5/15/26: Mo Egger with UC Football GM Zach Grant

The General Manager of the UC Football program joined Mo on 513 Day at UC.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
We are broadcasting from the University of Cincinnati on five
to one, three day This has been an absolute blast
and it continues as we are joined by the general
manager of the UC football program, Zach Grant. Awesome to
have you. Is this a downtime a year for you?
Is this a busy time? Like? Where where are we
in the calendar?

Speaker 2 (00:17):
Yeah, it's great to be here. I appreciate you having
me on. We're at a point that's starting to ramp
up being a little busier and busier. You know, the
downtime after the portal is really February, and then you know,
we have spring practice and a lot of high school
visits associated with that, right, and now this month our
coaches are on the road seeing our prospects and different

(00:38):
guys they either need to see work out or go
in home and convince them to come here on official visits.
And so as we get closer to June, where we'll
host a lot of official visits for high school players,
the work starts to ramp up in the strategy behind.

Speaker 1 (00:52):
That, all right, talking about the work ramping up. As
soon as the season ended, you were going to have
to hit the portal. And if I'm my memory serves Mere.
The calendar was a lot different this year, so you
had more time to prepare. It wasn't like season ends
and now you got to hit it, which it had been.
So give us an idea. I know how hard you
guys worked in that stretch leading up to the portal opening.

(01:13):
I know you had a lot of spots and wanted
to fill large to do list. Give me an idea
how you feel you're you and your staff did.

Speaker 2 (01:19):
Yeah, I think, uh, you know, we we did a
fantastic job filling our needs. You know, it obviously starts
with our head coach, coach Cyderfield set the vision for
what we needed, and we're going through a little transition
period there with a new defensive scheme, and you know,
our coaches you know, worked their butts off to you know,
show the vision of where each of these players would

(01:40):
fit in. And then on on the personnel side of
things and the recruiting side, you know, trying to budget
and allocate our rev share money the best way we
possibly could both, starting right after the season with retaining
our players, which is always step one, and then right
after the season we signed our high school class, and
then we had a month leading into early January where

(02:03):
you know the portal actually opened. There was a lot
of information gathering and discussions with agents leading into that
and what we needed to do, and I think over
an eleven day period in early January we signed twenty
two players in the portal. There's kind of all hands
on deck in the entire program, and it extends beyond

(02:23):
just the football program. Nowadays, you know our Trevor Wright
and our I call it the contract department, but he
deals with a lot of that and as kins of
a liaison between our General Counsel's office and you know,
the ongoing discussions with John Cunningham and John Daniel as
it relates to what our budget pool is and what

(02:45):
we need to do to make sure we're competitive. And
then you know, in a quick turnaround over the holidays,
our academic staff did a tremendous job making sure all
their transcripts and they were able to get in school.
And so I'm proud of the work everybody. It extends
beyond just you know, the football program, and it's a

(03:05):
team effort.

Speaker 1 (03:06):
What do you like most about the team as we
go into summer?

Speaker 2 (03:10):
Yeah, what I came away from spring really really proud
of was just the competitive spirit both offensively and defensively.
We're obviously going to look a lot different than last season.
We had a little bit more brand names on last
year's team that you know, everyone knew about year over year,

(03:31):
but without those guys, that added energy that we have
with players in my opinion that are just as good
and we're a little deeper. It just added to a really,
really competitive spring. So I think we got better as
a full team. And obviously we're implementing a new defense.
You know, there's an added energy to the guys in

(03:52):
their belief in what we're doing.

Speaker 1 (03:54):
You are going to go into summer and now, you know,
focus on high school recruiting. And I said this coach
Sadderfield in the first hour. You know, I feel like
we never talk about high school recruiting anymore. I know
you do in your world. So what do these coming
weeks look like?

Speaker 2 (04:08):
Yeah, yeah, I think it's funny the portal gets a
lot of publicity because it's the impact is felt like
right now with when those players come in. But high
school recruiting is still the lifeblood of what we have
to do to build a consistent program moving forward, where
there's no ebbs and flows. Year and year out. We're

(04:29):
setting the floor of the roster with really good players.
A lot of times out of high school they're more developmental,
but it's we're going to try to sign a full
high school class every year. So what that looks like
in the next month. We have three official visit weekends
the weekend of the fifth, twelfth, and nineteenth of June,

(04:50):
and then it goes it's a dead period for a
while until the season. But you know, those three weekends,
you're got ten to fifteen players here in high school
each weekend, and we're showing them the entire city. We're
showing them most of them have been here already, but
we're able to go out to dinner with them, and
it's kind of more of a feeling of camaraderie with

(05:13):
the entire staff around these guys. And as always, you know,
we're evaluating them as much as they're evaluating us too, right,
and nowadays in college football, you have to value each
of these players. And we're sticking to our guns though,
like in we want to have the most money to
retain our roster, and we're not gonna, you know, blow

(05:34):
it on high school players completely, but we'll be as
competitive as we need to be.

Speaker 1 (05:39):
You have a very fascinating job, and I've said that
to you before, and it's it's still like the job
has been normalized, but there's still so many nuts and
bolts to it that I always enjoy your perspective. I
appreciate you doing this.

Speaker 2 (05:52):
Yeah, of course, thank you. It's it's a fun job.
It changes every day, but I'm excited going to work
every single day. My job is a lot easier when
we work with really good people, which I'm fortunate to
do here.

Speaker 1 (06:05):
Yeah, no question, Thanks so much.

Speaker 2 (06:07):
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (06:07):
Zach Grand, general manager of the University of Cincinnati football program.
The head coach of the UC volleyball program, Danielle Tomach
will join us next Right now, though, it's time for
Redemand and Jones on baseball.