I was recently down in Eugene, OR to present to the Sports MBA student as the Warsaw Sports Marketing Center on the value of Sports Networking and Social Media.  While there, I had the opportunity to interview Paul Swangard – Managing Director, Warsaw Sports Marketing Center. The University of Oregon has never been about sports or business as usual–from legendary track star Steve Prefontaine to having one of the first environmentally friendly business school facilities in the nation.

Given that enterprising reputation, it’s little wonder that the UO’s Warsaw Sports Marketing Center was the country’s first sports business program housed at a college of business (the Lundquist College of Business to be precise). Today, the center is recognized by ESPN, Sports Illustrated, Sports Business Journal, and others as the leading think tank and training ground for the sports business industry.

During this interview, Paul provides insight on:

• Overview of the Warsaw Sports MBA program
• Their unique “Experiential Learning” approach
• Success stories of past Sports MBA students
• The story behind their great, late founder – Jim Warsaw.

Warsaw Sports MBA Interview

What is your opinion on the value of getting a Sports MBA?  Do you think it’s worth the cost? If you like this article, please consider sharing it with your friends on Facebook & Twitter!

Warsaw Sports MBA Students

It’s one thing to hear from the Managing Director, but you really get a sense of the value in obtaining a Sports MBA from the Warsaw Sports Marketing Center by hearing from the students.  In this video, three current Sports MBA students (Carolyne Wood, Steve Acampa, Katrina Galas) talk about why they chose Warsaw.

Warsaw Sports MBA Interview (Transcribed)

Trevor

Hey everyone it’s Trevor here from Sports Networker and I’m joined by Paul Swangard. How’s it going Paul?

Paul

I’m good, thanks.

Trevor

Good, good. So were at the Warsaw MBA program here in Eugene, Oregon. Paul had me come in and speak to the students about social networking and LinkedIn and how they can leverage all these tools from a networking standpoint. And, in getting to speak to these students I’ve really gotten an insight into where they’ve found value in the MBA program because really I’m just learning about these MBA programs myself. So I wanted to talk to the guy who’s really running the show here and get an insight into what the MBA program is all about. So what is the MBA program really all about?

Paul

I think people who are looking and getting themselves in to sport are often finding themselves in sports management programs and that really is the starting point for our education system. Programs in sports management have been around for decades. Typically they’re housed in the school of kinesiology, school of physical education. You found almost a plethora of different career paths that were related to sports from coaching to parks and recreation to tourism.

Our founder, Jim Warsaw, who was a graduate of the University of Oregon and grew up in the sports industry, noted in the early 90′s that there was actually no business school anywhere that was housing a program that was built around the world of sports. So in ’93 we founded the Warsaw Sports Marketing Center and we like to think we created a new way to study sports where students are coming here first and foremost to study business and get all those tools underneath them so they can understand finance and accounting and management and marketing and then mold on top of that study things that are specific to the world of sports. Then what the center does is envelops that whole academic experience with a rich array of out of classroom things. Everything from speakers like yourself to study tours to mentorship programs to events where they can get their own experience. We hope that whole elistic approach is something today that students are looking for which is more than just sitting in a classroom and listening to folks like you and I tell them how it’s supposed to be.

Trevor

So the experiential learning is the key  word in that and what you guys are pushing towards right? It’s less about the book skills and all that kind of stuff and more about what’s going on in the real world out here and how they can connect with other people that are doing sports as a business.

Paul

Yeah and graduate schools have always been built around that whether you’re looking to go to a school like Harvard or you’re looking to go to a school like ours which focuses more on kind of a niche area. It’s a “who you know” business so building your network and leveraging some of the great suggestions you made today I think is helping students understand the power of not only building a network the traditional way but in the new ways that can be given to you through technologies and other ways to link yourself with other people.

The line that Jim Warsaw always used was “This program is to be the aligning of where book smarts meets street smart” and there is only so much you can learn about this industry in the classroom. You sat in one of our seminar sessions today where we worked with one of our industry professors Declan Bolger who works with Major League Soccer. Bringing in real world what’s going on with Major League Soccer today and then some of the other construct events that are going on with our industry. When students can take what they’ve learned out of the book and connect with certain experiences that they’ve had where we’ve taken them to New York or taken them to China or taken them to other markets, when they can take the discussions they’ve had with senior industry people and tied all them all together I think they walk out of here with the network they potentially need and a few doors that have been open for them. And above all the confidence that they are immediately able to go into this industry and feel like they can contribute something.

