A woman is making history at Florida International University — on and off the football field. College football has changed, now with NIL (name, image and likeness), the transfer portal, as well as agents and negotiations. At FIU, there’s a new person making sure it all gets handled. Her n ame is KD Fletcher, and she’s breaking a pretty big barrier. “When I got the call, saying, ‘Hey, have you ever thought about being a general manager?’ I was like ‘absolutely not,'” said Fletcher. It wasn’t the traditional response to a promotion, but Fletcher said she was given a little time, and a long flight from New Mexico to South Florida, to figure it out. And figure it out she did. Fletcher worked her way up at FIU from recruiting to operations and now to the first female general manager in college football history. “It didn’t really hit me until I went to the recruiting symposium, and they had the GM meeting, and I walk in, and I’m like, ‘Oh, absolutely, I am the only female,’ so I was like, ‘Crap, OK,'” said Fletcher. However, standing out isn’t necessarily a bad thing, especially when one’s job is to stand up for an entire football program. “I am a firefighter, I tell people all the time. I just don’t have on a little red hat and running around with a Dalmatian next to me, but I’m a firefighter,” said Fletcher. “Every day that I walk in here, it is, ‘What do I have to do to make this program better?'” And these days, making a program better means dealing with just about everything. “In today’s climate, with NIL and RevShare, having to manage rosters and balance budget, so to speak, it’s essential to have a general manager,” said FIU head coach Willie Simmons. “With my everyday running a program, I can’t concern myself with who’s getting paid what, whether payments are on time, talking to the agents about raises and all that kind of stuff like that, so you have to have a general manager.” When that transfer portal window opens, Fletcher already has a plan for the birds that might fly away. “When that window is opened up, and my birds decide they’re going to fly on out the window, [I want to make sure] that I have something that’s flying back on down south,” she said. And while Fletcher may be the first woman to hold this title, her boss said that’s not why she got the job. “We didn’t hire her just to make history. We hired her because we felt she was the most qualified person for the position,” said Simmons. Fletcher said the history part is something she embraces, especially for the women who might follow her. “If you see me, all bedazzled and on the sideline, that’s me tapping into the woman’s side of this thing, so yeah, but no, I’m grateful again, forever grateful, and I’m embracing it, and I’m going to make sure I show up for all the women who want to be here one day, for sure,” said Fletcher. She also had a message for those women. “There’s nothing wrong with working your way up through the ranks. Don’t look for anything to be given to you,” said Fletcher. “For all the little ones that want to be in this seat and that want to come behind me, hey, take the time to learn the job in front of you.” And Fletcher isn’t exactly slowing down. She’s also in law school, hoping to eventually add another title to the job description, helping FIU athletes navigate the negotiations that come with the new world of college sports. ...read more read less