Tyler Barnes’ new role as Iowa football chief of staff, general manager is a ‘natural fit’

IOWA CITY — Tyler Barnes is not one to hype up his recent promotion from Iowa football’s recruiting director to chief of staff and general manager.

“More probably a title than anything,” Barnes told The Gazette.

As modest as Barnes is about the change, there’s purpose behind it. Iowa head coach Kirk Ferentz said the promotion is a reflection of Barnes’ “changing role” along with the “changing of college football.”

Barnes said he is “still going to be involved in everything” that he was doing in his previous role, but this move “frees me up a little bit more” — an especially important aspect ahead of the next wave of changes in collegiate athletics.

Perhaps the most glaring change on the horizon will be the NCAA’s implementation of roster limits and direct player compensation — both parts of the massive House vs. NCAA settlement — beginning in the 2025-26 academic year.

“That’s something that I’ve been looking through every day since we got back to camp, just trying to get an idea of where we’re going, how it’s going to look, how our roster spots are going to be divvied up,” Barnes said. “There’s a lot of change that’s going to happen, but it’s exciting. … I love trying to figure out this puzzle.”

After bringing the roster down to 105, Iowa football’s 2025 roster will be about 20 percent smaller than the size of its 2024 roster. Even when accounting for departing seniors, any portal entrants and the Hawkeyes’ relatively smaller 2025 recruiting class, roster cuts appear to be an inevitability.

“I’ve already done like a mock 105 with our current roster as it stands right now,” Barnes said. “We have 131 guys, so you’ve got to cut 26, which is hard. It’s really hard.”

Barnes also has “started some mock salary cap stuff based on the roster we have now.” Schools will be able to directly pay athletes, with the cap expected to be north of $20 million. It is unclear at this point how exactly that will translate to sport-by-sport athlete compensation budgets.

“I’m working on one number right now, and I think we’ll have a better idea in the next couple of months, hopefully, of what the number really might be,” Barnes said.

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Barnes is reluctant to offer the number he has been using for the mock salary cap — “I’ll let (athletics director) Beth (Goetz) tell you about that,” Barnes said — but it is a “pretty safe guess for the time being.”

Some of the salary cap work may already be familiar for Barnes from his collaboration with Iowa’s Swarm Collective, which pays Hawkeye athletes via name, image and likeness compensation.

Brad Heinrichs, the founder and CEO of the collective, described Barnes as an “incredible partner” and “one of the more valuable people inside of Iowa football.”

“From a budgetary standpoint, he helps me understand the importance of one player versus another player,” Heinrichs said. “I’m the one that has to kind of decide who gets what, and getting his expertise and understanding from a football standpoint, that’s been invaluable to me.”

The general manager role is a “natural fit for him,” Heinrichs said.

“He’s very organized, he’s very informed, he’s extremely levelheaded when it comes to people,” Heinrichs said, “and I think that he’ll do a really good job of balancing the roster and keeping us competitive.”

Barnes, Ferentz’s son-in-law, is in his second stint on the Iowa staff. He first served as a student assistant, graduate assistant and then administrative assistant at Iowa from 2009-12.

He then spent three years on James Franklin’s staff at Vanderbilt — first as co-recruiting coordinator in 2013 and then director of player personnel in 2014 and 2015 — before returning to Iowa as director of football recruiting in 2016.

Barnes “is really helpful in overseeing our entire personnel group,” Ferentz said.

“Used to just be recruiting, now you've got NIL, you've got portal, there's all kinds of stuff, all kinds of moving pieces,” Ferentz said. “Having him in place really allows me to do some of the things I want to be doing.”

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The promotion to the newly created chief of staff and general manager role gave Iowa the opportunity to “restructure our recruiting and personnel staff a little bit,” Barnes said.

Matt Spaulding, previously a recruiting specialist and “really good at what he does,” is now Iowa football’s recruiting director. Rhett Smeins is the assistant recruiting director after previously working as an analyst at Northwestern.

Ireland Hostetler is the director of internal operations after previously working as Iowa’s recruiting operations and special events coordinator. Scott Southmayd remains in his role as director of player personnel.

“It really allowed us to kind of just shift some things around and kind of get up to speed on where everybody else is in the country,” Barnes said.

Comments: john.steppe@thegazette.com

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