GM Noah Joseph wears many hats

You see Purdue GM Noah Joseph everywhere. He’s ubiquitous.

On game days, you’ll often find him stationed near Ryan Walters. At practices, Joseph roams the field, encouraging players, talking to recruits, huddling with coaches, doing whatever to help …

“Noah is a very important part of this program,” said Walters.

Who is Noah Joseph? He’s the general manager of Purdue football, the man who has a hand in everything … from talent procurement to when to go for it on fourth down.

Joseph is the glue who keeps it all together, one of the most important people in the Kozuch Football Complex. He’s the heartbeat of the program as Walters’ confidant and right-hand man.

A native of Zanesville, Ohio, Joseph cut his teeth as a try-hard, overachieving safety at Drake. That’s where he played for Bulldog assistant Chris Ash, who would become one of the most influential people in Joseph’s life. It’s a relationship that endures with each often texting daily.

“That shaped my trajectory because of the way he made me feel and got the best out of me,” said Joseph, a captain on the 1998 Drake squad. “I wanted to be able to have that same impact on somebody else. That’s what kind of drove me into coaching.”

Joseph hurtled into a coaching career from there, making stops at his alma mater, Eastern Kentucky, Iowa State, Eastern Illinois and Montana State. He then matriculated to North Texas, Indiana, Rutgers, Texas, Missouri and now Purdue, morphing into an off-field role in recent years.

Along the way, Joseph has worked for coaches like Dan McCarney, Kevin Wilson, Ash, Tom Herman and Eli Drinkwitz.

It was at North Texas where Joseph first worked with Walters, who was hired by McCarney prior to Joseph’s second season in Denton, Texas.

“I think Ryan helped me in a lot of different parts,” said Joseph. “But I was able to go to Indiana right after that season, and maybe a week later, he went to Memphis to be a secondary coach there. We always stayed in touch and knew we wanted to work again together because we worked well together and had a great relationship.”

The reunion finally took place in 2023 at Purdue.

“It’s a little bit different role being off the field and not coaching, but it’s been awesome,” said Joseph. “Watching, seeing how Ryan’s grown, and how our relationship, I think, has grown. I think he trusts me and knows that I won’t always say ‘yes,’ to him or anybody else, which is good and bad at times.”

What’s a G.M. do? What are the challenges of the position? Joseph shares his thoughts on those topics and more …

Noah Joseph on …

… THE GM POSITION:

Overseeing recruiting and the evaluation process and putting a system in place to determine who you’re going to recruit and who you’re not going to recruit. So, that’s kind of how it started. And now just with how college football’s changed with unlimited transfers, NIL and things like that, that’s really been the main focus.

We have a great staff here, led by Nate Dennison in scouting and Jess Stinger in recruiting, and just making sure those people have what they need. We’re working with the coaches to meet the coaches’ needs and have a plan in place overseeing that. We’re really trying to forecast, ‘Hey, what is the roster looking like now? What do we think it’s going to look like?’ Then, how do we solve the issues that we have? If somebody does leave, we’re prepared for that and have a plan in place.

... NAVIGATING THE PORTAL:

The big thing I think is with our program here, we need to recruit the right high school kids. We need to retain those high school kids, and we need to develop those guys. Our coach has a great plan in place. We have great people in place, Coach Ro (Kiero Small) in the strength and conditioning room in developing those guys.

You’ve gotten to know our staff. We’re young, we can relate, we do a great job recruiting guys, but that also allows us to help retain guys. It doesn’t always work out, but they feel like they can trust us as men, and we’re transparent and open and honest with how we interact with them. So, it’s been good in that aspect. The transfer portal and NFL, in my mind, go hand in hand. It’s probably not supposed to and that wasn’t the intent of it. But the reality is that’s how it’s working.

… THE BIGGEST CHALLENGE OF HIS JOB:

I think there are a lot of challenges. That is a huge one just because there are so many unknowns. When the transfer portal opens, it’s like Wall Street with both your own players staying, coming, going and trying to figure out how do you get them to stay. What do what they want? What is real, what is not real? As well as when you’re trying to find guys out there that are in the portal. You might say, ‘Hey, I’m going to see this guy.’ Everything seems good. And then, an hour later, something else has happened and he’s moved on or whatever. I think you want to have a plan in place, but you have to be able to adjust and adapt on the fly.