We have a mixture of “career switchers”; you met some today, I was an accountant, and they’re trying to evolve their careers in a new direction around that passion for sport. We have others who have that industry experience and all of them are looking for the same thing; A little more training and a few more people in their network. We’ve fortunately been pretty successful at doing that in a very boutique way; we’re very proud of the fact that we only take 20 students per year in our graduate program. It means something to have been a Warsaw Center student and that’s what we’re very proud of and hope to continue moving forward.

Trevor

You actually answered a question that I was going to ask which is how many people do you typically have in the class on a yearly basis. So it’s around 20?

Paul

Yeah. The Oregon MBA program is small by design and what Oregon decided a long time ago is we’re not going to be able to compete for the general MBA audience when we’re looking at trying to attract students who are looking at the top 25 schools. But if we took areas that Oregon would be known for that are natural to what you would think the Oregon brand would stand for and specialize in those areas, that’s what would be our success moving forward.

So we’ve picked four areas. Entrepreneurship and innovation, Oregon is known as it’s pioneering sprit; sustainable business because our team colors are green and yellow and sometimes all sorts of different colors these days, but the greenness of Oregon; financial and securities analysis, there’s a lot of money management going on and we have a strong focus in the Asian pacific; and then sports business.

I think, for a lot of people, their first introduction to the Oregon brand comes through our sport brand whether it’s our ever-changing football uniforms or the heritage of track and field and the Olympic success our former student-athletes have had. So each of our modules, those four areas, are only trying to attract about 20 students per year and 40 across the two-year program and they become a unified group of MBA students and yet they all have their individual passions that are interconnected with the center that they’re affiliated with.

Trevor

Are there any specific success stories that you can point to with past graduates who went on to work with different companies, leagues teams, whatever it might be.

Paul

Yeah, I’ll give you a few, dating back to our first graduating class in 1998. Lee Chung, he’s actually a Chinese national, rose through the ranks at Visa and was asked then to move back to China to lead their sponsorship program for the Beijing Olympic Games. Then he rose to general manager of the company and has recently moved on and started his own sports and entertainment company, which is a fascinating story. He’s started with a focus on music and figure skating. He’s basically using figure skating to grow the sports market in China. That’s a theme you’ll see with a lot of our students; kind of an international flavor.

Trevor

Seems like a very niche type of a sport and you just never know if the people in China are going to have a mass of following.

Paul

For those who followed the success of the Vancouver games the Chinese did very well. He had a filter where he wanted to have a sport where the athletes in the country were good, and that was the case with that sport, where he can make stars out of them and these particular skaters at that moment had some great stories that he could tell. It was television friendly and event-attendance friendly and he found ice-skating was where he wanted to start.

Acoste Jane another one of our MBAs who is now leading the NBA’s India initiative. So he’s moved to India after working in the league offices in New York and is in charge of grass-roots development of a sport where more people like cricket more than they like a basketball game.

We had Ty Stewart who is the executive director of The World Series of Poker.

Trevor 

So a real wide range then of talent.

Paul

Yeah, a wide range. I think our buckets are pretty clear and the three legs to our stool are teams, leagues, events and activities but we found at the MBA probably more leagues than the actual teams. Sponsorship and agencies, the intersection between non-sports brands and their alignment with sports as a marketing vehicle [are some other examples]. And then as you drove down here from north of the boarder and drove through Portland which is the epicenter, at least in our mind, of the sports apparel business. Not just for the brands you associate with Oregon like our friends in Beaverton but North American headquarters of Adidas, Li Ning’s first North American presence and store front is in Portland. Keane, Yakima, Ice Breakers from New Zealand; there’s an amazing array of companies there and obviously you attract a lot of students who have interest in that apparel sector. And that works it’s way all the way up into the northwest, which is great because we’ve got not only great companies in Seattle but in Vancouver as well with LuluLemon and others so lots of great opportunities.

