LEAGUE OFFICE
THE LEADERSHIP BEHIND THE
CONTINENTAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE
The Continental Football League is supported by experienced leadership across football operations, legal, marketing, officiating, and digital communications.
OVERVIEW
BUILT TO SUPPORT GROWTH, GOVERNANCE, AND THE GAME
The CoFL league office is designed to support football operations, officiating, legal structure, communications, marketing, and the broader growth of the league as it expands across key markets.
FEATURED LEADERSHIP
LEAGUE LEADERSHIP
The CoFL is guided by experienced leadership across football, legal, officiating, marketing, and digital communications.
MANNY MATSAKIS
FOUNDER & CEO — CONTINENTAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE
Manny Matsakis has spent four decades inside football — as a player, a coach, a publisher, and now the operator building the Continental Football League into the nation's home for summer professional football.
A Career Built On The Field
As a player, Matsakis was a three-time First Team All-Ohio Athletic Conference selection at Capital University and was named a 1st Team All-American in 1983, as voted on by Sports Information Directors. He was drafted by the Philadelphia Eagles in the 1984 NFL Draft. His coaching career began at Barberton High School before he joined Hall of Fame coach Bill Snyder's staff at Kansas State, part of what was regarded as the greatest turnaround in college football history. He went on to serve as offensive coordinator at Hofstra University, where the program set 34 school and 12 NCAA offensive records, then held head coaching positions at Emporia State, Texas State, Bethany College, and Defiance College, along with a head coaching stint at Enka High School in North Carolina.
Matsakis spent over a decade as assistant head coach and special teams coordinator under Mike Leach at Texas Tech, where he oversaw day-to-day football operations, including a $100 million stadium and facility renovation, and helped develop Wes Welker into a national record-holder as a punt returner. He later coached under Mike Kelly with the Winnipeg Blue Bombers of the CFL, rising from guest coach to offensive coordinator during the season.
An Entrepreneur In The Football Industry
In 1994, Matsakis founded American Football Quarterly, which grew into American Football Monthly — the international trade journal of the football coaching profession and a worldwide leader in football coaching information. The venture reflected a career-long pattern: identifying gaps in the football industry and building the infrastructure to fill them, whether in publishing, program turnarounds, or league operations.
Building The Modern CoFL
Matsakis now leads the Continental Football League's national expansion, guiding new market development, ownership recruitment, and the league's growth toward a broader footprint of professional summer football clubs. Colleagues who have worked alongside him in building out new ownership groups describe his approach in direct terms — bringing "background, work ethic, and a competitive spirit that is remarkable," paired with football intelligence that spans "the administrative side, to the entertainment side, to the connections in this sport."
Under his leadership, the league has emphasized preparation, proper capitalization, and disciplined standards as it moves into its next phase of growth. As Matsakis put it while reflecting on the league's first season, "Here's a league that hadn't existed since the 1960s, and we're sitting here in a position where we actually play games." On expansion, his message to prospective ownership groups has been direct: build for the community, and build to last — "you have to be capitalized properly from a financial standpoint to make this work."
The Continental Football League is Manny Matsakis's life's work — and it is just getting started.
JASON PHILLIPS
EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, LEAGUE DEVELOPMENT — CONTINENTAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE
Jason Phillips brings a rare three-part football résumé to the Continental Football League — All-American receiver, professional player in the NFL and CFL, and more than twenty-five years as one of the most respected receivers coaches in the game — and he brings it into the league office at the moment the CoFL is opening doors to its next tier of ownership, partnerships, and football talent.
A Career Built On The Field
Phillips arrived at the University of Houston in 1987 and immediately became one of the most productive receivers in college football. As a junior, he earned UPI All-America recognition, All-Southwest Conference honors, and SWC Newcomer of the Year. As a senior in 1988, he led the nation with 108 receptions, 1,444 receiving yards, and 15 touchdowns, was named consensus first-team All-American, and shared SWC Co-Offensive Player of the Year. Across two seasons in the Cougars’ Run-and-Shoot with Heisman Trophy winner Andre Ware, he caught 207 passes for 2,319 yards and 18 touchdowns, becoming the first NCAA player in twenty-three years to lead the country in receiving in back-to-back seasons. He was inducted into the University of Houston Athletics Hall of Honor in 2006.
Phillips was selected in the 1989 NFL Draft by the Detroit Lions, played two seasons in Detroit, and then joined the Atlanta Falcons under Jerry Glanville and offensive coordinator June Jones from 1991 through 1994, sharing rosters with Deion Sanders, Brian Jordan, Chris Hinton, Louis Riddick, and Jessie Tuggle. He continued his playing career north of the border with the Birmingham Barracudas of the CFL in 1995 — earning Southern Division All-Star honors with 76 catches for 1,101 yards and 8 touchdowns — and with the Hamilton Tiger-Cats in 1996 and 1997, adding 136 receptions for 2,029 yards and 16 touchdowns.
