According to a report from FootballScoop, Nate McNeal, director of player personnel the past two seasons at Illinois, will become Syracuse's first General Manager for football.

McNeal and Syracuse head coach Fran Brown overlapped on the staff of Temple in 2019.

The hiring of Nate McNeal from Illinois in the newly created position as the general manager of the Syracuse football program, has provided us with another element of the detailed presentation Fran Brown discussed with John Wildhack during his interview process.

It's Brown's vision to place a trusted former colleague in a role to oversee all of the program's roster development (player's health/safety) and management (scholarships), transactions (portal), student-athlete financials (NIL), and academics (support).

Brown and McNeal worked together at Temple in 2019, and McNeal's background with the Owls, his alma mater Northern Illinois, and most recently at Illinois where he served as the director of player personnel, has displayed his recruiting prowess.

McNeal will not only help the staff recruit in-home and during on campus official visits, but also establish relations with key high school coaches and administratively with donors and other internal staff members.

To get Orange Nation even more excited, according to our Rivals national recruiting colleagues, McNeal's most recent two-year stretch of recruiting from 2022-23 was Illinois' best since 2008-09, and the 2023 class was Illinois' highest ranked class since 2009.

With what Brown has accomplished in one month directing Syracuse's national recruiting rankings into the mid-30s with head-spinning success, we can all imagine the direction the program is headed when McNeal begins handling the daily operations.

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