And I think, as you have gone through your career too, it’s important for people to understand that the way you can work in sports is a much broader definition than often times where even our students come in the door and say “I want to be the manager of my favorite team” and that is often the starting point for a lot of people. The truth is if you can define your ultimate job description first rather than focus on a specific brand or a specific team, it’s really amazing to see how many different ways you can do what you love with an intersection in the world of sport. I think that’s been the culture we’ve tried to create here where so many kids will come in and say “I have this passion for wanting to be around sports and I think I know what I want to do,” but the serendipity of having all of these experiences that they get exposed to there is great satisfaction in my 10 years here of seeing the moment where a light turned on and a kid didn’t even know that light was available. If we can give them that runway to go off and give them something to do then we’ve done our job.

Trevor

There are a lot of people that want to work in sports and everyone has a favorite team and they say, “I want to be the General Manager of that team.” But the students that you have in this MBA program, I can tell, are very proactive right? So a lot of them have work experience already whether it be internships or actual paid jobs within sports teams and stuff. And of course you get experience along the way in a number of different roles as an intern but sometimes it’s pouring coffee other times it’s filling out spreadsheets and other times it is real world experience.

I think the one thing that I started to get from talking to your students today was that with the MBA program here they kind of get a feel of everything right? They can hear from people like Declan, who is in club services, who has been involved in a number of different roles in sports. And he can give his feedback and insight of his own experience. Anytime you learn from a mentor of sorts it helps you define or at least understand what’s out there right?

Paul

Anybody that comes into this business should not wear blinders when it comes to their professional career. I did not grow up dreaming to be a college administrator. I wanted to work in sports and had a background in sports media but I found my way here for the reasons that I spoke to before. There are things about this job that I absolutely love coming everyday to do.

I think so often students get fixated on what that summer experience is going to be as if that’s their only step into the real world while they’re here as a student and what we’ve tried to do, and what I would encourage any other program like ours to do, is to create an environment where you’re stepping out of that door of academia everyday. You’re writing about it – we’ve created a platform and a blog for our students to write about the industry as the issues come up. We provide them opportunities to work on signature events where they get the opportunity to go out and sell a sponsorship or design an event that will be better than the events we have seen in the quote-unquote real world. And afford them the opportunities with their industry partners to get a “snacking” size experience with brands.

So we’ve had this fall students working with Adidas on product focus groups. We’ve got some students working with the MLS on some online initiatives. We’re working with the Olympic trials here in the US that will be here in Eugene next summer on their social media strategy. All of those, if designed, could have been a summer internship for one person but now we’ve created a structure where a number of students can all come together and have the opportunity to get a little taste of that and then walk away and reflect on that experience which I think a lot of students don’t often do. “What did I learn? What do I not like about it? What would I never want to do again?” To do that multiple times and on an ongoing basis in this program I think sets them to be much more keenly aware of where they’re going to go with their career once they get out the door after graduation.

Trevor

Cool. I wanted to bring up one more point. The University of Oregon is obviously done an amazing job of the last number of years with their own brand. The colors themselves really stand out. The one thing I’ve noticed in your own branding for the Warsaw MBA program.

Paul

We have a two-foot tall bobble head here off camera but maybe we can pop it in.

Trevor

Yeah, we’ll pop it in. I’ll maybe try and find a photo of it or something. But it’s a bobble head of the founder right? Jim Warsaw correct?

Paul

Yeah

Trevor

I’ve noticed from a social strategy that you guys have taken photos of it at different events and stuff kind of as a branding thing to show here’s Jim coming along with all the students. What’s your thoughts in regards to the brand of Warsaw overall as it relates to The University of Oregon.

Paul

And here comes big Jim. We’ll actually put him right here and I’m honored to have him in the broadcast. He’s very agreeable every time I talk to him about subjects.

Quick background, Jim Warsaw’s family, his father David Warsaw is believed by many to be the father of sports licensing. They did a deal with the Wrigley family in the 1920′s to get the rights to do an ashtray that looked like Wrigley Field and sold it out in front of the stadium and it was kind of the first example of licensed merchandise. In the 1940′s the family came up with the bobble head doll.

