The Sports Career Playbook #1 - Working in Sports

Hello everyone and welcome to a brand new podcast. This is the Sports Career Playbook and we're here to help current students and applicants break in to the sporting world. By we, I mean myself, Elliot Stockdale and Professor Bob here, the Director of Sport Management at the University of North Texas. Over this six episode series, we'll discuss how to apply to university, what recruiters are looking for, how to network with people and most importantly, how to get into the sports industry as a working professional. So Bob, as I introduce you, quick question, where do we start? Okay, I want you to indulge me for a moment and we're going to replay a scene from a sitcom called Seinfeld and I'm going to explain it to your generation because I've been teaching long enough to know this sitcom did not survive the time. Students don't watch it anymore. Friends, office, yeah, survived, Seinfeld did not. However, there's a brilliant scene in there, just a short scene that perfectly captures the conundrum that we're going to try to address today that we're going to go into this entire podcast. I think this little scene sets up everything we're going to talk about in the next 10, 12 episodes. So to set the stage, the two main characters, George and Jerry, the best friends, Jerry's stand-up comedian. George is kind of like a failure at most things and he just resigned one of his jobs as a realtor and didn't really think it through. So in the scene, they're sitting in Jerry's apartment and they're brainstorming on a new career for George. Okay, and just to clarify to everyone, we are re-enacting this for copyright reasons. We can't play the clip. So please bear with us and maybe grit your teeth through our subpar acting. I'll be playing Jerry and Bob, you'll be playing George, is that correct? Yeah, my lifelong dream to play George. We didn't know back then that he was Larry David and then Larry David Kirby Enthusiasm. Some listeners might have watched those episodes. He's my spirit animal, so I'm going to play George in this scene. Okay, well, three, two, one, and action. I like sports. I could do something in sports. In what capacity? You know, like a general manager of a baseball team or something. Oh, okay, that can be quite tough to get. Well, it doesn't have to be the general manager. Maybe I could be like an announcer, like a color man. You know, how I always make those interesting comments during the game? Yeah, you make good comments. So what about that? Well, you know, they, you know, they tend to give those jobs to ex-ball players and people that, you know, are in broadcasting. Well, that's really not fair. I know, but okay, okay, let's, let's go out as well. What else do you like? I like movies. I like to watch movies. Okay. And scene. And scene. So other than, other than just, you know, for the fun of it, why, why have we just done that? It's, it's, it's almost every sentence here has like a treasure in it for us, right? So I've had hundreds, if not thousands of these conversations. I started my career as a PhD student, being an undergrad student advisor, where I met with students and figured out the curriculum, you know, the curriculum that went through the class at the peak and talk about the career choices. And I'm still doing that now as the MBA program director where I interview every MBA student, uh, applicant that's coming in. And so I, I, if I asked him, what do you want to do? That's often the first thing I hear. I want to be a general manager. It's like, great. You just told me you want to be the boss. Everybody wants to be the boss. It's like, that's, that's really not how you start your career. It's not like, oh, I can be a general manager day one. It's like, have you thought through what you're going to do the 20 years leading up? Yeah. So that's, that's the first one that, you know, I, I just love that, that comment there. Then we get the second one, right? So the next sentence, right? So he's like, well, okay, if I can't be a general manager, he's not saying, Oh, I'm going to, you know, maybe I should just start with work my way up, you know, sell tickets and no, no, no, no, George wants the shortcuts. Right. He, he can be professional athletes. So the next best thing is general manager and trade athletes. And if you can't be that, let's be a color commentator, right? And, and Elliot, I mean, you can tell a little bit more about it. You were a commentator and sports game, right? That's what you did before you transitioned into this is MBA program. How often have you heard from people that they could be a competitor? Oh, every, every time, every time you go out to a bar or you're just talking amongst, you know, random people or people that have, you know, around 15, 16 wanting to get into the sports industry. Everyone believes that they can be a commentator and everyone believes they've got the skill set. And that isn't necessarily true. And that's, that's the beauty of sports, right? Everybody understands sports. Everybody knows sports. Everybody has an opinion about sports and everybody thinks that they have something meaningful to say about sports. So that's, that's the other thing, right? So a lot of people just like, Oh, I know sports, I can work in sports. So that's the second thing. And we're only like halfway this 42nd dialogue. And then what I love is, is, is the Jerry common then saying, Well, you know, they tend to give those jobs to