Last week, the Detroit Lions lost a member of their front office (director of scouting advancement Mike Martin) to the general manager job at Notre Dame, and this week they'll lose another.
According to ESPN's Pete Thamel, Michigan State will hire Lions' Director of Football Compliance/Lead Football Counsel Jon Dykema as their executive senior associate AD/student-athlete management and assistant general counsel.
Thamel further reported Dykema's new role at Michigan State will involve negotiating and managing athletic contracts, which has become an essential function for college athletic programs in the NIL era.
The school has confirmed Dykema's hiring. He is a Michigan State alum, class of 2003, and he worked as a student manager for the men's basketball team from 1999-2003, including two Final Four runs and the 2000 national title. A Grand Rapids native, he earned his Juris Doctor from the University of Akron School of Law and his MBA from the University of Akron College of Business Administration in 2007.
Prior to coming to the Lions, Dykema spent four years (2007-2011) as the director of men's basketball operations at the University of Utah.
Dykema was with the Lions in a variety of roles since 2011 (staff counsel, interim general counsel, manager of football administration and lead counsel). He became the Director of Football Compliance/Lead Football Counsel in 2022.
The Lions' website described Dykema's wide-ranging role this way:
"Overseeing the legal aspects of the club's football operation, negotiating player contracts, assisting with the club's salary cap planning and management, helping to direct analytics initiatives and coordinating with the league office regarding CBA compliance, player contracts and grievances. He also advises the coaching staff on playing rule interpretations and changes, penalty trends and replay reviews. On the business side of the organization, Dykema functions as the club's privacy officer for HIPAA compliance and helps manage the organization's government relations strategies and policies."
The Lions have had quite an exodus of people this offseason, all the way down to two key behind the scenes front office people in the span of a week.
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