There is a tiny bit of precedent for a successful NFL player pursuing a broadcasting career in retirement and then parlaying that into running a franchise. That said, the precedent is Matt Millen, who went 31-84 running the Detroit Lions after they hired him away from FOX Sports in 2001.
Still, Millen surely must have learned at least a thing or two in his seven years at the helm of the Lions, and he admitted that the situation John Lynch is walking into in San Francisco isn’t all that different.
“It’s funny. The parallels between John and I are very similar,” Millen said Monday, via Josh Budow of the Associated Press. “He will just have to learn the job fast. It’s not an easy job. It’s an all-encompassing job and it’s a job that never ends.”
Millen even had some advice for Lynch: knowledge of the game is all well and good, but it’s people skills that are required to succeed as a general manager.
“Learn the people. It’s about people, it’s not about football,” Millen said. “Football he’ll know. That’s the easy part. He’ll spend more time with non-football stuff then he ever will with football stuff. I thought I’d be talking about how we handle blitzes and how we’re attacking protections and stuff like that. You never did that. That was all coaching. What you had to do was manage your people so you could get the right people and manage your coaches so you could perform at the highest level. It’s a people job. It’s about human capital. That’s what it’s about.”
Lynch’s hiring comes as a shock, though unlike Millen’s hiring by the Lions, Lynch apparently campaigned for the Niners job. Here’s hoping he knows what he’s getting himself into.