A Career Built Developing Receivers
Phillips moved from the field to the sideline in 1999 and spent the next twenty-five years earning a national reputation as one of the finest receivers coaches in the profession. He began his college coaching career at Baylor as inside receivers coach, then returned to the University of Houston with head coach Kevin Sumlin, coaching wide receivers as the program reached three bowl appearances in four years and won the Conference USA championship in 2006. From there he coached wide receivers at Southern Methodist, Kansas, Utah State, and Oregon State, developing NFL-caliber receivers year after year, including Donnie Avery, Patrick Edwards, and Tyron Carrier. He returned to the Canadian Football League as wide receivers coach for the Hamilton Tiger-Cats from 2022 to 2023, where he coached three-time All-CFL receiver Tim White through back-to-back 1,000-yard seasons, including White’s 2023 CFL receiving-yards title.
In 2024 he joined Deion Sanders’ staff at the University of Colorado as wide receivers coach, where he coached Heisman Trophy winner Travis Hunter and developed the Colorado receiving room that sent multiple players to the NFL in the 2025 Draft, including Jimmy Horn Jr. and LaJohntay Wester. He retired from the Colorado staff in August 2026 to spend more time with his wife and family, closing a coaching career that touched three professional leagues, nine universities, four decades of players, and a coaching tree that reaches deep into today’s NFL and college football.
Building The Next Chapter Of The CoFL
As the CoFL’s Executive Vice President, League Development, Phillips is charged with expanding the league’s relationships across the professional football community — advising on ownership recruitment, opening doors with former NFL players and coaches, supporting football-side vetting of prospective ownership groups, and representing the league in markets where CoFL football is being built. His mandate sits alongside the league office’s continued commitment to disciplined expansion, proper capitalization, and the football and business standards Founder & CEO Manny Matsakis has set for the CoFL’s next phase.
“Jason is one of the most respected receivers coaches of his generation and one of the most well-connected people in football,” said Founder & CEO Manny Matsakis. “He is joining the CoFL because he believes in what we are building, and because he wants to help us build it the right way — with the right people, in the right markets, at the right pace.”
Jason Phillips is joining a league office being built to last — and his work at the CoFL is just getting started.
MICHAEL SCHETZEL
CHIEF OF STAFF — CONTINENTAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE
Michael Schetzel brings nearly three decades of professional sports executive experience to the Continental Football League, with a career built on one consistent skill: turning front offices into revenue machines.
A Career Built On The Field
Schetzel's résumé spans Major League Baseball, Major League Soccer, the USL, the WNBA, the NHL, and the Olympic movement. He got his start at the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games, where he built the Olympics' first-ever ticketing program for yachting competitions and generated seven-figure revenue from scratch. From there, he moved to Madison Square Garden as Director of Sales & Marketing before spending more than five years with the Boston Red Sox as Director of Sales & Ticket Services, where his 20-plus person team broke ticket sales records annually during the franchise's 2004 World Series championship run.
Schetzel later shifted into professional soccer, serving as Vice President of Ticket Sales & Services for Real Salt Lake, where he drove 33 percent ticket sales growth over five years and pushed retention to nearly 100 percent during the club's 2009 MLS Cup championship season. At Nashville Soccer Club, he served as Vice President of Ticketing & Corporate Partnerships, setting inaugural-season sales records as the club rose from amateur ranks to MLS and building over $2 million in annual sponsorship revenue, including a $1 million jersey-front partnership with Nissan. Most recently, as Chief Business Officer of FC Tulsa, he grew overall club revenue by more than 200 percent and was recognized among the USL's top business leaders, earning a Chief Business Officer of the Year nomination and the league's Club Services Award. He followed that with a run at Indy Eleven as Vice President of Ticket Sales Strategy, leading the league in group ticket sales.
Building The Business Behind The Shield
As the CoFL's first Chief of Staff, Schetzel is charged with building the operational and commercial infrastructure behind the league's shield — sponsorship revenue development, the league's media kit, sales infrastructure, ownership-group standards, front-office expansion, and national partnership strategy. His mandate is direct: help the league scale from its 2026 base to eight clubs in 2027 and toward a long-term vision of 24 clubs across four divisions.
"Adding an executive of Michael's caliber sends a message," said Founder & CEO Manny Matsakis. "We are building a real professional league, and we are building it with people who have done this at the highest levels."
Based in Westfield, Indiana, Schetzel is playing a hands-on role as the CoFL builds out its headquarters in Indianapolis. He holds a Master of Arts in Sports Management from Georgia Southern University and a bachelor's degree from Brigham Young University, and is fluent in Spanish.
BILLY GAHAGAN
Vice President, Operations — CONTINENTAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE
Billy Gahagan is the Vice President of Operations for the Continental Football League, bringing a rare combination to the role: a football lifer who has also spent three decades working on some of the biggest live sports broadcasts on the planet.
An eight-time Sports Emmy Award winner with NBC Olympics, Billy began his career with the network in 1996 working the Atlanta Olympic Games as a Production Services Assistant. In 2000, he moved over to the Venue Engineering team where he has held the position of Equipment Supervisor working every Summer and Winter Olympics NBC broadcasts. Along with his 15 Olympics, Billy has worked three World Cups with Telemundo and has now started working with NBC Golf in the same capacity. When a global broadcast has to hit air on time, in a country it just landed in, with thousands of pieces of gear moving through a single warehouse, Billy is one of the many people making that happen.
