The Mark Pantoni tree: Ohio State's recruiting guru a 'Godfather' of college football personnel dire

April 2024 · 12 minute read

COLUMBUS, Ohio — More than 180 college football recruiting department staffers from more than 60 programs gathered at the Omni Nashville hotel back in August for an audience with “The Godfather.”

Mark Pantoni, Ohio State’s director of player personnel who leads the charge in identifying prospects and formulating Urban Meyer’s entire recruiting strategy, would hate that nickname and any insinuation that the people gathered during those two days for the first ever Personnel Symposium were there for him. They weren’t only there for him.

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This gathering was a long time coming. The brainchild of former Alabama recruiting chief Ed Marynowitz, in consultation with Pantoni and other stalwarts of the increasingly visible college football personnel profession, the symposium was a place to share ideas and to talk about the state of recruiting in the sport. It was a place to convene as one body that can push for change while creating a unified voice for the hundreds of people working in roles that didn’t exist a decade ago at programs across the country.

Marynowitz and Pantoni started this revolution around the same time. Marynowitz was hired as Nick Saban’s director of player personnel at Alabama in 2008. Pantoni started heading Florida’s recruiting efforts under Meyer around that same time.

“They’re kind of the Godfathers of our profession. The two of them were sort of the first two guys that weren’t ex-coaches, or a hidden assistant coach in a recruiting job that was really just coaching on the field,” Mike Giglio, the director of player personnel at South Florida, told The Athletic. “Mark was one of the very first guys whose role was dedicated directly to recruiting. It’s evolved even more since that time. Those were the two places that were ahead of everybody else, and everybody was playing catch-up to them.”

Marynowitz is out of the game now, working with super agent Jimmy Sexton. Pantoni remains, and a quick review of the people gathered at the symposium in August showed just how far his reach in the personnel profession has grown.

Five of Pantoni’s former recruiting assistants are now directors of player personnel at FBS programs. That includes Eron Hodges, recently appointed to head up Jeff Brohm’s recruiting efforts at Purdue, which hosts Ohio State on Saturday night. Giglio at South Florida, Derek Chang at Texas, Adam Caltury at Rutgers and Mark Diethorn at Virginia Tech are all part of Pantoni’s tree.

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From there, it branches off to schools like Georgia, Syracuse and Appalachian State. All of those programs have directors of player personnel who once worked for Pantoni descendants. Pantoni also has former assistants working in scouting in the NFL with the Washington Redskins and Indianapolis Colts, and another who just left to work for the league scouting players for the NFL scouting combine.

Soon Pantoni’s tree could rival that of Meyer, who has 10 former assistants working as college head coaches and another in the NFL.

I think Mark I’ve heard this, and it’s my opinion is the best at what he does,” Meyer said. “You’re starting to see his people branch out. When they want someone, Mark is kind of the Godfather, one of the more experienced guys.”

There’s that word again.

The truth is that Ohio State and Meyer sell. They’re the name brands, and Pantoni knows that. If he wasn’t at Ohio State, or wasn’t linked with Meyer, he wouldn’t quite hold the standing that he does in the world of scouting, recruiting and signing players.

But given that opportunity to oversee Meyer’s recruiting plan 10 years ago, Pantoni has helped force change across the sport, with directors of player personnel or non-coaches in similar roles now at nearly every FBS program, while establishing himself as a trendsetter in college football roster building.

It’s not just me,” Pantoni said. “It’s obviously coach Meyer and the program as a whole, how we operate, learning from great coaches and the operational setup of how we do things. I think how I help is with the attention to detail that it requires.”

Giglio put off law school to chase a career in college football. He was a Florida student, and a big Gators fan. He shared a Rivals.com account with his roommates to keep up on recruiting. Together, they huddled around a radio to listen to the AM frequency broadcast of Carlos Dunlap’s commitment to Florida in 2007.

