Cashing In On Sports
A Study In Sports
By Guy Junker

One of the more popular majors today for college students looking for careers in the world of sports is sports management. Ohio University was the first school to offer the program back in the late 1960's. Soon afterwards, Robert Morris and a few other schools followed. That was over 30 years ago. Today, sports management and similar majors are the rage at many colleges and universities.

Professor Scott Branvold of Robert Morris says there are currently about 250 undergraduates enrolled in their program with another 20 in the graduate program.

"A lot of students are attracted to the glamour of working in sports," Branvold says. "But one of the first things I always warn is that they will work while others play."

While nights, weekends and holidays are the regular shift for many working in the world of sports, it did not deter Troy Schooley, who says he probably could not have gotten through college without Robert Morris' specialized program. Schooley works in promotions and is the events coordinator for ESPN Radio in Pittsburgh.

"My sports marketing class was more interesting to me than a straight marketing class. It included projects that had us prepare strategies for the Washington Wild Things minor league baseball team," he explains. A scratch golfer who thought he might want to be an agent, Schooley has taken his sports management degree and found a niche in sports radio.

At Point Park, they offer a unique program in Sport, Arts and Entertainment Management. Bob Bunnell is an associate professor there and director of the program. "Ours is only two years old, but we already have 80 students in the major with well over 100 expected next year." And, in the fall, Point Park will launch a Masters program. At a school long respected for its music and theatre departments, it makes perfect sense for those who want to work, as Bunnell puts it, "the back of the house."

"We have a lot of double majors who are performers but also are in our program," Bunnel elaborates. "The line of demarcation between sports and entertainment is smudged anyway. How much of the Super Bowl is sports and how much of it is entertainment with all of the pre-game activities and halftime concerts, etc.?"

At Duquesne, the sports marketing major has been around since 1997. The program, like sports management at Robert Morris, operates within the school of business. Steve Greenberg is the Executive in Residence at Duquesne and says the 125 students currently enrolled in the major is a perfect number. "The size is significant, but not so big that we can't give individual attention to the students."

Sports marketing majors at Duquesne have landed jobs and internships with the Steelers, Pirates, Florida Marlins, Pitt, and with retail companies like Dicks Sporting Goods, Nike and Reebok. Greenberg worked for the Pirates himself for over a quarter of a century and was instrumental in designing PNC Park. But it's a different world than when he started with the Pirates in ticket sales.

"If you are marketing M&M's, you have a consistent product," he says. "In sports, you have a constantly changing product and one that you can't control. That offers a whole different set of challenges than ordinary businesses."

And that's why a specific major fine-tuned to sports is so attractive for many of today's business students who are pointing themselves in the direction of sports and entertainment. As sports themselves become more highly specialized on the playing field, so too have the careers of people working in and around the games. Professional teams have positions for people that include "director of game night entertainment." Large universities have multiple assistant athletic director jobs for marketing specialists who can help sell merchandise and tickets. There is a lot of competition for the entertainment dollar and students coming out of collegiate programs designed specifically to prepare them for that kind of business are already a step ahead.

Guy Junker co-hosts the "Junker & Crow Show" weekdays from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. on ESPN Radio 1250.