Jim unfortunately is no longer with us, he was diagnosed and fell ill due to complications from Parkinson’s disease and one of the last things we did before he died was commissioned a bobble head to celebrate our 15th anniversary. In the tragedy of losing him we wanted to instill in our students that it was really his core ethos that really made this program important and the sense of family that we wanted to carry forward. We knew that, with only 20 students coming out of the door every year, if we didn’t have a strong inner-connection between those 20 the scalability of this brand and the strength of this thing would be very hard. We could do it over maybe a 50-year planning horizon but over the first 20 years of this place every student mattered. So out of the tragedy of that we created a micro site jimwarsaw.com that tells his story. And then we actually got the bobble heads built, smaller ones obviously for most people.

Trevor

Seems a little tough to throw in the carry-on at the airport right.

Paul

Yeah TSA would probably have an issue with it.

And we asked every student, every alumni, when they are at a place where they feel the Warsaw Center, and more in particular Jim, had enabled them to get to a place where they were saying “this is what I really wanted when I went to Oregon” we asked them to take a picture. It’s kind of our Travelocity gnome, this idea of getting him into places. Jim was always so very proud of what students were able to accomplish once they left here and in a small way, it’s not only for his memory but for his family.

Now it’s just become who can get the next great picture. So last year it was Marcus, one of our alums who works for the Miami Heat, got Jim into the Miami Heat Dancers tryouts. Jim would’ve loved that. We were in Luzon, Switzerland when they awarded the Olympic bid to Brazil; we’ve taken him to the Great Wall of China.

I think that’s important for companies. In the wake of the untimely loss of Steve Jobs at Apple and we use the example of when Bill Bowerman the legendary shoe designer and co-founder of Nike passed away. If you cannot instill in the future generations of your employees, or in our case our employees are really our students, if you cant make them understand what it meant and why we started this place in the first place it becomes really hard to keep the core essence of your brand strength alive. It’s been a fun activity, Jim has been an indomitable spirit and somebody we’re very proud of promoting any way we can.

Trevor

Well in the research that I’ve done and just feedback from other people he sounded like an amazing man. Obviously I never got the opportunity to meet him but he is an extension of what everyone in this program represents so that’s awesome. I just wanted to make sure we got this guy on camera because I didn’t even realize that this one actually was a bobble head but that’s brilliant.

Paul

Well his idea was, and we talked about it earlier, it’s where book smarts meet street smarts and he’s actually standing on a road. Passion, integrity and leadership were his three brand pillars for this place and while we miss him everyday we believe that everyday we’re living up to and maybe even exceeding some of his expectations. And it’s what we do and there’s great programs around the globe now entering this space and if anyone watching is interested in learning about an educational opportunity I think just look for places that really deliver on the ultimate promise. Are they getting people in the industry? Do they create an environment where you’re getting a good blend of both training from really smart people and experiences where you can build your resume? I like to think, and I don’t know if you disagree or not, five percent of your resume is where you went to school.

Trevor

We actually had that conversation earlier right before we started this interview and without a doubt I agree with that yeah.

Paul 

So what we can do for you to build up that other 95 percent. And there are great schools that focus on wanting to work in the Olympic movement versus wanting to work in team sports. So just do your do diligence and make sure you’re investing what is an expensive dollar these days for education and getting what you’re coming for which is a return on that investment.

Trevor

Well I love what you guys are doing here and I really appreciate you taking the time to do this. How can people find out more information? Where do they go? They can just come into your office sit down and fire questions at you right?

Paul

Operators are standing by. WarsawCenter.com is our landing page. You can also follow us on Twitter and I tweet a lot. I do a lot of stuff, like you do, related to issues in the industry and providing some perspective. Or just reach out to us by phone or by email. We’re really excited when we can share what we’re doing but also just offer advice to people. There’s a lot of challenge these days trying to maneuver through what this world is going to look like once we figure out what the economy is going to look like and we’d be more than happy to help. It’s all about just creating an environment where we feel like people we can be a resource to them. So whether you’re a student or a prospective student or just someone in the industry that’s looking for more information we encourage people to reach out

Trevor

Great stuff. Thanks again.

Paul

No problem. Go Ducks as we say.

Trevor

Go Ducks.

About Trevor Turnbull

Trevor Turnbull is the COO of Sports Networker & the Sports Executives Association .