ex ball players and people, you know, in broadcasting. And, and he's so right about sports is a little bit of a secret society. It's, it's this, this closed society, this brother sisterhood that it's hard to get into. And, and a lot of students never really figure out how to get into. And that's really why we're doing this podcast, right? To help people figure out, Hey, how do I open that door? How do I actually go into this, this field? Because George responds, Well, that's not fair. I heard that as well, many, many times like, Yeah, but it's an appetite. And they give these jobs to the people they know. It's like, Yeah, that's true. They give the job to, and we're going to talk about that. Well, how do you become one of the people they already know. So I, and then lastly, just, you know, George, like, instead of kind of really going into it, he just moves on. Oh, I like movies. And that's the thing as well. I think many students go into this field for the wrong reason. So let's see if we can filter that out in this. And yeah, I just, I just left the scene. I'm a youth science health fan. But this scene is, is something that, that, that survived the times. So picking up on everything you've just, you've just said and what it is to be in the sports industry, what kind of questions should these applicants and current students be asking about getting into the sports industry? Yeah, so I think that's what we want to do today, right? So what we want to do, we want to give the listeners a list of questions, 10 of them. They can work through those questions themselves because there's really questions you should ask yourself. Now, you want to talk to other people, you want to get input, if you know people in the sports industry, you want to go talk to them. But it's really for yourself. Like, okay, what are the 10 questions I need to ask myself? So we're going to go through this and really use that as a starting point to, to crack in the code, right? In order to understand or to crack the code, you have to understand the code. And so the way we pick it, we're going to do this. You are right now a first year MBA student. You should have asked these questions to yourself. Maybe you haven't really fully explored them internally. We'll do this in the podcast, and then I will comment on it and kind of give some background to that. Absolutely. So, well, without any further ado, then let's, let's jump into these list of questions and we'll start with question one. And I think it's pretty simple really. Why do I actually want to do this other than, you know, for example, for me, other than just for the love of soccer, why should I want to do this? And you hit right there on the nail, right? So, because it's a simple question, but it's also the hardest one, because we all have to be honest with ourselves. Why did we go into this? Why did we explore this? Because we love sports in general, and most often we love one particular sport or even a sports team. And what, what was your favorite soccer team? A team from, from England back home called Nottingham Forest. And what was your first job or your first internship or volunteering job or whatever it was, right? It was with Nottingham Forest. There we go, right? So this is how, you know, how, how people go about this, right? You were not dreaming necessarily of being maybe a BBC anchorman on the news. You know, you love soccer, you love Nottingham Forest, you love broadcasting. That's where, so often we kind of start there, but that's really not enough. And so did you ever dream, I'm going to use, I'm going to use a couple metaphors. I love metaphors, right? In this episode. So did you ever dream of running or opening a bar? Oh, absolutely. There we go. Every guy, and I'm going to gender stereotype here. It's not entirely true, of course, but every guy at some point in his life wanted to open a bar. That's, that's just a ritual. And many of us actually have conversations or even like at one pager that I drew up with their friends, right? Like, this is how we're going to do it. If nobody's doing this, we're going to do it, right? So, and, you know, if I asked my wife this, like she would say, fashion designer, at some point you want to be and most women. And again, I'm gender stereotyping very dangerous. But we have these jobs that everybody in their lives are like, Oh, I want to do that. Sports is part of that, right? It's just like, Oh, I want to work for my favorite sport team. What's better than that? So what people think of is, is, is really who they want to work for, the ability to tell other people about it. And that's a big part of it, the status, the ego that comes with that. But not thinking about what it really means, right? So, and not a metaphor, like you've been now in Texas for how many months? Oh, not even months, just just five weeks, five weeks. How do you like the brisket? It's incredible. It's absolutely incredible. So in case we have listeners from outside Texas or outside the United States, even brisket is barbecue. And the Texas brisket is the best in the world. And I'm saying that as a foreigner who's lived in many different countries who visited a lot of countries, the Texas brisket is incredible. So every Texas man, and probably also a woman at some point, thought they could do that themselves and they should learn how to do themselves and they're going to smoke their own meat. And I think a career in sports is almost like that. Just because you love