Sources: Cincinnati, Scott Satterfield on verge of nabbing FootballScoop's reigning Player Personnel Director of the Year for G.M. role
Zach Grant, one of the most well-regarded personnel experts in college football and FootballScoop’s reigning Player Personnel Director of the Year, is poised to make another substantial career leap, sources tell FootballScoop.
And new Cincinnati head coach Scott Satterfield is likewise making an extremely significant off-the-field addition in the same sequence.
Grant is expected to exit his post at Ohio State to become the first-ever general manager for the Cincinnati Bearcats’ football program and the newly hired Satterfield, who stunned college football earlier this month when he exited Louisville to take over the Cincy program. Though the deal has not been finalized, per sources, it is expected to be completed in the coming days.
Grant, who helped construct and engineer Western Kentucky’s record-setting 2021 roster that propelled the Hilltoppers to a conference championship-game appearance and a bowl win, most recently had served as head of player personnel for Ryan Day and Mark Pantoni at Ohio State.
The Buckeyes this week signed a consensus top-five recruiting class that, per the 247Sports Composite, ranked top-3 in per-commitment rating average.
Grant has long been a key fixture in recruiting departments and climbed through the personnel ranks with a reputation for strong attention to detail and a tireless work ethic.
He was praised by Maurice Crum, a former Notre Dame linebacker who first worked with Grant last decade at Notre Dame, when Grant earlier this year was named FootballScoop’s top personnel expert.
“He was like so excited just to look at all the pieces that we put together,” Maurice Crum, a former Notre Dame standout who rose to become WKU’s defensive coordinator before vaulting earlier this year into the co-coordinator role at Ole Miss, told FootballScoop. “He had a mindset of, ‘I don’t want us to just take anyone out of the Portal, we have to take the right things and the right people under Coach Helton’s guidance.
“And Zach would just be so excited every time we got a piece. Like he could see it coming together before everyone else could, and then once it got together and got going, it was special. Obviously, he was like everyone early on the season, a little nervous, but he said, ‘Just trust me, it’s going to work.’ It kind of took off all the sudden.”
