At 38, Scot McCloughan fs ’92 is one of the youngest general managers in the NFL. Now in his second year of overseeing the San Francisco 49ers organization, he says he loves just about every aspect of his job, even the stress of returning the team to its glory days in the 1980s, when the 49ers captured three Super Bowl titles.
“I like the pressure,” says McCloughan, who played baseball (not football) at Wichita State. “Everything is on my shoulders, and I’m not afraid of that.”
Before being named GM, he put in a three-year stint as vice president of player personnel. “There’s no reason we can’t contend for the playoffs this year,” he says. “We’re a young team, but so are a lot of other teams.”
Scouting may be his strongest skill. An inexact science, scouting involves not only evaluating players, but also envisioning how they would fit into the team — a process that involves a lot of gut feeling. “There is no manual for this work,” McCloughan says. Although he hasn’t been back to Wichita since 1992, he still follows Shocker baseball and says he had a productive time on the team. “I enjoyed it,” he says. “They (the coaches) taught me a lot.”