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This interview is part of our Sports Jobs interview series where we talk to successful sports business professionals about their role in sports, how they got there, what a typical day looks like and advice they would give to sports business students looking to land their dream job in the sports industry. 

Sports Jobs – Peter Stringer – Boston Celtics – Director, Interactive Media

Peter Stringer is the Director, Interactive Media for the Boston Celtics (NBA).  Peter wears many hats in his role and has plenty of great advice for sports business students aspiring to work in the sports industry!  Check out the interview below and if you have any questions for Peter, please leave a comment below.

And, we’d greatly appreciate it if you’d share this interview with your friends on Facebook & Twitter!

To connect with Peter online visit:

http://peterstringer.com
http://linkedin.com/in/peterstringer
http://twitter.com/peterstringer

Sports Jobs Interview Series – Transcription

Trevor

I’m honored to be joined on the phone today by Peter Stringer who is the Director of Interactive Media for the Boston Celtics. How are you doin Peter?

Peter

I’m good. How are you?

Trevor

I’m great. So Peter I wanted to ask you a few questions about the job you’re currently in, how you got there and some advice you would give to other people. So maybe start it off with how you got into this role. What was your path? Maybe go back into your education, your background and where you’re from and all that kind of stuff. Let us know who you are.

Peter

Sure yeah. I went to Boston University to pursue a journalism degree and that education led me to an internship with New England Sports Network. Kind of one of those things where I was in the right place at the right time. When I was in school in the late 90′s the Internet was really taking hold and becoming something where people were actually publishing and news outlets and media outlets were kind of setting up shop and becoming publishers in that platform as well. So when the local sports tv station NESN, or New England Sports Network, was looking to set up their site they were looking to take in interns who knew html and I had learned that from a previous internship at a PR firm and have, of course, been a passionate Celtics fan and Red Sox, Bruins, Patriots having grown up in New England.

So it was kind of a right place at the right time. Got the internship and then really kind of sunk my teeth into learning Web development and content writing. So I was coming to the games at the Garden, covering the Celtics and the Bruins mostly, during the Winter and then the Red Sox in the Summer time and little of the Patriots here and there because NESN at the time was owned by the Red Sox and the Bruins. So I spent a lot of time coming to the Garden and covering the events alongside professional journalists as an intern and really there were only a few sites at that point doing that.

So it really gave me a leg up into the sports industry and continued even after I left that job and took a full-time job with NESN after I graduated in ’98. I stayed there for a couple years. Then when I left the full-time job I took a job at Fidelity doing corporate work. I was still freelancing for [NESN] covering some Celtics games and some Bruins games as well. Just using that journalism background in writing and reporting for their site.

Fast forward to 2005, I had been out of sports for a little bit and had been strictly doing professional Web consulting when the opportunity with the Celtics came up. I had gotten to know our PR guy Jeff Twist, who has been with the Celtics for 30 years; a guy that was hired by Red Auerbach, a legend in his own right. He helped me get my resume in front of the people that needed to see it. The job was open and I came on with the Celtics in November of 2005 as their Internet Operations Manager, chiefly responsible for the Web site. That has since changed into being Director of Interactive Media and controlling all of our social media platforms as well as the Web site and all of our digital marketing and social media efforts.

Trevor

So you touched on people that may have influenced you along the way but is there anyone in particular from a mentorship standpoint that helped guide you to the path that you’re on right now in getting your foot in the door?

Peter

Yeah, absolutely. The guy I would point to is the guy that many people in the sports business would point to; you’ll hear this name a lot but a guy named Jack Falla who was a Sports Illustrated hockey writer for a long time. Jack was a professor at BU for sports journalism and I had him for a couple of classes at BU. He was a no-nonsense guy where he’d go to bat for you and try to get you a job in a bunch of different places. We actually were co-workers at NESN, when I was an intern, he was doing freelance hockey work for their broadcast of college hockey and in a bunch of different capacities wrote a column for our site.

So he was a professor, a mentor and co-worker and he spent plenty of time with me trying to hone my craft both in the classroom and out of the classroom as a friend and a mentor. He was somebody I went to for advice if I need advice about a certain job. Then as I established my own foot hole with the Celtics he was the guy that always emailed me about interns and said “Hey I’ve got this kid that would be a great intern for you, can you take him on?” And knowing what I knew about Jack, anyone that came with a recommendation from him I knew was going to be solid. So I did have a couple of kids who were recommendations from Jack as interns and they have gone onto other jobs as well.