… IMPORTANCE OF HAVING A STRONG COLLECTIVE:

I think in today’s day, honestly, that’s the only way you can be successful in college football until we get some rules and regulations in place. If you don’t have the ability to get in the game, your NIL collective will allow you to get in the game. If you can’t get in the game, you have no chance to get guys. And then, conversely, to be able to retain your guys, you have to be able to give them something to hold on to because somebody’s going to give them something.

… TAMPERING:

There’s a lot of different ways that the tampering goes around. How much does a coach from another school call your player? I don’t know if it happens a whole bunch, but there are a lot of different avenues. The thing that’s changed, too, just with technology and everything is guys know each other from different avenues and all over the country and they can communicate. You might play in an all-star game with a kid that went to another school and you maintain the friendship, so you communicate on a regular basis. Or you did camps together. I think there’s a lot of friendships that 10 years ago maybe you didn’t have that kind of go into the tampering point of view.

… AUGMENTING THE RECRUITING DEPARTMENT:

I always say we’re in the talent acquisition business, and it doesn’t matter how good of a coach you are. No offense to Bill Belichick. You look at Bill Belichick, and he goes down as one of the all-time greatest and you lose Tom Brady, and you’re not so great anymore. So, as coaches, you’re only as good as your players. We have to do what we need to do to attract the best players possible.

We kind of looked at it not necessarily as a pro model, because it’s different in the pros, you have college scouting, right, which would be equivalent to our high school, and then you have pro scouting, which would be equivalent to the transfer portal. They’re picking who they want on their team, whether it’s through the draft or free agency.

For us, it’s a little bit different because we’re trying to get kids to choose to come to Purdue. We kind of split it up where we have a personnel or scouting department. Their main focus is to find players. Let’s evaluate them. Who fits our scheme? Who do we want to recruit? They work hand-in-hand with our coaches and Coach Walters to identify the prospects that we want and then from there those names and people go to the recruiting department. Now, it’s the recruiting department’s job to do everything possible to get them to sign and come to Purdue.

… IDEAL NUMBER OF PORTAL ADDITIONS EACH YEAR:

I think that’s a great question. Initially, we would say three to four, but now with unlimited transfers … That was when you had the one-time transfer rule. With unlimited transfers, you don’t know the likelihood of a kid sitting and developing for three years or two years even. I think it is kind of going to fluctuate and that’s what the challenge of the job is, trying to figure that out right now.

Where are we deficient on our roster? Where do we need to go find a playmaker? Plus, who on our roster do we think is going to leave that we’re going to need to replace? You used to think it’s a four-year long process. It’s really not, as it’s six months now.

… THE FUTURE OF ROSTER MANAGEMENT:

So, first off, I heard this at our AFCA conference in January and it kind of hits you right in the heart. It’s sad, but it’s reality: college football is no longer in the education business. We’re now in the entertainment industry. I think, unfortunately, that’s the reality of it. Like anything, when you look at it, well, what’s the top level, who’s the best of the best? It’s the National Football League, right? And they’ve evolved and adapted from the AFL and NFL and mergers and all this and they’ve got a system in place that the best of the best people that are making the most money in the industry are doing.

I think that’s kind of the route it needs to go, have some type of structure where you have salary caps, you have contracts. Now, the hard pieces, how do you look at education? What does that look like? I think that’s the reality. Kids are going to have one to four years maybe to maximize their earning potential. How do we allow them to do that? Plus, help them secure their future so they can continue to to earn money.

At the end of the day, why did you come to Purdue? To me, you come to Purdue to earn and make money and there are a lot of different avenues, right? What’s your scholarship check look like? Our administration and Coach Walters have done an amazing job of being able to increase that and take care of our student-athletes. It’s scholarship money, right? It’s NIL opportunities, which the Boilermaker Alliance and Purdue faithful have stepped up to the plate and helped us tremendously.

How do I make money right now? How do I prepare you? How does this scheme and these coaches prepare me now to go hopefully make money in the NFL? Then, I’m getting a Purdue degree where a Purdue degree out there means something. People want to hire guys with Purdue degrees. How do we maximize that and make sure everybody gets something that they want?

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