brisket. Do you really want to get up at 4am in the morning to get that fire started, to let that brisket just sit there for 16 hours, watch it, right? Figure out how to do that well, which takes months and years to work. I can make a very mean pork ribs, grape ribs, very Texas based. I'm very proud of it. Brisket, I never really figured it out and I cannot make it as well as the pro skin here, right? So it's just easy to go get it. That's the question you've got to ask yourself. Do I just love brisket and eating it with sports? Do I just want to watch sports? Or do I really want to put in the work? Because it doesn't make the viewing experience better. And that's kind of what we're going to talk about today as well. So once you get past that first unwind block of, you know, you do want to work in sports, you've decided, yes, I want to work in sports. The next question is, do I need a degree to work in sports? Yes. The same way that you really need a degree for everything in life nowadays, right? I mean, do you need a degree from a knowledge expertise basis for certain jobs? Probably not, depending on, you know, the work experience that you have as an entrepreneur, or maybe as an athlete even, right? But knowing the society we live in today, it's almost, yes, you need to have a degree. However, what's in sport is very important to understand is there's so many different routes and jobs in sports that it's not necessarily one degree that you have to go after, right? And, you know, I'm in sport management and my faculty member in sport management. You are actually now in an MBA program in sport management. That is a very common one. But if you know you want to be a broadcaster, don't be in sport management, right? Then you should be in journalism or in broadcasting, you know, I'm sure they're broadcasting degrees. If you want to be, if you know what you want to do in sports, let's say that way, right? If you know exactly like, hey, I want to be in marketing, or I want to be in graphic design, or I want to be, like I said, if I want to be in journalism, you know what you want to do. Then you can find a specialist degree and go into that. And then augment that with internships and jobs in sports, right? But like we said earlier, many of us just love sports. We don't necessarily know what we want to do in sports. We just know we want to be in sports. If you're a generalist, right, you just don't know yet what specialist you might be one day, or maybe you're never going to be a specialist, then typically sport management would be the best degree to get. And we're going to have a whole episode on just, you know, figuring out, hey, what is, what is the degree that I need to find? And what are the best sport management degrees that I should go at? So when you're starting this journey, and you know, you're choosing your potential degree that you're going to go on, should you know what kind of organization you want to work for before you start the journey? Or is that something you want to pick up on as you go along? Better yet, you should not know what sport organization you want to work for. And if you do, you should forget about that right at the start. And this is a conversation I've had many times as well, right? When I asked, I was like, as applicants, I go, what do you want to do in sports? Well, I want to work with the Dallas Cowboys. That is the worst response you can get. Now, I'm not judging you when you do so. Because again, I know that this is how it works. But basically, what you're telling me now is that who you want to work for, right? You're basically saying, Hey, I'm a fan. This is the organization I love. This is the organization I want to work for. Well, if you would say that out loud during a job interview, an internship interview with the Dallas Cowboys, you're disqualified on the spot just for that comment. Because the last thing they want is a fanboy, or as they call them, jock snippers, right? People around the building, just in the hopes that they could meet, you know, Dak Prescott, their CDLAM, or, you know, wherever the star player is. And so what we tell our students when we work really hard on it, it's like, no, it's not for whom you're going to do it. Maybe one day you're going to do it for your dream organization. It's not impossible. It's also not impossible that once you're in that dream organization, somebody else has come and come and it's going to give you a promotion and a pay raise, and you're going to take it and you leave your dream organization, right? That happens quite often as well. But what you really need to focus on at the beginning is figuring out what you want to do. And once you figure out, hey, I want to be in event operations, I want to be in marketing, I want to be in ticket sales, I want to be in community relations, I want to be in PR. That's when you can start growing. And then when you notice it's like, oh, yeah, I actually love cooking a brisket. Right? That's, that's what, you know, I love the process of, you know, figuring out the herbs and the salt and the pepper and what temperature I should get my barbecue and what kind of wood to use, right? Once you get to that stage, now you're at the beginning of your career. Because now you do, and it doesn't matter for whom you're going to do this. The metaphor that always comes to mind to me, there is, you know, the sports team is the shiny toy, right? So my first academic job was in Auckland, New Zealand. And of