By GLENN GUILBEAU, Tiger Rag Editor
Back in 2008, new LSU football general manager Billy Glasscock was 32 and the offensive coordinator at Arizona Western, a junior college in Yuma.
And he decided to take the 3:10 (Out Of) Yuma, instead of (To), which is what the 2007 remake (with Russell Crowe) of the 1957 classic train western is titled.
Glasscock, a native of Bloomington, Illinois, bet on himself, and that wager has kept paying out, reaching $1 million last December when he took the 3:10 To Baton Rouge … from Oxford, Mississippi.
“I got connected with Coach Kill,” Glasscock said in a story in 2016 when he was director of recruiting at the University of Minnesota.
Glasscock does not have mafia ties, as far as we know, but, “I got connected with coach Kill,” sure sounds like it could be in a Martin Scorsese classic.
But Coach Kill is not a hit man’s code name. Jerry Kill was Northern Illinois’ head football coach from 2008-10.
“He didn’t have any paid positions, but he was looking for guys to help,” Glasscock said in 2016. “I left a full-time job as offensive coordinator at Arizona Western to work for free for him.”
Glasscock helped Kill with recruiting, probably with coffee, and as assistant strength coach, eventually drawing a salary. After Kill went 7-6 and 5-3 in the Mid-American Conference in 2009 and 10-3 and 8-0 in 2010 with some players courtesy of Glasscock, Kill got the head coaching job at Minnesota. And he took Glasscock with him as director of recruiting.
Kill and Glasscock and others turned around Minnesota to a pair of 8-5 seasons in 2013 and ’14. Glasscock through a 9-4 season in 2016 before taking a more lucrative director of player personnel position at North Carolina State.
“Glasscock has spearheaded a recruiting effort that has sent Minnesota to four straight bowl appearances, while embracing the ever-expanding intricacies of evaluating high school prospects,” that 2016 story said of Glasscock.
After 2017-20 at NC State, he moved on to the same job at Texas from 2021-23 before Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin made him general manager in 2024. In 2025, Glasscock made $425,000. He followed Kiffin to LSU last December with a $3 million contract over three years and is now one of the highest paid GMs in college football.
Glasscock works in player acquisition and retention and salary cap management – which has been an incredibly important position since college football went to Name, Image & Likeness and the no-sit-out transfer portal in the summer of 2021. He helped Kiffin assemble the No. 1 portal class in 2024, No. 2 in ’25 and No. 1 at LSU in 2026.
“It’s worked extremely well with Billy and I,” Kiffin said recently. “I know that I can get on a plane to go recruiting, and everything will be handled extremely well in this building. To put together the rosters the way we did, and now come here and turn this the way we did, at least on paper so far, is awesome. I think he’s as good as they come in the entire country.”
Glasscock, 50, oversees at LSU an army of 10 various player personnel and recruiting assistants, who have lower level positions not unlike those he had in his career – J.R. Belton, Adam Clark, Thaddeus Rivers, Tyler Veeins, Mike Williams, Jeff Martin, Austin Shelton, Arl St. Cyr, Sam Petitto and Dwike Wilson.
As GM, he and Kiffin run LSU’s personnel department like an NFL team.
“If you want the answers of how to do something in college football, usually just look to the NFL,” Kiffin said. “Why not have a GM who can help you run the entire building?”
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