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Eventually his roommates outgrew their fixation with recruiting. Giglio never did. A student intern in the Florida compliance office, Giglio would watch faxes come in on National Signing Day and wonder what it would be like to be on the other side of that operation.

I felt like I had a different connection with seeing the faxes come in than people in compliance did because I knew who the players were,” he said.

So instead of going to law school, Giglio stayed at Florida to pursue a master’s degree in sports management and business, and began interning with Pantoni in the football program in 2008.

Diethorn was working in finance at PNC Bank in 2009 when he moved to Gainesville, a place he’d never been, rented an apartment he found on Craigslist, enrolled in graduate school and started interning for Pantoni.

Chang was a producer at ESPN for eight years, working closely with Meyer on College GameDay during his year off from coaching in 2011. When Meyer left TV to go to Ohio State, Chang lobbied to join him as an unpaid intern, eventually landing with Pantoni and living mostly off his savings for two years.

Caltury was a coach at Central Valley High School in Monaca, Pa., who made his living as a drywall finisher. He coached two former Ohio State recruiting targets, five-star Class of 2013 receiver Robert Foster (who went to Alabama) and four-star Class of 2015 defensive back Jordan Whitehead (who went to Pitt). Caltury, who wanted to pursue a career in coaching, went on visits to Columbus with those players and eventually worked that into a job in OSU’s recruiting department. That was before NCAA rules prohibited programs from hiring people with direct ties to recruits either two years before or two years after their enrollment.

I said I’ll start anywhere,” Caltury told The Athletic. “Started in the recruiting department. Jordan decided he didn’t want to come to Ohio State, and I still had a job.”

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Hodges was a sailor in the U.S. Navy for four years who then bounced around college jobs, including a stint as a strength and conditioning intern at Ohio State in 2012 before returning to Columbus as a recruiting assistant in 2015. He was promoted to Pantoni’s assistant director of player personnel in 2016 before leaving for Purdue last April.

Everyone on the tree has some kind of story of self-sacrifice or altered life plans to chase the dream of working in college football. While it’s not a requirement, it does stick out to Pantoni, who deviated from a pre-med track at Florida when he joined Meyer’s staff, as he’s making hiring decisions.

“I want guys that are hungry,” he said. “I tell them first day that I started at the bottom and had to earn everything I have today. In doing that, I never asked for anything, just kept my mouth shut and kept working hard. So I try to establish that mentality on Day One. … Obviously a lot of these guys have good recommendations. Some of these guys were emailing me 87 times before I said yes. Their aggressiveness and hunger to show they wanted to be here kind of told me something.”

Pantoni rewards hard work by giving his assistants the tools to eventually run their own personnel departments. When assistants perform tasks for coaches, Pantoni has the assistants deliver information to coaches themselves rather than act as middle man because he wants his assistants to have that personal contact with coaches that could be a springboard to following that coach if he ever leaves to take over his own program.

It’s funny hearing Pantoni talk up setting up assistants for future success, because he sounds a lot like Meyer.

I usually tell these guys to put in a good two years, and after that, I think they should be prepared to go run their own department,” he said. 

Meyer has the same two-year rule for most assistant coaches. Some stay longer than others, but he asks for that commitment from almost everyone he hires with the possible payoff being a head coaching job when they’re done going through a crash course in how to run a championship program.

Mark Diethorn, left, and Mike Giglio. (Courtesy of Mike Giglio)

Giglio worked at Florida for two years before going with Charlie Strong to Louisville. Diethorn was at Florida for two years before going to Pitt to work for Paul Chryst. Chang dipped briefly back into TV after two years at Ohio State, but then joined Tom Herman’s staff as director of player personnel at Houston. Caltury was in Columbus for two seasons and then went with Chris Ash to Rutgers. Hodges spent two years in a recruiting role before Brohm hired him at Purdue.

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We were looking into changing our recruiting department a little bit,” Brohm said. “Eron Hodges was at Ohio State, had been there a little bit and we had heard some things about him. We decided to give him an opportunity to run his own recruiting department and be the head guy. … I think his strength is building relationships with the recruits. He’s very visible in that aspect.”