course, if anyone, if someone has never been to New Zealand, it's, it's one of the most beautiful islands in the world. And I was in Auckland and our offices were on the North Shore. And my office faced the Ocean Bay. And in that Ocean Bay, like a couple of miles out of the coastline was big volcano, Renki Toda Island. It was, it's still, it's a dormant volcano, the real volcano. Absolutely gorgeous. And I remember the first day in my office, I come in and it's like, holy crap, this is gorgeous. Yeah, this will never tire me. This is the coolest view ever. Right? I was just excited to be there. And the first day I would be staring out of the window, look at it. And guess what? After a month in that office, I didn't even notice the volcano anymore. Because I have work to do, right? I'm staring at my computer. I'm not staring outside to the volcano. I'm looking, I'm dealing with students, I'm teaching my classes. I almost forgot about it. And I think what sports teams that the same way, right? So when the first day you would start working for, let's say the New York Yankees. Yes, I'm sure it's overwhelming. It's gorgeous. It's glamorous and right. You feel like, you know, this is the best thing ever. And then two months later, you forgot, you know, the Yankees part of it and you just like your job and what you do and the people around you or not. I think the glamorous thing doesn't last. That wears off real fast. And so it's not about who you work for, but what do you want to do? Okay, so I've been pretty fortunate to sort of know what I want to do in the sports industry. I've worked a couple of different jobs and now I'm on a different journey. And I've been, like I say, fortunate to actually know what I want to do. But there are hundreds and thousands of people and students that don't know what they want to do. They don't know where to, where to go and they don't know how to find their niche. So what, what do they do to try and find that? Well, let me ask you this, right? So you're saying like, I know what I want to do. You knew what you wanted to do, right? You wanted to be a broadcaster. You did that. You know, you're a journalist by trade. You did that for a long time. You did it for your favorite soccer team. Good job. Not in a forest. That's awesome. And then you came to the States to start in your MBA program. What do you want to do afterwards? Have you figured out what you want to do where this journey is going to take you? I have ambitions of potentially running my own business and running my own business in the commentary industry. But away from that, I'm still, still trying to figure it out, you know, owning and starting a business is a very difficult task. And it's not something that I can just do overnight. So I'm, you know, I'm still figuring out, I'm still testing the waters and, you know, whether I want to work in marketing or event operations, I'm, I'm still, I'm still trying to figure that sort of things out. And yeah, and that's while you're in the MBA program, you get introduced to different facets of the sports industry. You know, you might say like, Oh, wait, maybe I do really like that or like that. Now, I love the motive for getting your MBA as a specialist. If you want to get a specialist degree, getting your MBA to start your own business is definitely a route that we would never talk anyone out of. So hopefully you'll stay that path. But how do you find your niche? So experience. The thing is with sports, and this is from different reasons as well. But one of the things of sport is because it's so heterogeneous, there's so many different facets to it. You want to explore the different things you want to get engaged. And assuming that most of the people listening to this will start a degree in sport, it's, you know, soon, or considering it or already in a degree, I would say is aside from taking classes, you want to go volunteer, you want to go to professional development events, sport business events, conferences, you want to do internships, you want to find a part time job, maybe full time job if you can, but you want to get engaged in the sport industry. You just want to raise your hand and explore all the different venues that are there for you in sports. And sports industry kind of relies on that aspect. They use a lot of interns and volunteers. That's free labor for them. They know they can do it. And at least cheap later, let's say that way, if they pay their internships, more and more unfortunately are doing that. But there's always opportunities. And particularly if you're in a bigger city, right, so we're in a Dallas Fort Worth, we have about 8 million people here, we have plenty of sport teams here, sport entities, marketing agencies, you can get some work experience, right? So then you'll learn like, Oh, what do I actually like? Do I like social media and running that? Do I like event operations? Do I like a sponsorship ticket sales that you can find what you want to do? But you got explored, right? So this is not a degree where you can just kind of like sit in the back of the row, get, you know, good grade in class. And then once you graduate, right, then figure out, Okay, what am I going to do now? Because that really doesn't help you at all. Any work experience you gain outside sports won't help you too much to get into the sports industry. So you really have to work hard to get some sports specific experience. So we've discussed, you know, experience and how important