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Kansas State football coach Collin Klein over person signing a contract
There are verbal promises to your spouse, and then there is physically putting the promise on paper, signing it, and handing over the evidence so nobody can pretend the conversation never happened. Kansas State general manager Trey Scott chose the second option when college football programs started trying to lure him away.
Scott promised his wife he was not going to chase the increasingly lucrative GM jobs popping up around college football unless exactly one coach called him. That coach was former Kansas State teammate Collin Klein, who became the Wildcats’ head coach in December and almost immediately made Scott’s extremely specific contractual escape clause relevant.
Trey Scott Literally Put Collin Klein In The Fine Print
Scott had little reason to leave his previous life.
After spending 11 years in NFL personnel departments with Washington and the Raiders, including a rise to assistant director of player personnel, he moved into representing coaches and executives with Rep 1 Sports and later Excel Sports Management. He was living near his wife Lauren’s family when college programs began contacting him about the rapidly evolving GM role.
That created a conversation at home.
Scott told CBS Sports that he promised Lauren he would not chase those opportunities unless one particular person came calling. He then wrote it down, signed the paper, and handed it to her.
The name was Collin Klein, and naturally, the one scenario Scott carved out actually happened.
Kansas State hired Klein on Dec. 4 after his two-year run as Texas A&M’s offensive coordinator. Scott was announced as the Wildcats’ new general manager one week later, bringing two former Kansas State quarterbacks back to Manhattan to run the program together.
Klein Basically Had His GM Picked Before He Had The Job
The connection goes much deeper than two guys who happened to attend the same school.
Scott played quarterback at Kansas State from 2007 through 2010 and served as Klein’s backup while both were Wildcats. Their careers eventually split in completely different directions, with Klein climbing through college coaching while Scott evaluated players in the NFL.
They never really stopped talking football.
During Scott’s years scouting, the two would reconnect on the road and spend hours discussing player evaluation, positional traits, and what NFL organizations looked for when building rosters. Klein later said the relationship meant there was almost no preparation required when it came time to choose his GM.
He knew his guy.
Kansas State hired Scott to oversee roster construction, player retention and talent acquisition in an era where NIL, revenue sharing and the transfer portal have essentially turned college personnel departments into miniature NFL front offices.
That happens to line up pretty well with spending more than a decade inside actual NFL front offices.
It also makes the origin story even better.
Scott had already worked for the Raiders, negotiated contracts for coaches and executives, and built a comfortable life outside college athletics. He apparently decided there was only one person worth blowing that up for.
Then that person got the Kansas State job.