
Hanson and Hill have also been instrumental in building the OUDNA initiative, which combines the past and present of the Sooner brand into a package designed for consumption by today's recruits.
That includes groundbreaking videos heralding the arrival of the 2019 and '20 recruiting classes.
"For our Oklahoma brand, we’re always going to try to recruit the very best in the state no question. But we’re never going to have a team completely full of players from the state of Oklahoma just with the size of our state," Riley said in December "We’ve always been a national brand. We’ve always nationally recruited. And so the thought was of organizing almost a takeover of some of the major cities all across the country."
A former Sooner track athlete, Hanson began her college athletics career in development before becoming the director of on-campus recruiting at North Carolina from 2015-17. She returned to Norman shortly after Riley's promotion to head coach as OU's executive director of recruiting, then was promoted to assistant AD for recruiting strategy and administrative engagement in 2019.
Hill was named Oklahoma's first director of player personnel in 2014. He previously worked in the same role for two years at Colorado State, and prior to that worked in football operations at Southern Miss and Fresno State. The Southern Miss graduate broke into coaching as a college scouting assistant with the Atlanta Falcons.
"Both Annie and Drew have been instrumental in both our efforts in recruiting and personnel," Riley told FootballScoop. "They combine both hard work & creativity to keep our program on the cutting edge. I’m very thankful to have them on our team here at Oklahoma."
As always, FootballScoop Coach of the Year award winners are chosen by prior winners.
Previous winners of the Player Personnel Director of the Year award are Tyler Siskey (Alabama, 2013), Mark Pantoni (Ohio State, 2014), Austin Thomas (LSU, 2015), Jody Wright (Alabama, 2016), Marshall Malchow (Georgia, 2017), and Matt Lindsey (South Carolina, 2018).
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