that is and you know, how to find your niche and try different things. But to go back to what we were discussing about the degree itself, and if you actually need one, how important is it actually then to have a 4.0 GPA because that isn't something that I ever thought of or he never crossed my mind really when when applying how important that GPA potentially could be. Yeah, when I answer this, I hope that there's not a single professor or academic listening to this podcast, right, because basically what I'm going to say, the simple response is not the very now that's a misleading response, right, because a 4.0 GPA means you understand the skills, the expertise and knowledge that requires to be in the sport industry, right. So in that regard, it is important. It also is very likely that at that point you've impressed your professors, which are often conduits, right, mediums toward these jobs and sports. So it is important. But I think what people need to realize is, unlike some other majors where a 4.0 GPA, you can just lean back, right, you can hang out with your sorority sisters, your fraternity brothers, right, do some other fun stuff on the side, take a part time job, which by the way was me as a student. I did all kinds of things. I was a bartender, I did all that stuff. That doesn't really help you. And then the 4.0 is not enough, let's say that way, right. So what we said before is all that extracurricular engagement, the experience there, that's to some extent, as important, let's say that way, I could argue more important, but as important as what happens in the classroom. And so in the classroom, yeah, you try to impress your professors. But if I have a student with a 4.0 GPA without any work experience, and I have a student with a 3.45 GPA, and three internships and two volunteering and you know, a long list of things that they did. It's the second student who's going to get the job because board organizations are looking for people who have the experience. None of them are looking for necessarily the brightest student, the most intelligent student who, you know, might have the most potential in the long run. No, they're looking for somebody who can start working day one, who has great interaction communication skills, and knows what it takes to succeed in the sports industry. So you mentioned there about looking for positions and experience and how important that is. Now, speaking from my experience in my broadcast field, I had to work a lot of long hours and I had to do a lot of volunteering and a lot of unpaid work with no expenses paid. And that's just because that's the industry. And it's not just in broadcasting, that carries over into sports as a whole. So with that in mind, what kind of positions should I be looking out for to get that experience and to get that volunteering time in? Realistic goal setting. That is the first and foremost, right? So again, we talked about the importance or the emphasis that people place on working for a particular organization. Let that go when you get started. Find smaller organizations, low level jobs at bigger organizations. Find something that gets you into the door, that allows you to experience it, right? So for the bigger organizations, there are a lot of paid jobs working the event, which is kind of like steward ticket say takers, right? Those kinds of people that, you know, the shitty jobs, let's say, and I'll use that word, the shitty jobs are not glamorous, gets you in the building, puts a line in your resume, you meet your first people, right? The supervisor and then the boss of the supervisor who might be the guy or the girl that two years later gives you that internship, right? So those jobs are valuable, and you know, you get paid a little bit, right? If it's unpaid, yes, particularly smaller organizations don't have resources, right? They will want you to kind of volunteer. I always tell my students, hey, if you can do it, do it. Do it under your own, you know, conditions. I protect your time. Just volunteering. Be outspoken about what you're willing to do or not. I'd negotiate that as you go into an internship. And the moment to say negotiating, I'm kind of worried that I'm giving the wrong impression because you don't have a lot to negotiate. But at least for yourself, tell them what you're willing to do or not be willing to walk away for it, look for something else. But yeah, you want to start there. And that then will lead to an internship. And that's the frustrating part, right? In any other field, internships are meant to introduce you to something, their service for the food thing. And then it's understood and that that comes in return for some, you know, cheap labor or free labor that you provide by, you know, making coffee, going to a coffee machine, right? Go shop, you know, some stuff, right? That kind of thing. Yeah, that's kind of, well, in sports, right? So if the Dallas Cowboys have an internship, just an internship, that one last year core partnership, where I asked for how many applicants do you have? 721. That's just for an internship. Now it's a paid internship, but it was just an internship. Even that, if you if you put 700, you know, if you ever buy a stack of paper at the paper shop, right, you know how thick that is. Yeah, even looking at all those, it's impossible to go through 721. 