USA Rugby and the College Rugby Association of America have appointed former USA Eagle Luke Gross as the new General Manager of USA Collegiate Rugby, creating a full-time leadership position focused on strengthening the college game and its place within the wider American rugby pathway.
The appointment, announced Tuesday, September 22, puts Gross into a newly created role at an important moment for rugby in the United States, with the LA28 Olympic Games approaching and the country preparing to host the Men’s Rugby World Cup in 2031 and the Women’s Rugby World Cup in 2033.
For college rugby, however, the immediate significance is closer to home.
American collegiate rugby remains spread across multiple organizations, competitions, conferences and divisions. USA Rugby and CRAA say Gross’s role will focus on strengthening the college game, improving relationships and communication, expanding participation and developing a stronger pathway toward the national teams.
Gross made the scale of that ambition clear in announcing his appointment.
“Our overall goal is to strengthen and unite the college game at all levels while creating the best possible experience for our student-athletes and programs,” Gross said in USA Rugby’s announcement.
Exactly what that means across the wider U.S. college rugby landscape will be one of the important stories to follow.
A New Full-Time Role for College Rugby
This is more than a coaching appointment.
According to USA Rugby, Gross will oversee work intended to expand participation, strengthen relationships with institutions and conferences, develop strategic partnerships and create new revenue opportunities around collegiate rugby.
There is also an organizational structure beginning to form around the position.
Gross will transition from his current role with Indiana University during October. During that period, he is expected to focus on onboarding collegiate rugby staff covering men’s and women’s competition, marketing and communications, and events.
CRAA President Paul Keeler described putting full-time leadership in place as an important step, emphasizing the need for consistent attention and accountability within the collegiate game.
USA Rugby CEO Bill Goren similarly identified participation, institutional and conference relationships, partnerships and revenue development among the priorities surrounding Gross’s appointment.
Those responsibilities potentially make the General Manager position an important bridge between competition administration, universities, conferences, commercial development and the broader USA Rugby pathway.
Gross Brings Playing, Development and College Experience
Gross arrives with experience across several levels of American rugby.
He earned 62 caps for the USA Men’s Eagles and represented the United States at three Rugby World Cups after beginning his rugby career while studying at Marshall University.
After his playing career, Gross moved into coaching, player development and administration. His previous USA Rugby responsibilities included high-performance player development and coach development, as well as involvement with the Collegiate All-American program.
He later coached the Sacramento Express in PRO Rugby and held coaching and amateur rugby roles with the Glendale Raptors. Gross also coached the Glendale XOs, a crossover-athlete development program.
Since 2022, he has served as Head Coach and Director of Rugby for the men’s rugby club at Indiana University.
That most recent experience puts Gross directly inside the environment he will now be asked to help administer nationally.
“I am a builder, and I enjoy bringing people together, solving problems, and helping programs grow,” Gross said.
What Does “Unite the College Game” Mean?
That may become the biggest question surrounding the new position.
There is no single competition structure covering all of American college rugby.
CRAA administers a significant part of the collegiate game, while National Collegiate Rugby operates its own extensive men’s and women’s competitions. Women’s varsity rugby also includes the National Intercollegiate Rugby Association structure. Gross also brings direct experience of navigating different parts of the collegiate landscape. He took charge at Indiana in 2022, the same season the Big Ten men’s conference moved from CRAA to National Collegiate Rugby competition. Indiana went on to compete in the NCR Division 1 national championship that fall, while Gross’s teams have also faced programs competing within CRAA’s D1A structure.
Below those national organizations sits another layer of conferences, divisions and individual programs.
RFC has previously examined how those different systems fit together in One Sport, Multiple Systems: Who Runs College Rugby in America?, including the different roles played by USA Rugby, CRAA, NCR and NIRA across the collegiate landscape.
For supporters, that fragmentation can make something as basic as finding a fixture, final score, competition or team record surprisingly difficult.
RFC’s USA College Rugby hub brings CRAA, NCR, and NIRA schedules, results, standings, conferences, and club information together while keeping each organization’s competition data separate.
Gross’s appointment does not, based on Tuesday’s announcement, mean those organizations are being combined into one national system. USA Rugby and CRAA have also not announced that NCR or NIRA will come under Gross’s authority.
That distinction is important.
The stated ambition to strengthen and unite college rugby therefore raises questions about what greater alignment might look like in practice: shared communication, competition coordination, player pathways, commercial relationships or something more structural.
Those answers will become clearer as Gross begins the role and the new collegiate staff is assembled.
College Rugby’s Place on the Road to 2031
The timing also gives the appointment significance beyond college competition itself.
Gross specifically connected college rugby with the pathway toward the USA national teams and the major international events coming to the United States.
The LA28 Olympic Games will put rugby sevens on one of the world’s largest sporting stages in the United States. Three years later, America will host the Men’s Rugby World Cup, followed by the Women’s Rugby World Cup in 2033.
That creates both a player-development opportunity and a fan-development opportunity.
Thousands of players already compete on college campuses around the country. Making those competitions easier to organize, understand and follow could help turn more of that existing rugby activity into a visible part of the sport’s growth in America.
For Gross, the national-team pathway is clearly part of the assignment.
“We have both a tremendous opportunity and responsibility to bring the college rugby community together,” he said.
By the Numbers
What to Watch
The first thing to watch will be the organization Gross builds around the new position.
USA Rugby says the October transition will include onboarding staff responsible for men’s and women’s competition, marketing and communications, and events. Who fills those positions — and how their responsibilities are divided — should provide a clearer picture of how the new collegiate structure will operate.
The larger question is how far the ambition to “strengthen and unite” American college rugby ultimately extends.
There has been no announcement of a unified national competition system or of NCR and NIRA being incorporated into the new structure. How USA Rugby and CRAA work with the other organizations, conferences and universities already operating across the college game will therefore be important to follow.
For college rugby supporters, the measure of progress may ultimately be much simpler: whether teams have better competitions, administrators have better support and fans can more easily understand where, when and against whom their college is playing.
Gross now has the job of helping turn that ambition into a functioning collegiate rugby system.
