Nicole Auerbach

USA TODAY Sports

PISCATAWAY, N.J. — Rick Mantz thinks he has the best job in the world.

It’s not just because he’s working at his alma mater, or working in college football again for the first time after nearly two decades at the high school level. It’s because of what, exactly, he gets to do on a day-to-day basis as Rutgers’ director of high school relations.

He spends his days calling and texting his old coaching buddies. He sets up social events. He helps plan camps, like the Scarlet Knights’ well-publicized mega-camp at Fairleigh Dickinson University on Wednesday, one also staffed by Ohio State coach Urban Meyer and Temple coach Matt Rhule.

Essentially, Mantz serves as a liaison between Rutgers and New Jersey’s high school football world — and he loves being the bridge. He is one of a growing number of college football staff members involved in recruiting not high school players, but high school coaches.

“I used to have to do my regular job during the day,” Mantz told USA TODAY Sports. “That's something I think the high school guys respect, because I know what those guys do: You're teaching five classes. You've got cafeteria duty. You've got bus duty. You're chasing your kids in the hallway. At the high school level, you are the equipment manager. You're the groundskeeper. You're cutting the grass. They know that I know that, and I respect that.

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“I can get ahold of those guys, and they can get ahold of me. There's a respect and a bond there. I think that's huge. I would have to do my job all day and then at night get to go to clinics, get to socialize, get to do whatever.

“My job now is to socialize. My job is to get together and have a beer with the guys that I've known for years. That's my job.”

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Mantz’s position is not entirely unusual; schools from Louisville to USC and UCLA have coaches with the same title: Director of high school relations. But more often, the role of maintaining relationships with local coaches is included as simply another task for a recruiting coordinator or a director of player personnel. Keeping it separate, as first-year Rutgers coach Chris Ash has already learned, makes this position extremely valuable for myriad reasons.

“I'm not from here,” said Ash, who determined specific roles like this one based on his prior experience at Ohio State. “I've recruited through this state, but not very often. I knew that we were going to want to make this our home state for recruiting. All of our recruiting efforts are going to start here. To be able to have any success doing that, we had to have the right type of relationships with the high school coaches. If we were going to do that, I was going to have to hire some people that had New Jersey connections.”

And, unlike some of his peers who simply pluck the head coach of the hottest high school program in the state — or one with a talented five-star player, or two — Ash chose Mantz, who amassed a 113-69 record during 18 seasons at Hillsborough (where he won the 2000 NJSIAA Central Jersey Group IV title), South Brunswick and Passaic high schools.

“I'm looking for sustained relationships, not just an instant impact that one individual could bring by maybe bringing a recruit, too,” Ash said. “I wanted someone that would help build some long, sustained relationships with high school coaches.”

Or, as Scout.com national director of scouting Brandon Huffman put it, a director of high school relations can “be that olive branch, if you will, from the college or university that they’re at to the local high schools.”

Nunzio Campanile, the head coach at Bergen Catholic (N.J.) High School, said Mantz is “probably the perfect guy for that job,” someone that everyone in the state either knows personally or at the very least knows his name and his involvement in New Jersey football during the past 20 years.

“It’s always good to have somebody you can easily approach,” Campanile said. “Someone to go to with an idea or an issue or something worth sharing. It’s great to have somebody who’s like us.”

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Huffman sees this director of high school relations position sprouting up more frequently in recent years in larger metropolitan areas that are also fertile recruiting grounds, such as Los Angeles and throughout New Jersey. He said the director role makes a lot of sense if the head coach doesn’t have ties to the area, or if he’s coming from the professional football ranks and needs some help understanding the recruiting landscape.

Perhaps most important, their job title also allows them to be available 24 hours, seven days a week. If Rutgers is practicing and its position coaches are busy, Mantz is still in his office with his phone. Local coaches have a constant, open line of communication, and they also have a point person they know whom they can contact.

Mantz’s involvement with the New Jersey Football Coaches Association goes back at least 25 years, and he is a past president of the organization. “I’ve got everybody’s cell phone,” he said.

The benefit of that is tangible. Mantz gave this example: He’s in a staff meeting, and someone says, “Hey Rick, we can’t get a hold of this kid,” or “How come so-and-so hasn’t come in for a visit?” Mantz can then text the recruit’s coach immediately, get a response and relay it by the time the coaches leave the room.

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And when Mantz reached out to high school coaches throughout the state to set up socials, meet-and-greets with Ash in the weeks and months after his hiring, Mantz’s former colleagues were eager to come. Campanile went to one along with other coaches in north Jersey.

“When I got here, probably 50 people called about Rick, more than any other coach that I've ever been involved with trying to hire,” Ash said. “The things that they were saying about Rick were off the charts. It wasn't just from one area in the state, it was from all areas in the state. I could tell right away that he was a guy that was well-connected to people. He was a guy that people were going to be able to trust, communicate well with, relate with.”

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An added benefit of these decades-plus relationships? Candor.

Ash seeks high-character players for his program, a quality that’s always important but even more so right now at Rutgers after a string of off-field arrests a season ago. Mantz believes his Rolodex helps with the vetting process, among its other many uses.

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“Sometimes the coaches will be very forthcoming: ‘Hey Rick, this kid's got some problems,’ ” Mantz said. “Some coaches say, ‘Well, he's a nice kid.’ They kind of dance around it. They don't want to quote-unquote badmouth their kid. I'm saying, ‘Guys, look. Be honest. Don't tell me the kid's a good kid, then we get him here and find out that there are issues.’ Just to make sure, I can call three or four other guys that know him, other coaches. When you've been around long enough, you know these people. I can usually get some back story.

“Those are things that I feel I bring to the program.”

Mantz also can sell. He’s tasked with promoting Rutgers to high school coaches who have, for years, sent their best players out of state for college. He’s done it himself, to places like Penn State and Syracuse.

But now, he believes Rutgers can and should be a more attractive option, and he’s trying to get his friends in coaching to believe, too. He’s playing up the fact that Rutgers plays in the Big Ten East, one of the premier divisions in all of college football. He’s playing up Ash and his assistants, and their Ohio State pedigree. He’s playing up both the proximity of the school — recruits’ parents don’t have to drive six hours to see them — and also its distance — still far away to give a student, like Mantz himself back in the 1980s, a true college campus experience.

“What high school coaches have realized about Chris Ash is that if a kid is going to leave the state, it's going to be with him wrapped around the kid's leg,” Mantz said. “We're going to fight and claw for every great kid because he's very proud what he's building here. I think he should be. I think the New Jersey coaches are realizing this guy is legit.”