721 resumes, right, even if the one pagers, you're still not going to go through, right? Absolutely. So that the frustrating part of the sports industry is particularly if you want to work for a professional sports team is that the competition is incredibly high. And you actually have to work, you have to have a resume to get your internship. And which, you know, to some extent is a catch 22, right? You know, whether to get the work experience, you need to get an internship, or to get the internship. So you're looking for small teams, you know, third, fourth division, you're looking for youth sports, youth academy, right? So, so if you can build up a portfolio of experiences, and some resume lines, and you get to meet some people, and then you take that to the internship and then hopefully impress people. And that often does lead to a job because that's technically how they recruit their own people right through the internships. Now, I'm going to slide in an extra question here if that's okay, Bob. Now, you were on about earlier about Seinfeld, one of my favorite films from, you know, came out about 15, 20 years ago, it was called Yes Man. And Jim Carey starred in it, and Zoe Deschanel. Anyway, the casting doesn't matter. In Yes Man, he says yes to everything, he doesn't have a choice. Is there a worry maybe on your side when people are volunteering, that they're just going to say yes to everything? Question 6A, right? No, 6B is this, right? So still question 6. I would say the first six months of getting on, you know, first six months of his journey, right? Whether that's part of the degree, maybe it's a year. I guess it will be slightly different for everyone else, but say yes to everything. If you can, right? I mean, you've got to have a life, you've got to be able to. But the way I look at that is if you love sports, you're going to love everything that comes in your path the first six months, right? Because everything is cool and exciting. And you know, you're going to be working, you know, as a fan engagement specialist, right? FC Dallas calls everybody who works in the game a fan engagement specialist, 11 for it. It's a great title. It looks good in your SMA. I know it's, you know, to some extent, it's a little bit of BS, right? They're not necessarily all engaging events, but they are working the games. It's not a great job, necessarily. But your insights, the stadium, you get to watch them soccer so now and then, you meet a lot of people, you're working in communication skills, you get to meet the people in the FC Dallas. And for them, it's a talent identification program, right? They're going to find their real interns there. And so I think you should jump on those things as much as you can. And then once you build that up a little bit, yeah, then maybe you step back and become a little more selective on, Hey, I need this or I don't need this anymore. But I like, I like, you know, I, if I recall the movie correctly, saying yes, everything kind of worked out. It does work out, right? So, you know, say yes. Later on in your career, there are some issues with saying yes to everything. But at this point, it's like, no, man, go do it, be positive, enjoy it. If you hate it, end it on a good note, don't burn any bridges. Everybody knows everybody, right? So you want to leave in a positive note. But yeah, no, jump in. So once you've gone through this volunteering phase and these potential internships, at one point, then do you start looking for full time employment or let's call them proper jobs? I don't think it's chronological like that. Now, it might turn out for many people, right? That's the most common route, right? The volunteering that leads to an internship, initially leads to a job. But for many people, it's not that linear. That also means that sometimes people get to skip stages, right? And I would say jump on everything means apply for full time jobs as well, right? Apply for part time jobs, full time jobs. Don't just apply for the little ones. But here's the thing, what you need to know about that, okay? Applying for jobs in the sports industry is again, hundreds, if not thousands of people are applying for these things, you might never get a response. They're not going to tell you why they don't like you. They're not going to tell you or explain why somebody else is better. You're probably never going to hear from it. So what you're doing is, is you apply for something. You probably have your standard resume, you have your standard cover letter, mess with it, never sent the same one twice, right? You always adjust it, modify it to the context. Some people might think like, how do you do that in resume? Those are just facts. Yeah, you rank them differently. You know, you leave some things out, you add some other things, you make it specific to that. That takes you maybe half an hour, an hour, right? The more you do it, the less time it takes, because the more different versions you have, you can reuse and you know, and then the moment you've done it, you forget about it. You forget about it. Don't wait for a decision. Don't think you're going to get a decision. Don't think you're going to get the job. Put it out there and move on. Do what you've already been doing, right? And there's no reason to wait. For some people, it comes early. For other people, sometimes our best students, they don't get that job offer until like four or five months after graduation. I don't know why. I don't think they can explain it. It's frustrating for them, right? Particularly if they were, you know, among the best students in their, in their