re: Old Recruiting Thread: RIP insiders

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Hugh Freeze is making big-boy moves heading into Year 2 at Auburn.

And Freeze's gain is yet another loss for Brian Kelly and LSU.

Multiple sources tell FootballScoop that Freeze and the Auburn Tigers are plucking away Will Redmond from LSU to become Auburn's brand-new general manager of football.

The reigning FootballScoop Director of Player Personnel of the Year, Redmond has in short order become one of the top personnel executives in all of college football..

The Scoop - Wednesday January 24, 2024

Scott Roussel

He's the off-the-field architect of LSU's roster overhaul under Kelly and was the lead scout on Jayden Daniels when the Tigers recruited the former Arizona State quarterback out of the NCAA Transfer Portal.

Moreover, it was the work of Redmond -- and a top-notch staff he helped hire -- that accelerated LSU's rebound under Kelly.

The Bayou Bengals had fewer than 40 scholarship players when Kelly arrived in late 2021 after he had established the mark as Notre Dame's all-time winningest coach; work in the Portal and on the traditional recruiting trail helped LSU turn in consecutive 10-win seasons in Kelly's first two years and also saw the Tigers appear in the 2022 SEC Championship game.

Redmond's move to Auburn, however, could be viewed as quite literally generations in the making.

A Franklin, Tennessee, native, who climbed from sports information student-assistant at the University of Tennessee to deeply experienced personnel professional, Redmond's grandparents first met at Auburn -- even before the school was known as Auburn University.

Moreover, Redmond has a cousin who is a former NCAA Champion with a star denoting the stellar career on the Auburn campus.

In addition to Redmond's undergraduate work on Rocky Top, he also logged time at MTSU and Kansas before Austin Thomas plucked him away from the Jayhawks to help run LSU's personnel efforts.

LSU in the past two years signed 247Sports Composite top-7 classes, and as Redmond prepared for his exit from one of the SEC's three sets of Tigers to another one, LSU already garnered commitments from the top-ranked quarterback, running back and wideout, per some industry rankings, in the 2025 class.

Redmond and his wife, Jessica, have two children.

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