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Win First: Sun Tzu's Five Fundamentals for Coaches and General Managers in College Football's NIL, Cap, and Portal Era
Paperback
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Sep 2 2026
Pages: 174
Weight: 0.53
Height: 0.37 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
The rules of college football have been rewritten. The fundamentals have not..
Name, image, and likeness turned amateurs into earners. The transfer portal turned rosters into open markets. Revenue sharing put a salary cap and a payroll on programs that never had either - and made every head coach a general manager overnight. The job changed under everyone's feet, and no coaching tree prepared anyone for it.
Win First is the field manual for the people now living that job.
Drawing on twenty-five centuries of strategy from Sun Tzu's The Art of War, Dr. Sherman J. Morris, a former college football Director of Player Personnel and Director of Recruiting, now a consultant to coaches and athletic departments, argues that while the rules keep changing, the ground beneath them does not. Sun Tzu named five fundamentals that decide every contest, and they still tell a coach or a general manager exactly how to win in the era of the cap and the portal.
Through the story of one program fighting to survive the new landscape, and real cases from across the sport, from the rise of the college GM to Florida State's collapse to Georgia's development machine, Win First turns ancient strategy into a practical system for building a program that lasts.
Inside, you will learn how to:
- Build the one thing a rival's checkbook can never buy: belief that keeps players when a bigger offer calls.(The Moral Law)
- Win the transfer window before it opens, and read the calendar like a weapon. (Heaven)
- Master the new terrain of the cap, the collective, the clearinghouse, and the 105-man roster. (Earth)
- Lead a locker room where everyone knows what everyone else is paid. (The Commander)
- Build the front office, the GM, the board, the cap discipline, the modern game demands. (Method)
You will also get The Operator's Toolkit: seven ready-to-use worksheets for running your roster board, cap plan, portal window, NIL deal clearance, retention conversations, and more.
With a foreword by SEC co-defensive coordinator Marcus Woodson and an introduction by Ohio State running backs coach and national champion Carlos Locklyn, Win First is written for head coaches, coordinators, athletic directors, and general managers doing the hardest job in the sport, and for anyone who wants to understand where college football is really going.
The rules will change again. Win first anyway.
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