A Look Into Notre Dame Football Operations With Jason Michelson
The life of the Notre Dame director of football operations is strenuous, consisting of early mornings, late nights and an abundance of time in airports. The job involves managing travel logistics and team accommodations, organizing summer camps and clinics, helping with team workouts and practices, and more. When it comes to pretty much every team function or event, the director of football operations has a hand in it.
The gig may not be as consuming as that of a coach or a graduate assistant, but during the season it can get to the point where family time is limited to a few precious moments each week.
Even given the demands of the job, opportunities for significant career growth have been available for those with the work ethic and mandatory organizational skills, and few exemplify the upward mobility possible within the Notre Dame football program more than Jason Michelson.
In less than eight seasons, he went from a football operations intern to the director. Michelson also contributed to a few of Notre Dame’s most successful teams in recent memory.
He started with the Fighting Irish in 2012, the season of their run to the BCS National Championship Game against Alabama, and left the program this past winter.
“The game wasn’t great, but that experience was,” Michelson said. “My first trip with Notre Dame was to Ireland.”
His first season after his promotion to director of football operations was in 2018, another season where Notre Dame accomplished yet another impressive feat.
“In the first year as director of operations, going 12-0 and to the College Football Playoff was quite the experience,” he said. “It was awesome. When you're winning, the operations are good. When you lose, something bad happened in the operating world.
“I was lucky my first year as director of operations, we won all of our [regular season] games so there were no operational issues that year.”
That season, he also discovered the operational difficulties of preparing for the College Football Playoff, which Michelson said is the hardest he has ever had to work in his life.
Even though Notre Dame was only guaranteed its one game in the Cotton Bowl against Clemson, Michelson also needed to have the logistics for the national championship game at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif., worked out.
“It was difficult planning for two games, trying to figure out your travel party for two games,” Michelson said. “The turnaround was so short. It got announced we're going to the Cotton Bowl on Sunday. On Monday, we flew to Dallas for a site visit.”
By the time he flew back to South Bend to cement travel plans and other logistics, head coach Brian Kelly and all of the assistant coaches were traveling throughout the world, which made confirming preparations more difficult than normal.
The next week, Michelson and his staff flew to Santa Clara to do the entire process all over again.
“They had us split up between the Cotton Bowl and Orange Bowl, so we were with Clemson the whole time, which is weird because you get ready to play them,” Michelson said. “But at the same time, operations people, we're not like coaches where we do everything in secret. We talk and try to come up with the most efficient ways to do things. That was really cool.
“We actually developed a really good relationship with the staff at Clemson, [director of football operations and player personnel] Mike Dooley and associate athletic director of football administration] Woody McCorvey. Those guys are awesome. They came to visit after the Cotton Bowl and came to a basketball game and we just talk shop for a day.”
In total, the team was in Dallas for about six days, with a plan to return to South Bend immediately following the contest to prepare for the national championship game. But when Notre Dame lost, all the players wanted to go home and there was suddenly no need for the hotels rooms the team was scheduled to use in South Bend because the dining hall and dorms were closed for the holidays.
“We ended up with like, I don’t know, 50 open seats on the planes home because we lost the game,” Michelson said. “Then we had to cancel hotel rooms for a week that we had, then we had food for a week. And so we had buses to get guys from the hotel to the [Guglielmino Athletics Complex]. It’s just really crazy how much planning went into it.
“Then the game’s over, you didn’t win and you throw it all away.”
While some aspects of the job may seem tedious, Michelson learned early in his career that every singular detail matters, no matter how small or simplistic it may seem and that you must over-prepare.
A graduate of Ohio University with a degree in sports management, Michelson’s first job was actually as a college graduate was as a football operations and player development intern in the NFL with the Detriot Lions. Once, prior to an away game, he was given the task of completing the team’s flight manifest, which involved providing the airline with names and birthdays for every member of the team.
“I basically went to our roster, and put ‘Matthew Stafford’ into our manifest and his birthday and submitted the manifest," Michelson said. "Well, Matthew Stafford’s legal first name is John.”
When the team got to a private hanger in Detriot, airport security quickly noticed the irregularity for Stafford and several other Lions players and team personnel. Michelson says the whole ordeal only delayed the team about 30 minutes, but it was a mistake knew he would never make again.
After roughly a decade in the industry, Michelson realized during that 2019 season that he wanted to spend more time with his wife and two children, 2-year-old Cooper and 9-month-old Tate.
“Cooper, he would see me on Friday morning and Sunday morning,” Michelson said. “He started hitting me with the ‘daddy don’t go to work today' and ‘daddy why do you have to go to work today.’”
Michelson left his position as Notre Dame’s director of football operations in January, which was once his dream job, and is now a regional sales manager with Azulana, which produces a sparkling tequila. Olivia Mitchell, a Notre Dame graduate and former intern with the College Football Playoff, officially took over a few weeks after Michelson left.
“She’s young, but she’s really good,” Michelson said. “She was under me, so it’s an easy transition. She’s really detailed. I think as you’ve gathered from this conversation, you’ve got to be detailed in our work.”
Thus far, he's been able to stay connected to the Fighting Irish program in his new job.
During the novel coronavirus pandemic, Michelson has set up virtual Azulana happy hours on the company’s Instagram account with former Notre Dame players. The first consisted of current and former NFL players such as Romeo Okwara, Sheldon Day, Jerry Tillery DeShone Kizer and others.
The next happy hour is Friday at 8 p.m. ET with Matthias Farley, TJ Jones, Bennett Jackson and Robby Toma.
He’s also been able to count on people with a lot of pull within the university.
“During my exit interview with Jack Swarbrick, our athletic director, he was like, ‘Let me know whatever I can do to help you get your product into the suites at the stadium,’” Michelson said, surprised by the offer. “I was like, ‘Are you sure?’”
But Swarbrick meant every word and, assuming there is a college football season this year, patrons will be able to purchase Azulana in Notre Dame Stadium.
“I’m fortunate that I ended on good terms with Notre Dame,” Michelson said. “I made a lot of connections, and I wouldn’t be where I am right now it wasn’t for Notre Dame.”
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