Celtics latest team to lose front office personnel to college

With the major changes that have swept across the college basketball landscape in recent years, many programs are turning to NBA personnel to help navigate the changes. Davidson made a huge splash recently with perhaps the biggest hire in Stephen Curry as the program's assistant general manager. North Carolina just recently hired longtime NBA agent Jim Tanner as their program general manager. The Boston Celtics were the latest team to lose personnel to the NCAA as Remy Cofield, the team's director of scouting, was hired by Arkansas as their athletics general manager, as per Jon Rothstein of CBS Sports.

With the transfer portal exploding in recent years, and the introduction of college athletes being able to profit off Name, Image, Likeness, or NIL deals, the college basketball world has become similar to the NBA. So it makes sense that college athletic departments are looking for those experienced in these matters to help steer the ship.

In Remy Cofield's case, he is leaving the Celtics to became the general manager of the entire Arkansas athletics department, a difference from some of the other general manager hires that were strictly for basketball.

Cofield had worked his way up through the Celtics' front office to become the director of scouting. He was originally hired by the Celtics in 2021 as a sales executive. He was later promoted to basketball operations assistant, college scout and general manager of the Maine Celtics when they were still called the Maine Red Claws before becoming the scouting director.

Prior to joining the Celtics, Cofield played college basketball for two seasons at the University of Pennsylvania in the Ivy League. Across those two seasons, he averaged 2.9 points, 1.1 rebounds and 0.3 assists with splits of 38.6 percent shooting from the field, 19 percent shooting from the three-point line and 81.1 percent shooting from the free-throw line.