There’s countless people across the sports industry; PR, sports PR; that all were disciples, if you will, of Jack Falla and really one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet. He passed away a couple years ago and it was really tough for myself and a lot of us who were students of his. As a friend and a mentor, he was really just one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet and I feel fortunate to have crossed paths with him. He really was instrumental in helping me become a professional in the sports industry.

Trevor

Yeah it definitely sounds like he was a great man. So Peter let me ask you; you obviously wear many hats within the Boston Celtics organization with the Web site and social media and everything else. Give us a glimpse into what a typical day looks like for you when you get to the office in the morning?

Peter

I mean it depends whether it’s a game day, an off day or a practice day. It really depends if the team is home or on the road. So everyday kind of has it’s own little wrinkles to it. For us, really the way we’re communicating with the fan base is through social media. In the past, just a couple years ago, we would be relying on people coming to our Web site, maybe through an email blast to get them to our site. Well now we don’t even have to do that. We can reach them whenever we want by shooting out a blast to Facebook or Twitter. Rather than relying on them to come to us we go to them.

Thats really been a paradigm shift for everyone in sports and brand marketers across any industry or any vertical. Typically we’ll shoot a couple different updates out throughout the day on a game day; it’s a little slower when were not playing. But certainly for us it’s constantly about putting out information, news and in some cases ticket offers. It depends on what’s going on at that specific time. But there’s no shortage of things going on with regards to digital operations for us. I mean it’s really how we connect and communicate with our fan base these days.

Trevor

And you manage the Boston Celtics fan pages; is that the largest one in the NBA?

Peter

The Celtics Facebook fan page is the second largest in sports in North America. There’s only one bigger than that; I won’t tell you who it is but they are our rivals on the West Coast. I’m sure you’ve heard of them.

Trevor

Possibly, yes. But we won’t mention their name.

Peter

Exactly.

Trevor

So looking back on your transition into this role you’re in right now, is there anything along the way that you possibly would have done differently with regards to internships, education or networking?

Peter

I would say that I would have started networking a heck of a lot earlier in my career. It’s really only something I’ve been doing actively the last couple years. The age of LinkedIn and Twitter has changed the game completely and opened a lot of doors for me in terms of having my own Twitter presence, my own blog and my own brand out there. For someone coming out of school in this day and age in 2011, it’s very different than it was when I came out of school in 1998.

I spent a lot of time going to technology based networking events in Boston because I’m one of the few people at the Celtics who is immersed in technology, specifically on the social media side of things. So, I spend a lot of time getting to know the players in the marketplace and city. Because you never know who you may need from a vendor standpoint or a collaboration standpoint, but it also shows you’re enthusiastic about the business.

What are the trends? I think that’s important, especially if you’re going to work on the technology side of any business, you need to be up on what’s going on. That’s a full-time commitment and requires a lot of reading and research and keeping up with trends. I think it’s very helpful to do that through Twitter and through the Internet but also just by talking to people and finding out what they’re working on and what types of things they’re seeing. It helps validate a lot of the things you’ll read online and you’ll find out “Are people really working on these kinds of things?” And generally, the answer is yes. But you’ll see people are taking many different approaches to it and I think that’s helpful for us because we’re not a technology company at heart.

As one of the few people here who really spends their day thinking, living and breathing technology, I think it’s important for me to be ahead of everything and up to date on what’s going on out there. And so, I think that from a networking standpoint, that’s really important. And also I think it’s a different world now, like I said before, networking allows me to keep in touch with my peers, different teams, different leagues and different brands to see what they’re doing. I want to know what people are doing, not only in the NBA, but across the 4 major sports, UFC and WWE. All these big brands that have massive followings and digital fan bases. I want to see what they’re doing and how they’re approaching their fans and they possibly want to know what we’re doing as well.

So I think the networking side of it is something that I wish I had gotten involved with much earlier in my career. Of course, in-person networking, but certainly with technology and social media, now there’s no excuse. It’s just a lot easier than it ever has been at this point.