Hodges was a key piece of the Ohio State recruiting operation, particularly when it came to on-campus visits. He also oversaw the walk-on program and was Pantoni’s right-hand man in evaluating film, identifying prospects and working with assistant coaches on the recruiting plan. Pantoni trusting you with those tasks can put you on a fast track.

It starts with menial work. In the early days that was stuffing envelopes and mailing DVDs to high schools to get game film. Now most of that is done electronically, communication sent via social media and text, and film accrued through uploads to Hudl.com. Guiding visits, even things like getting lunch orders, those are stepping stones to having a say in who gets put on the recruiting board and who doesn’t.

The goal is that when they leave Ohio State, Pantoni’s assistants are well-versed in all aspects of running a personnel department.

I was hired for a job that was probably above me at the time, but because I got to see how Mark operated I got a step ahead of most people,” Caltury said. 

So now there is an army of mini Pantonis around college football, and likely more to come.

Weston Zernechel and Justin Perez both hold the title of assistant director of player personnel at Ohio State. Ed Terwilliger has been a recruiting assistant and liaison to high schools for a few years. The personnel department also includes assistants Zane Stevens, Devon Smith, Mike Kendall and Jason Kwon. Don’t be surprised if you see any of those names popping up as directors of player personnel at other programs in the next few years.

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I got into this with no football experience, and nobody would answer me,” Diethorn said. “I worked for Mark a short time, and coming out of there I’m getting all kind of responses because I had coach Meyer and I had Mark Pantoni on my résumé. They would pick my brain just to see if I knew anything.”

That’s where things have changed a bit as the personnel profession continues to grow.

Where Pantoni at the start was hiring bankers, would-be lawyers and TV producers to work in these roles, he’s now seeing more qualified applicants come across his desk. Zernechel was an equipment intern at OSU who then went on to a recruiting assistant role with Chang at Houston before returning to Ohio State. Perez worked in scouting with the New Orleans Saints before joining Pantoni’s staff.

Mark Pantoni, far left, and Derek Chang, far right, at Ohio State. (Courtesy of Derek Chang)

That’s different. What’s not is Pantoni still being a sought-after mentor.

I always had a lot of respect for him, but it probably grew to a greater degree when I was in his position at other places,” Chang told The Athletic. “There are days where I would sit in this chair and go, ‘Wow, I don’t know how Mark did it,’ because there’s a lot of stuff. It feels like there’s a lot on our plate. … Now knowing the amount of things that we’re tasked to be in charge of, Mark really did handle a lot and I don’t know how he did it with such poise throughout my time there.”

Pantoni worked in a two-man recruiting office at Florida when he first started. Even when he got to Ohio State in 2012, he and former recruiting assistant Greg Gillum were the only full-time employees.

Now Ohio State has more than a dozen full-timers working in personnel and on the creative side of the recruiting operation, plus the interns just trying to get in the door the way Giglio, Diethorn, Chang, Caltury and Hodges did.

It evolves,” Pantoni said. “Staffs across the country are growing each year. Probably four years ago there might have been 10 to 15 schools that even had a director of player personnel, and now probably every Power Five school has this position. Each year it’s growing. It’s getting larger.”

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And as that continues to grow, so too will Pantoni’s influence.

I learned everything from Mark, everything I know,” Giglio said. “Just being able to sit and watch him, the way that he interacted with coaches, the respect that he garnered from them, is something I wanted to emulate. … He has an incredible memory, he’s like a walking database. If someone has a question about a prospect, he’s able to recall an incredible amount of information about those people. Watching him do that as coaches come into the office, for me that was something I would need to be able to do. … He’s one of the most successful ever. So we’re in a good place as long as we’re doing something close to what he’s doing.”

(Top photo of Mark Pantoni and Mark Diethorn: Courtesy of Mark Diethorn)

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