group and they know, they know, everybody knows, kind of, right? But sometimes it just takes time. And sometimes, we're the student, we admit it and it leveraged that into a job with the Delz Mavericks and then said no to our degree. Still hate it for that. No, I'm joking. I'm very excited for her. But it's like, yeah, but hey, she, she made it work. So good on her, right? So, you know, you never know when it comes. So in sports overall, I think there's a common misconception on how much you get paid. So, you know, like, we're, we're on about when you're starting off, you're volunteering and you know, you're paying, yeah, paid and these low paid internships and stuff, whoever and whatever you're working. But I feel at least when, you know, going back to that first question on, you know, where do I start in sports? People that are at that stage believe that, you know, when you walk into a job in sports, you're going to be paid, you know, hundreds and thousands of dollars. It's just, it's not quite the case, is it? Are people really thinking that? I hope not. There's no easy answer to this, right? Because the heterogeneity in sports and so many different jobs and so many, you know, so I would say for starting, right? So let's start with a starting job. I would just say average salary minus 10k. So if you want to be in marketing, well, if you work for a general marketing firm, you're going to make 10k more probably than in sports, if not more, there's, there's going to be a difference. Why? Because again, a thousand plus people applied for your job. They know you'll take it. So at the entry level, you're going to miss out on some income, right? That's the price you're paying for being in a wildly desirable field. And I'm assuming that most people are okay with that. Even if you're young and you're not married and, you know, you can manage that for a while. Now, what happens then is that once they are in that job for a couple of years, right, they move up, they get their raises. It does even out as you move up. Why? At that point, right? It's like the ranking total volcano. It's not as shiny anymore. Other things start to matter. Salary starts to matter. Hours start to matter. Benefits start to matter. And yeah, probably at that point, somebody to care for, right? The family to take care of all these things. So at that point, it evens out because otherwise these, these four teams, right, the sports organization lose all their talent, which they can't afford either. So it does even out. And at some point, I almost feel like, you know, you can make more money in the sport team at the highest levels. But no, there's no athlete money, right? So the, the, the, the saying in sports has always been and will always remain sport team spent the money on the field, not off the field. I think that, I think that answers my question pretty well, to be honest. So you mentioned there about let me say one more thing about now go on because I know you had an original question about fun. Yes. And I kind of like took it out here because I knew we would hear on it and let's make sure that we don't forget to hear on it. I have yet to meet a person who's not happy to, to work in sports. It is a fun industry to be part of. You like what you do. You like for whom you do it. It's fun to talk about with people around you, right? It's, it is, you know, because technically, if you work in sports and the business side, as we do, they're really only two jobs in sports, organizing the party, selling the party. We're in the party business. That's what we do. We're in the party business. That's fun. You're part of the, you're part of a lot of parties. And then later on in life, where you're like, Oh, you know, I don't really need a party. I just want to sit home and read a book. No, maybe that changes. But I will say, right? So you pay a little bit, you know, they pay a little bit less, but you do have a fun job. And talking of that kind of fun side of things. I think when you're working in sports, you have to be prepared to make sacrifices and be prepared to work weekends. So how will working in sport impact life in general? Will that fun that you have in sport be the only fun that you have? Will you still get the opportunities to, to have that social experience or no? Yeah, but, you know, indeed, different hours, different times, different days. It depends on the sport, of course, right? So working for an NFL team to some extent is nice because, you know, it's a relatively short season, right? It starts in August and runs till, till February. Now it doesn't mean that, you know, well, February, you like the playoffs, right? And in December, doesn't mean that the rest of the year, you're not working. You're still working, but then you don't have the games and the travel and all that that comes with it, the haptic off, off a season. If you're working majorly baseball, it's 162 games, right? The season is eight to nine months. Yeah, that's, that's a bit of a drag, right, to get through that season. Lots of evenings, lots of weekends pretty much, right? And, and, yeah, that can be pretty intense. So it does depend on the sport. But in general, you'd say, yes, you have irregular hours, you work a lot more evenings, even if you're not necessarily directly tied to the game. You still work, you know, somehow you're tied up to that party and, and you work weekends and then you have a Monday or a Tuesday off. The other thing is, if you're at a, at a