Trevor

Is there any advice that you would give to sports business students looking to land that dream job in the sports industry? I know we have a lot of readers on Sports Networker that are students that are essentially trying to break into the industry and they’re just starting to learn how to use these tools from a networking standpoint. Are there any tips for somebody just starting out? So they don’t have a Twitter account yet, they’re not on LinkedIn, what would you suggest?

Peter

Well first of all they should be on Twitter and Linkedin.They should also secure their name as a domain name. I have peterstringer.com where I blog about what’s going on in digital marketing and sports marketing and industry. With setting up a blog, it doesn’t matter if you get huge traffic numbers. You need to look at it as an extension of your resume, it is your online resume to build your brand. If you want to get into sports marketing, you want to be thinking living and breathing sports marketing constantly. You want to demonstrate that you have opinions, you’ve written about different things and you’re following the trends. Just by virtue of reading about it, Tweeting about it, blogging about it, you have an inherent advantage because you’ll know the stuff inside out. You’ll start turning up in search results based on what people are looking for.

I didn’t have this coming out of school when I was looking for a job and again, I was kind of in the right place at the right time with the whole NESN gig. But now, I think the students that are going to separate themselves and become contenders versus pretenders are the ones who are really going to put the effort in, learn the craft and understand the business they’re trying to get into. I mean, I think people forget that sports is a business like anything else and openings do not happen often in sports business because everyone wants to work there.

The day I leave this job they’ll have hundreds of resumes for my position. Anytime someone leaves the Celtics, we get a ton of resumes and how do you get to the top of that pile? Well obviously, it helps to know someone at the organization. But, more than that you really have to demonstrate that you’re going to bring something to the table. Being a fan isn’t good enough to get you anywhere. Everyone is a fan. That’s easy to do and that’s easy to claim. But what you have to demonstrate is what you’re gonna bring to the table.

I know when I interviewed here at the time it was really just about managing the Web site and I came in with a plan of how I would revamp their Web site. That’s the type of stuff you have to be able to do to separate yourself and make that distinction. Because, again, you’re going to be up against hundreds of candidates to begin with and if you’re lucky enough to get the interview you might be up against 10 or 15 interviews. So it’s super competitive, everyone wants to work in sports. But, at the end of the day there’s usually only a few that will stand out in interviews and those are the people that organizations are going to gravitate towards and those are the ones we’re going to want to end up hiring.

Really I think the onus is upon students especially because they dont have any professional background. They need to demonstrate what they bring to the table, build their brand, start thinking about these challenges and demonstrate that they understand these challenges that are facing teams today in 2011.

The other side of it, I would say, is to not just focus your search on a specific team or industry. There are plenty of companies that surround the sports industry. Very few kids are going to get into the sports business right out of school. It’s just unlikely, again, based on the competition. If it’s between a student who has no experience and a professional who has worked somewhere else, the professional is probably going to get the nod. I can’t speak specifically on our hiring practices necessarily, but I would say in general terms, you are up against experienced candidates. There are plenty of other businesses that surround the pro and college teams. If you look at a team’s corporate partners, those are great places to start because these are industries that have connections within the sports business. I would always tell people not to be too narrow in their search in terms of getting into the sports business.

It may not be point A to point B, you may have to take a job that maybe isn’t ideally what you want right away, but will help you get to where you’re trying to go to.  And, I think that’s something that shouldn’t be lost on kids as they’re trying to break into the sports business.You’re not necessarily going to graduate in May and be working for a sports team in June. It just doesn’t work that way.

Trevor

Right, right. Great advice Peter thanks very much for that. Now you’re obviously a very social guy yourself and you already mentioned you have a blog so how can people connect with you online?

Peter

Sure. On Twitter it’s just @PeterStringer, the blog is peterstringer.com and the LinkedIn is obviously there. Facebook I don’t typically use beyond my small circle of friends, I’m not really a big Facebook guy in terms of public brand. I think those are the places that everyone should be and again if you wanna be a professional in the sports business, especially if you’re trying to break in, those are really important places to be.

Trevor

Great stuff. Thanks very much for doing this Peter

Peter

I appreciate it. Thanks for the time today.

About Trevor Turnbull

Trevor Turnbull is the COO of Sports Networker & the Sports Executives Association .

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