FootballScoop is proud to announce that Will Redmond (LSU) is the 2022 FootballScoop Player Personnel Director of the Year presented by AstroTurf as selected by prior winners.
There was not any panic.
As LSU prepared to face Kansas State in the Texas Bowl in the opening week of January 2022, the Tigers’ roster was tattered.
The school had fired once-beloved head coach Ed Orgeron midseason, and something of a mass exodus from the program had unfolded by season’s end.
Yet as the Tigers prepared for that eventual 42-20 loss to K-State with less than 40 scholarship players available for the game, Will Redmond saw opportunity.
“As an evaluator and roster manager, the challenge of rebuilding a locker room was truly exciting,” Redmond said. “Diving into the film, knowing the players would have to be immediate impact roster members set the tone for the offseason.
“We knew we not only needed great athletes, but great people as well.”
Late in 2021, LSU had hired away Brian Kelly from Notre Dame, and Kelly leveled a clear pathway for the Tigers.
“The charge from Coach Kelly was simple: bring us guys with elite traits on and off the field,” said Redmond, a University of Tennessee alum. “Coach Kelly made it abundantly clear when he arrived that we would do everything in our power to lock down the state of Louisiana. That also included transfer portal prospects with ties to our state.
“It is a daily, relentless pursuit -- find players with elite traits and elite talent. It starts at home for us, and we have arguably the best group of recruiters in the country to help make Coach Kelly's vision a reality.”
The plan, unequivocally, is working. Some 20 months after barely having enough scholarship players to close out that tumultuous 2021 campaign, the Tigers now are a consensus preseason top-5 group, and they’re building on recruiting classes the past two years that rank top-7 nationally for their underclassmen as well as among the nation’s top collections of talent via the NCAA Transfer Portal.
These factors, among myriad, are why Redmond is FootballScoop’s Player Personnel Director of the Year for 2022 as presented by AstroTurf and voted by previous winners.
“This is a tremendous honor for Will, and I’m very happy to see him recognized as the recipient of this award,” Kelly, who had broken Knute Rockne’s all-time wins record for the Fighting Irish, said. “His ability to identify talent and his overall evaluation of players is vital to our program.
“Whether it’s identifying young players or evaluating players who may be in the transfer portal, Will has been able to adapt to the ever-changing landscape of recruiting and player evaluation. Congratulations to Will on this well-deserved honor.”
After he transitioned from working in media relations on Rocky Top to an understudy role in the Vols’ recruiting department, Redmond first became director of player personnel at MTSU under Rick Stockstill before he landed at Kansas as the Jayhawks’s director of recruiting.
Austin Thomas then hired Redmond to the bayou, where he grew from a personnel research and strategy position to become LSU’s DPP.
“I take great pride in having witnessed Will’s journey of professional growth, where he has unsurprisingly evolved into a leader in the personnel industry,” Thomas said. “From the outset of his career, it was evident that Will possessed a rare combination of character and skill, but also had an eagerness to learn in order to become an expert in his field and achieve his goals.
“His unwavering commitment to excellence, coupled with his keen eye for talent and exceptional ability to develop deep connections and lead others, truly sets him apart.”
Redmond, quite simply, has worked to stay true to his faith and his development while focused on how to help position the Tigers for College Football Playoff contention. LSU is coming off a surprising 10-win campaign in Kelly’s debut year atop the program that included an SEC Western Division championships.
“My faith and my family always come first for me,” said Redmond, quick to thank numerous former influences from his days at UT. “My wife, Jessica, and our two children are my greatest source of inspiration. They know how passionate I am about what I do. It is not always easy for them day-to-day with the hours we work, but I could not do this job without their support.
"This award is truly a reflection of the coaches and support staff I have the honor of working with on a daily basis, (director of recruiting) JR Belton in particular. Our personnel & recruiting group is as good as or better than any in the country. Without them, none of this would be possible, and I am so grateful to serve this group as their director of player personnel. I will forever be thankful to Coach Kelly for allowing me to remain part of the LSU football family."
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), Matt Lindsey (South Carolina, 2018), Annie Hanson and Drew Hill (Oklahoma, 2019) and Lee Willbanks (Indiana, 2020) and Zach Grant (Western Kentucky, 2021).
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