Has anyone ever seen or heard of students (undergrad or grad) at the Business school doing any Sports Marketing work with Tribe Athletics? Is there no program to speak of? It seems like this is one area that for some reason is lacking that other schools likely utilize as cheap labor.
Spencer Milne has a strong team of interns this year to work/shadow/support in the marketing & promotions. The size of that program has grown pretty significantly over the past 6-8 years when I was back in school. (I'm a broken record over here, but I can't say enough about how great of a mentor/teacher Spencer is to students).
All that said, I don't know how formal of a program it is in terms of combining with curriculum, hours, workload, etc. Just know that opportunities exist.
When I was in school ('10), there weren't any formal sports marketing courses offered at Mason. The Sports marketing Club was launched the year after I graduated. (
http://mason.wm.edu/programs/undergradua.../index.php)
Personally, I got a lot of experience in sports through Tribal Fever. Best of both worlds--allowed me to experience the game and experience some administration duties of running an organization, marketing and leading.
My son majored in Sports Management at a large SEC school. The biggest thing that I saw was that the canvas to paint on was much larger than with a smaller school like William and Mary. From a marketing perspective its way different when you have 100k folks at football, TV affiliations, and a huge donor pool. You are right about the cheap labor part. That's how almost ALL pro teams do it.
From the AD search article on the other thread, seems like a no-brainer for "search chairman" Lawrence Pulley to push for some sort of classes in this genre with dedicated internships. While its not likely to be a large component of Graduate education, due to a lack of nearby pro teams to utilize, it would seem like there would be plenty of interest from the Undergraduate side prior to grad school.
Different as it would be compared to a P5 school, there is still plenty to learn at that stage of one's education and seems like an underutilized resource. You also could open it to the athlete population/kinesiology track. Im sure many athletes would be VERY interested.
My senior year 96/97 there was a pseudo Sports Marketing class. Several of us approached Todd Mooradian (Business Professor) about starting one. He went out of his way to help us. While a course could not be set up, he did sponsor an independent study in Sports Marketing (which counted for 3 credit hours). Approximately 30 of us (both guys and gals) signed up for it. We were responsible for coordinating speakers. Every Thursday night for the spring semester of 97 we had a "class" in the Business School (when it was in Tyler) and a different speaker would present. We had folks come from the Redskins, Capitals, Bullets/Wizards, and several other professional teams, universities, and other and sports entities. A deal was worked out with Kingsmill Resort where our speakers would be provided a courtesy hotel room for the evening they spoke. Our entire grade was a paper on a topic that we individually selected, with the coordination and approval of Professor Mooradian.
BEST CLASS I EVER TOOK AT W&M.
For those who don't know Todd Mooradian, he is a great man and a true asset to the WM Business School and Tribe Athletics.
That class sounds awesome. Agreed completely on Professor Mooradian--The sports marketing class wasn't in tact in 2009, but he took time to meet with me, provide some advice about the field. Really great guy and really knowledgeable.
Whenever I meet with interns or college students about working in Sports/Entertainment Marketing, I consistently use one of his pieces of advice as a key talking point--even 6+ years after talking to him about it.
There was a one credit class in the fall I took called TV Sports Today that was taught by Jim Spence (former executive for ABC Sports I believe). It was more of a look at the TV side, but included the business aspect of it. I believe he retired to Williamsburg, and wanted to teach a class on what was his passion and work. A very interesting class, and goes to show that there are people in the community with the credentials to be a part of this kind of thing.
As far as I know, Mr. Spence is still teaching one class.
Just read that Dr. Mooradian is the new Dean of the business school at Louisville. Congrats.