GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Florida Gators head coach Billy Napier has tapped long-time Atlanta Falcons Director of Football Operations Nick Polk to be the Gators’ Associate Athletic Director/Football General Manager.
Napier and the Gators have adapted to the ever-changing landscape of college football in the NIL age. Napier has long talked about creating an “NFL-style front office”, which will now be led by Polk as the Associate AD for Football.
“We are excited about moving forward with building out the front office concept with the addition of Nick Polk,” head coach Billy Napier said. “His leadership and experience will prove to be extremely valuable to the entire organization. Nick has a college football coaching background, as well as extensive NFL experience to go along with representing a number of clients that are in college football and the NFL. This is a huge step forward for the Gators.”
“I am honored and privileged to have this incredible opportunity to be named Associate Athletic Director/Football General Manager for the Florida Gators,” Polk remarked. “I’d like to give a special thank you to Scott Stricklin and Coach Napier for their trust in my abilities to take on this new role. Every successful program has alignment with its leadership and it was evident throughout this process that this is the case here. I am excited to work daily with this football program’s great administrators, coaches, players and staff to build a championship program.”
Polk spent 18 seasons with the Falcons where he was responsible for salary cap management — including draft negotiations, contract proposals, player contracts, coaches contracts, trades and trade value analysis, Collective Bargaining Agreement compliance, football budgets, league liaison, daily cap monitoring, and strategy. Before taking the job with the Falcons, Polk served as the Senior Director of Football Operations for NFL Europe for three years where he directed all of the NFL Europe League Football Operations.
With revenue sharing set to kick in, where schools will, for the first time, be able to pay athletes directly, there’s a hope that the market will stabilize some. Polk has nearly two decades of experience managing salary caps and negotiating with athletes and agents, which will be critical in his new role at Florida.
“We’re getting this front office built out to be more strategic about the salary cap, the contracts, revenue share, marketing, endorsement, that pool of money that could come available. And then, how you allocate the money becomes part of the evaluation process,” Napier said. “We have been living life that way although there’s no rules, what we’ve tried to do the last 18 months is create our own rules in terms of how we added players to the team. Not only the addition of players but the retention of players.”
The Gators have also hired Benjamin Elsner Director of Football Strategy.
Elsner comes to the Gators after serving most recently as Chief of Staff of The 33rd Team, a football analysis platform that provides in-depth insights on NFL teams and players, for nearly five years.
“Ben Elsner is one of the bright, up-and-comers in our profession and has unique and valuable experience in his early career,” Napier said. “He will be working alongside Nick in the salary cap and contract space. He will also help us use analytics and A.I. to evaluate all the data relative to strategy throughout the organization. He will be working closely with me to make sure we are continuing to evolve and are using the best practices throughout our program at all levels.”
In that role, he was responsible for various tasks within the start-up/think-tank. . Elsner worked closely over the past two years with former executives and team presidents gaining insight on successful, sustainable and efficient team building philosophies. Prior to this position, Benjamin gained experience working with former head coaches and general managers as a head scout evaluating both NFL & CFB players.
