Meet FIU Football's First General Manager: Jose Jefferson

The question that everyone has is what exactly does the general manager of a college football team do?

"[Simmons] wants me to look at the ergonomics of the staff and team," Jefferson said, "How does our roster look? Are we heavy on this position, light on this position? How does the staff work? Are we communicating effectively? Are we using people? So it's like looking at the team at a 30,000 -foot view."

When Jefferson and the rest of the staff arrived on campus, he described it as "Abracadabra, pull a recruiting class out of our rear end." After the winter and spring portal went by, FIU went on to bring in 21 incoming freshman and 26 transfers. FIU finished with the third-best recruiting class in CUSA per 247Sports, but number one in Rivals' rankings. The 2026 class is already up to 20 hard commits, once again giving them one of CUSA's top recruiting classes.

"We had less than 30 days to get a good recruiting class, and guess what? We had the number one recruiting class in Conference USA. My thought was to blitz Broward, Miami-Dade and West Palm. It's seven million people that we gotta blitz and let them know that we're around. Then we go through the spring and cherry-pick in the portal, maybe a couple of guys. 20 guys later in the portal and then we turn over for 48 guys and then we're already working on 2026 guys in June. So within six months that I was there, the whole thing just changed."

The consensus among FIU's staff is that the team believes they got better in the trenches. The recent additions of UAB offensive lineman Zaire Flournoy and Rice offensive lineman Miguel Cedeno.

"We went through spring and we were probably six guys deep," Jefferson said of FIU's offensive line. "Now, we're about 12 guys deep."

Along with the offensive line getting better, Jefferson emphasized the addition of Holy Cross quarterback Joe Pesansky, adding a veteran quarterback who can step into games if junior starter Keyone Jenkins is unable to go. In 12 games last season, Pesansky completed 292 passes for 2,399 passing yards and 19 touchdowns.

"If we didn't have Joe (Pesansky), we'd be in trouble, we would definitely be in trouble," Jefferson said. "Now we feel we have two guys that can lead us and get us through. I think [Jenkins] can win games for us, but Joe can win games for us and get us through games."

After three straight 4-8 seasons for FIU, Jefferson believes that the expectation going into 2025 is bowl game or bust.

"We went from a team that said I think we'll be able to match what we did last year with four games to where we're talking bowl, we're talking extra games, and we're talking league championship. We want to compete for that and we feel that."

One major reason why FIU believes they will be more competitive is because of the recent support provided by the newest President, Jeanette Nuñez. Along with that, the recent House ruling, allowing revenue sharing, will and already has changed the college football landscape. Even with the ruling, FIU believes that they are in a great place financially to compete with the best teams in Conference USA.

Jefferson noted that with revenue sharing, it changes their recruiting strategy, noting that schools traditions are still alive, but in this new age, a scholarship is considered the minimum to certain athletes and then they want to begin talking a dollar figure. It will take a focused approach to use the current circumstances to FIU's advantage and make them more competitive with top teams in CUSA and perhaps eventually, the rest of the Group of Five.

"The university has stepped up and made us competitive with revenue share," said Jefferson. "Now, can we compete with the University of Miami? Probably not, if it comes down to revenue...We decide to be smart with the funds that we have and smart with what we do, with the people that we bring in. That's what makes recruiting that much more important and that's the difference between pro ball and college ball."

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