There’s a lot of glory that comes with pursuing a career in sports!
You are the person that your whole family wants to talk to around the holidays and the response from your newly met peers is usually something along the lines of “Oh, that’s pretty cool!”. But what does a career in sports really entail? Freshman year professors will tell horror stories about long hours and endless networking to try to scare off the kid who thought “oh, I like sports, I’m going to major in that”. The troublesome part is that the professors’ “horror stories” are mostly accurate regarding working in the sports field.
After a summer working in sales for the Aberdeen IronBirds, I can personally confirm everything that the words of my professors have been true. Watching the amount of work that the full time staff puts in on a daily basis almost amazed me. They would come in from 8-430 and hit the phones trying to make sales before immediately jumping into game day set up for a 705 first pitch. And that’s just Monday through Friday, they’re in on weekends working those games as well. These guys and girls are working upwards of 60-hour workweeks and it’s not exactly the easiest work in the world either!
With that said, it couldn’t be more worth it. For one, the people that you get to work with working in the sports industry are awesome. The incredible people, that I had the opportunity to work with this summer, made being 2000 miles from home completely worth it. In addition, there’s just something about showing up on a baseball field or a basketball arena that makes that long day just a little bit easier. Finally, networking is so convenient in a sports workplace that it is almost too easy. Professors are not exaggerating when they stress how important networking is, especially in sports.
Working in sports can get you connected to almost any job in the entire world because of the amount of people that you come in contact with. You have to start somewhere in order to build your network and a great opportunity for this is at the Sport Business & Media Career Day on October 14th hosted by the School of Public Health. There will be 15 mentors attending the event as well as 8 total employers who will be accepting resumes for jobs in the future. Everything from the Indy Star to the Philadelphia 76ers will be represented so there will be an opportunity for anyone interested in working in sports. You have to start somewhere and who knows, maybe you’ll get a cool story out of it to tell that cool uncle over thanksgiving break!
Dustin is a sophomore undergraduate student who is majoring in Sport Marketing and Management as well as Economics. He is aspiring to work in baseball operations and you can probably find him watching a sporting event somewhere.
