Kyle Whittingham has made another addition to his Michigan Wolverines football staff, as the team is bringing in Berj Najarian to be the new assistant general manager/strategy, according to ESPN’s Pete Thamel. Najarian served as the director of football for the New England Patriots under Bill Belichick for 24 years.

Sources: Michigan is set to hire Berj Najarian as the football program’s new assistant general manager/strategy. He’s going to help Kyle Whittingham’s program with contracts, negotiations and strategy for the new college sports landscape. pic.twitter.com/1byZQKK3QJ

After leaving the Patriots, Najarian had a brief stint at Boston College, as he was the chief of staff for one year. Now, he is coming to Michigan to help navigate the program through a new era of college sports that relies heavily on NIL.

In this new era of college sports, many programs have started to hire general managers to assist with a lot of the tedious new tasks that take up a lot of time for coaches. Having a GM takes a lot of weight off the head coaches’ shoulders and allows them to focus more on coaching the team. It takes time to adjust to a new era like this, and programs are now essentially putting together entire front offices, as professional teams do. It is needed.

Michigan has a new GM this year, as Dave Peloquin was brought in to replace Sean Magee. The assistant GM role that Najarian is stepping into did not previously exist at Michigan.