Why South Carolina is turning to the NFL to beef up scouting department
Every year it seems that college football more closely resembles the NFL. The transfer portal has turned into free agency. Teams are getting into bidding wars trying to land players. And, combining preps and portal prospects, the number of players to evaluate is astronomical.
So perhaps it makes sense that college football teams are looking to the NFL as they try and revamp their scouting and personnel department for the revenue-sharing era.
Arguably no school has gone as deep into the NFL model as Oklahoma, which hired Senior Bowl Executive Director Jim Nagy and a bunch of folks with NFL front-office experience to get an edge in roster management and player evaluation.
And, now, South Carolina is following suit.
Earlier this week, the Gamecocks hired Rex Hogan as their director of scouting. He’ll work under player personnel director Darren Uscher.
While he spent the past two seasons leading the college scouting department at Auburn, Hogan spent over two decades working in the NFL.
Starting in 2003, he spent 12 years as an area and national scout for the Chicago Bears. He then moved into front-office roles with the New York Jets and Indianapolis Colts before a five-year stint as the Jets’ assistant general manager. Hogan and the Jets mutually parted ways in January 2024.
“It’s really just to continue to strengthen what we already do,” Beamer said of Hogan’s hire. “Darren does an awesome job heading it up, but if there’s a way to make us even better and add to the personnel back there, let’s do it. And Rex, to me, fit what we were looking for.”
Beamer noted on Friday that Hogan’s hire has been a long time coming. He admitted that following the firing of player personnel director Taylor Edwards in 2024, the Gamecocks’ head coach sat down with then-AD Ray Tanner and explained how he wanted to set up the USC personnel department.
Beamer said he wanted one person to head everything up — which led to Uscher’s hiring — and supplement that with “somebody with an NFL background,” Beamer said.
“Because I saw the college game,” he added, “heading more and more toward the pro model of scouting, NIL, revenue share, all that. And (I) thought there was a benefit to that.”
Beamer tried to lure someone from the NFL that summer but, given NFL training camp was fast approaching, the timing didn’t work out. He put the idea on hold after the Gamecocks went 9-4 in 2024, before bringing Hogan to Columbia this week.
Even with Hogan, South Carolina’s personnel department still isn’t massive. Uscher — who’s “doing what a lot of schools have two or three people doing,” Beamer said — and assistant director of Player Personnel Brian Bachman lead USC’s evaluation efforts.
“I’m never going to be a guy that says we’ve got to have the biggest staff. I don’t want that. I’m a less is more guy,” Beamer said.
“But when you looked around the league,” he continued, “I thought we were a little bit behind some schools from a personnel structure standpoint. Not a lot. I mean, we’re very much in line with a lot of people, but I just felt like there was a position or two that we were maybe missing, lacking.”