great organization, there's not a lot of turnover. And so friends with the Dallas Cowboys, nobody ever leaves that organization. People would ever attend 15, 20 years. Makes it tough to move up, right? Because the people ahead of you above you are not moving up. And so what happens is if you want to have a career, you want to get the promotion, you want to move, you know, the next challenge in your, in your life, you have to move around. Now, fortunately, we are in a giant market with a lot of sporting. So actually, I see here, executives that stay around in, in Dallas, but generally the career is, you know, you go from let's say Dallas, and then your next job is Nashville with the Tennessee Titans. And then the next job is with the Detroit Tigers. And yeah, you move around from job to job to move up because of how the system works. So it's not as extremist in coaching, right? Where it really can be every other year. And I never understand how coaching families do it. I couldn't do what coaches do. But, you know, I have an academic career. And I moved around plenty as well, every four or five years. And I'm proud to be now at UNT for my six year and not planning to leave anymore. But in sports, you have to kind of like be prepared to move around as well. And if not, well, you have a great resume. And this is when people move out of sports, right? You don't really have to stay. Even if you like what you do, the great thing is if you work in marketing and sports, you can work for Pepsi. You can work for AT&T, Southwest, right? All these big corporations. And with your resume, you're going to be very competitive with those jobs. Well, and then suddenly you're like, Oh, wait, I'm going to get a race. I work from nine to five, right? And your life, you know, takes a different twist. The only thing is, yeah, you can't tell your friends anymore that you work for the school sports. Yeah, I think what you're trying to say, though, is there's transferable skills in everything that you're going to be doing, transferable skills that you'll be able to use everywhere? And I love that word because transferable skills work the other way, right? So if you work in sports, yes, those skills transfer to outside sports. Now, if you work outside sports, there's a lot of skills that transfer as well, but sports teams don't recognize that. And that is one of the challenges right to get into the industry is, you know, I used, and I mentioned that earlier, I used to be bartender, worked in a restaurant. My sales skills and communication skills, you know, exponentially grew throughout that period. And then I still rely on that as a professor when I teach my classes to control a crowd, right? Because, you know, as bartender, you control your crowd. None of that would be recognized by a sport team, right? That's not how they look at resumes, because I really look at resumes like, Have you done this as an intern or as, you know, at some level within sports? If it's not in sports, they just don't even bother to look at that. Not because they don't understand it transfers. But again, because there's somebody in that stack who's already done it in the right setting for them. Yeah. And I think you've sort of wrapped us up nicely there. And leading us on to our final question. Like you say, the skills that you have, that you learn in sport can be transferred into anywhere else in life. And that all kind of brings us back to how do you pick that right program? How do you find the right program for you that will get you those skills that you can use in sport and potentially elsewhere in life? And so this is question 10. But technically, it's question 11. Yeah, it's question 11 now. Yeah, we've had an action. So this is what we're going to do, right? Cliffhanger. No. Yes. Oh, no. Episode two, how do I take the right degree program, right? Where do I, how do I find my school where I want to be next time with us? Well, why not? What an absolute cliffhanger to end on. Bob, it's been an absolute pleasure. Really excited for, for the upcoming episodes as I hope everyone at home and wherever you are listening is as well. If you've got any questions, following on from this, please getting touch. We'll be more than happy to assist you. And we hope you stick around. So make sure to drop a follow. And hopefully you'll join us for episode two. But from myself and Bob, thank you and goodbye. So what are the takeaways from today's episode? Number one, figure out why you want to do this other than for your love of sports. Number two, figure out what degree best fits for you. Are you a generalist or specialist? Number three, don't think about what organization you want to work for. Think about what kind of job you would like. Number four, say yes to as many things as possible when you commence your journey. Number five, understand that a high GPA is great, but it doesn't necessarily get you the job. Number six, set realistic goals about your first job positions that you apply for. Build up to your dream job. Number seven, your search for any kind of job starts on day one. Number eight, your first job in sports will pay you less than any similar job outside of sports. Number nine, you will work irregular hours and work on days that other people are off. You're also more likely to move from city to city. And finally, and this is the most important one, you have to listen to our next podcast if you want to know how to pick the right degree program. [BLANK_AUDIO]