That logistic and operational standard is what he brings to the CoFL. Setting up a football league across multiple markets, in a summer window, with new ownership groups and new venues, is a logistics problem before it is anything else. Billy has spent a career solving harder ones.
The football side runs just as deep. He was a four-year letterman in football and baseball at Kansas Wesleyan University, a three-time All-Conference (KCAC) and two-time All-District 10 selection and a member of the Coyotes' 1990s All-Decade Football Team. He continued playing on the offensive line for the Wichita Warriors in semi-pro ball, earning All- Conference honors in the SCFL and later suited up again with the Daytona Beach Speed while also coaching the team's offensive line.
He has coached at nearly every level below the pros. Assistant football and baseball posts at Seabreeze High School, Spruce Creek High School, and Father Lopez High School in the Daytona Beach area. Head coach in varsity golf at Spruce Creek. Head baseball coach at American Legion Post 270 and with the Golden Spikes 12U program. In 2003 he was a nominee for the AFLAC National Assistant Coach of the Year.
As Athletic Director at Seabreeze High School, Billy ran a full department the way an operator has to — building the annual budget, raising money across every sport, scheduling opponents, officials, travel, gates and concessions, developing the school's athletic record book and serving as the department's primary contact with the FHSAA and the media. He also served as Alumni Director at Father Lopez High School and as a College Recruiting Coordinator and Media Relations Director for area programs.
The broadcast résumé outside of NBC is the piece that maps most directly to what the CoFL is building. Billy has been on-air as a high school football play-by-play announcer and analyst for Double D Productions, on CSPAN2's Channel 98, and as a color commentator and sideline Billy Gahagan — Vice President, Operations analyst on WNDB 1150 AM and KSAL 1150 AM. He co-hosted Volusia's High School Huddle on WDSC Channel 15, served as a guest recruiting analyst for Bright House Sports in Tampa and reported for the Sunshine Network's FHSAA Sports Report. Early in his career he was an on-air DJ and college basketball play-by-play voice on KPAC 102.7 in Salina, Kansas, where his high school football play-by-play took first place in the 1993 Kansas Association of Broadcasters medium-market awards. He has also handled PA duties across college and high school football, basketball and baseball.
Off the field, Billy is a co-founder of Axios Management, a sports management agency he helped launch in 2007, and a co-founder of the Baron "Bud" Asher Foundation, honoring the late Daytona Beach coaching and civic legend.
Billy and his wife, Debbie, live in Ormond Beach, Florida.
OPERATIONS AND COMMUNICATIONS
SUPPORTING THE LEAGUE DAY TO DAY
NICK SARRIS
LEGAL COUNSEL
Nick Sarris is an attorney based in Arlington, Virginia, and is publicly associated with Sarris Talent & Athletic Representation Services, LLC in the Washington, D.C.–Baltimore area. For the CoFL, he helps support league legal structure, agreements, and governance as the organization grows.
MICHAEL D'AMBROSIO
DIRECTOR OF OFFICIATING
Michael D’Ambrosio is publicly associated with football officiating and football-official education, including his Whistle Talk platform focused on officials, coaches, and fans. His background gives the CoFL a credible officiating voice tied directly to rules, mechanics, and football-official development.
CARRIE COPLEY
MARKETING DIRECTOR
Dr. Carrie Scanlon Copley is a strategic leader, brand builder, and business consultant with more than 20 years of experience helping organizations stand out, connect with their audiences, and drive growth. With expertise spanning leadership, marketing, operations, and community engagement, she brings a hands-on, results-oriented approach to building strong foundations, aligning moving parts, and helping organizations grow with clarity and impact.
ROMMEL ISLA
DIRECTOR OF DIGITAL MEDIA AND COMMUNICATIONS
Rommel Isla supports the league’s digital publishing, communications coordination, and online content execution across the CoFL’s growing media and web presence. His role helps connect the league’s public-facing messaging, content rollout, and digital operations.
THE FUNCTIONS BEHIND THE LEAGUE
The league office is built to support competition, communication, governance, and growth across the Continental Football League.
Football Operations
Supports league competition structure, team coordination, and football standards.
Officiating
Oversees officiating standards, rules interpretation, and official development.
Legal And Governance
Supports contracts, league agreements, compliance, and long-term structure.
Marketing And Communications
Guides public messaging, brand growth, and audience development.
Digital Media And Content
Supports the league’s website, digital publishing, and media presentation.
Broadcast And Content Strategy
Helps shape the future presentation of games, shows, and league media.
Business Development
Supports league growth through strategic relationships, new opportunities, and market development.
BUILDING THE FUTURE
GROWING THE LEAGUE OFFICE WITH THE LEAGUE
As the CoFL expands into new markets and develops new opportunities, the league office will continue to grow alongside it, with leadership focused on disciplined expansion, competitive integrity, and long-term sustainability.
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