For EMU GM Jeff Collett, sensible recruiting is far more than spending dollars and cents

Ypsilanti — The nerve center of Eastern Michigan football’s offseason work is a rather unassuming second floor office in the Incarnati Athletic Center. 

The walls — dominated by whiteboards with numerous checklists, reminders and details — are the expected smattering of Eastern Michigan branded stuff. A poster for a John Wayne film hangs in the corner. Neatly arranged papers and a set of twin computer monitors fill out Jeff Collett’s desk as he fills his seat, his back to a window as sunlight reflects harshly off the snow-covered Rynearson Stadium field just to the south. 

Collett, 37, is the hub through which the spokes of Eastern Michigan football run, and is in charge of one of the most rapidly changing aspects of college football: How to assemble and maintain a roster. 

Collett’s job title — General Manager — is one of many trappings of a professionalizing model of college football, one that’s trickled down from the biggest monied FBS programs to the Group of 6 programs like Eastern Michigan. And the Eagles aren’t immune to the contemporary forces in college football, tapping into various ways to pay players, as is allowed now. But be it by necessity of Eastern Michigan’s spot toward the bottom of the financial totem pole in FBS, or the active choices being made by head coach Chris Creighton, Collett and Co., EMU refuses to eschew the old school way of assembling and maintaining a roster, prizing meaningful personal connection and players who want to join a program for the long haul. 

It’s a stance that, despite aligning college football’s past orthodoxy, feels increasingly out of place as agents, contracts and roster salary pools become a norm. And it’s a choice that those in the Eastern Michigan building stand steadfastly by. 

“If I’m forced to leave those things behind, I'll go sell insurance, I'll go teach high school again,” Collett said. “If we're forced to leave that behind, then I don't deserve or belong in college football. That might be the DIII in me, but like why you do it, why you got into it, if it becomes NFL 1B, then I don't know how long, you know, a lot of us would have left. Just the virtue of why you do it, the reason why you do it.”

Collett’s background prior to Eastern Michigan is not too dissimilar from Creighton, who came up playing and coaching at almost every level of college football before jumping to the FBS ranks. 

Collett began as a high school teacher and football coach before joining the football staff at his alma mater, Centre College, in 2013. He planned a career arc that would see him spend his career rising the ranks at the DIII school about an hour southwest of Lexington, Kentucky, and eventually retiring. 

Plans changed in 2019 when Collett connected with Creighton and they discussed Collett joining the Eagles’ staff. He came to Ypsilanti for an in-person interview with Creighton that ended up lasting around 12 hours. 

READ MORE: Chris Creighton signed a new contract with Eastern Michigan in 2023, here are the details

Shortly after, Collett joined the Eastern Michigan staff, where he remains seven years later. Collett joined originally as the recruiting director but his role has evolved over time, and in April 2025 Eastern Michigan named Collett the general manager of the football program. 

With this background, and from his vantage overseeing the administrative staff and handling big-ticket tasks like Eastern Michigan football’s roster construction, NFL liaising and NIL efforts, Collett brings a mindset that pairs neatly with Creighton’s ethos for how to run the program. 

“And we actually are super proud of that,” Collett said, “That guys aren't coming here because, you know, of six and seven figures. Guys are coming here because they love football and wanna be with people that love football and in a locker room that is gonna be great. And people are out there measuring, you know, what's in their bank account. They're measuring the impact and difference they can make. And so the underdog mentality, like, that's who we are. 

“We know we're never, you know, we may not have the best or the most, but like, we're gonna be strategic, we're gonna be very efficient and we're gonna do everything we can to control what we can control to make sure, at least inherently, that football as it's intended to be happens here.”

The best way to define Eastern Michigan’s roster building disposition is to say it’s “old school,” which is not to say that Collett and Co. are ignoring modern aspects of team building. 

Eastern Michigan takes transfers and has the TruEMU NIL collective. Alumni and NFL star edge rusher Maxx Crosby holds the title of assistant general manager and has been a key asset in driving donor development and connections behind the scenes. 

Collett didn’t share precise figures, but estimates that Eastern Michigan’s financial backing for football is somewhere in the middle of the pack for the MAC. 

Players are getting paid like they are elsewhere in the FBS, but money never comes first for Eastern Michigan. 

“If that's the first thing you talk about, you're not a fit at Eastern Michigan,” Collett said. “That's flat out. We have ended recruiting meetings with recruits and their families. We have ended phone calls with recruits and their families because before we ever talk about our team and our players and our culture, they ask, ‘What can you guys do?’ Those people aren’t a fit here. So yeah, we're, you know, a little old school in how we think about that. But if dollar signs are your biggest priority, then you're probably not a fit at Eastern Michigan, just culturally. We're going to take care of our guys, and I think we do a really good job at taking care of our guys. But if that's the first thing that you want to know when you're looking here, it's not a fit.”

And that is where the “old school” thinking lies: The evaluation of the football player and person, and their fit in the Eastern Michigan program, are the biggest driver of who is a take for the Eagles in recruiting. 

When Eastern Michigan seeks out recruits — and freshmen recruits are key in this regard — it’s still on the premise that they’re committing to the school and football program for the long run. Collett and the recruiting staff are not looking to make Eastern Michigan JUCO 2.0, advertising EMU as a launchpad to bigger Division I opportunities. 

The aim, ultimately, is a locker room stocked with players as committed to Eastern Michigan football as the Eagles are to them. Players who are eager to pour themselves into a pursuit bigger than themselves — team football success — and even bigger aims like transitioning from high school into fully-fledged adulthood with grace and maturity are who fit in the EMU locker room

“We pray that those who need to be here are here,” Collett said. “And those that don't need to be here are not here. And that's exactly how we approach everything, when it comes to recruiting, is that we want guys who feel like they need and want to be here. And if they don't, if you come here and you're miserable, we're miserable and no one wins, right? And if we come here and you're miserable and we're miserable and you leave after a year, then we've failed you. And that's how we look at it. It's hard. The conversations we're having right now with guys that are moving on, either by their choice or ours, like those are still tough conversations because of the relationship.”

Evidently, the Eagles didn’t have trouble finding their type this recruiting cycle. 

Eastern Michigan signed 37 players (plus another walk on) and a majority are high school signees. Getting freshmen in the building and then retaining them is a major cog in the Eastern Michigan roster building philosophy, and Collett says they intend to keep recruiting the high school ranks hard even as others look to the transfer portal. 

And stacking and developing classes like the one Eastern Michigan just signed on early signing day at the beginning of December for the 2026 cycle. 

The class is ranked third best in the MAC according to 247 Sports, with 28 three star signees, more than any other team in the league, and could be the foundation for future successes for what has already been Eastern Michigan’s winningest head coach. 

All this is not to say that the Eagles won’t use the transfer portal, either, or can protect themselves from players eventually leaving. Collett said the roster evaluation goes on constantly, and he’s always trying to get ahead of the curve, as evidenced by the work he’s already getting done on the 2027 signing class. 

And that’s because the forces changing college football at the highest levels inevitably trickled down to where Eastern Michigan, too, needs to be in the portal and capable of paying its players. 

But just because the game as so many have known it has changed doesn’t mean it’s gone entirely, at least in Ypsilanti. Because Collett and those around Eastern Michigan football aren’t going to let it go easily. 

“So, as much as the world tries to tell us how we need to operate,” Collett said, “I don't know if this program or the leadership in it would sacrifice who they are and why they do what they do to win more games.”