It’s Academic: My Dream for an Athletics Communications Training Ground

For seemingly as long as many can remember (1966, to be exact), Ohio University has set the standard when it comes to sport administration graduate programs. It was the first of its kind and continues to be the best of its kind.

Sure, there are many accredited graduate programs in sport administration and management across the country that are extremely challenging academically and provide excellent training to become a sport administrator at any level.

But, the truth is, Ohio University is where one goes to set him/herself on the fast track to becoming a major Division I collegiate athletics director. Since revered baseball administrator Walter O’Malley began the program from a vision he had in the 1950s, the list of graduates who have become collegiate athletics directors is a Who’s Who of talented administrators who have shaped the college sports landscape. During my career, I’ve had the honor to work under two athletics directors who earned their graduate degrees at Ohio – Mitch Barnhart at Kentucky and Jeremy Foley at Florida.

Walter O’Malley’s biggest concerns centered around the fact that he felt there was a deficiency, even in his own Dodgers organization, of properly-trained administrators in the front-office side of athletics organizations. Look at collegiate athletics during that time – many athletics directors were either the retired or current football coaches of their programs who had little formal training in the areas of business, ticketing, marketing or public relations.

Am I saying those early athletics directors did a bad job? Absolutely not – many were extraordinary leaders and administrators who learned how to manage and run a program based on what they learned on the fly both as a coach and later as an athletics director.

That’s kind of where we are as athletics communications practitioners. At this time in collegiate athletics, our role is almost as important as ever. With the various forms of new and social media, as well as message boards and the traditional media, our respective programs need expertly trained public relations personnel.

There’s a lot of great SIDs out there, who are developing and implementing new and creative ideas every day. But I think you would be hard pressed to find anyone who would say the knowledge they use in their day-to-day activities came primarily from the classroom.

Most of us major in the communications-based disciplines: journalism, public relations, integrated marketing communications or something similar. That’s a good general training ground and I think that should still remain the standard for undergraduate education. It builds a solid foundation for the communicator. Without a solid foundation, the house is going to crumble one of these days.

If you’re like me, you spent most of your undergraduate time dashing back from class to the sports information office. Almost everything we learn about the day-to-day approach to our job – from writing press releases (the athletics way), to transcribing quotes, to gameday management to crisis communications – was learned on the job.

It’s an instinct. It’s developed over time with experience. I compare our instinct and thinking-on-our-feet ability to that of a lawyer. Just like a lawyer refers to previous cases as precedents and looks back on former cases for advice on how to handle current cases and situations, we are the same. What did I (or a colleague) do the last time this happened? Was that a good solution or a bad solution? Often, we call our colleagues at other schools to see how they handled a certain situation that’s confronting us.

How many times does a curious student come to you and ask you to describe your job, what a typical day is like, why you work all those hours or how you learned the craft? How hard is it to answer those questions? I would say most of us have a hard time coming up with answers to those questions.

We need a professional training ground that stems from the classroom. .

My dream is that one day, we will have an athletics communications equivalent to Ohio University’s Sport Administration graduate program. Essentially, if you want to get on the fast track to becoming a leading athletics communicator, you go to the graduate program I am proposing.

It will be a two-year graduate program that admits anywhere from 12-15 top students per year. Students can apply, but the program will also be in touch with SID offices from around the country to target and “recruit” the best undergraduate athletics communications student workers from across the country.

The formula for the ideal student will be simple: A great communicator with a strong academic record, a variety of different volunteer/internship experiences as an undergraduate (with a primary emphasis on his/her own collegiate SID office), a rock-solid work-ethic, a keen instinct and an incredible drive.

The course-work will be similar to that of Ohio University’s sports administration program. In conjunction with the university’s business school, the student will earn a Master of Business Administration (MBA) in his/her first year. That will be something that sets the communicator apart from his/her peers. How many SIDs do you know that have graduate business degrees? It’s all about acquiring those skills that will set the graduates apart from their peers.

You might say, why would an athletics communicator need a business degree? If you’re going to go to the top of this industry, you’re going to have to handle a budget sooner or later. Not only are you going to have to handle this budget, you’re going to have to be savvy about it.

As a friend and colleague of mine has often told me – there are two main bottom lines to a sports organization. The organization measures its success based on wins and generating revenue. If you can effectively manage and streamline your budget, guess what? You’re helping with its revenue generation and budgeting. You are contributing to the success / bottom line. You’re going to be an effective employee for your organization.

Also, the leadership principles and management techniques taught in business school will be invaluable to your success in any avenue of life.

Let’s be honest, based on the structure of your organization, you may be able to be an effective men’s golf contact without ever knowing or touching the media relations budget for that sport. In fact, in my three-and-a-half years as an undergraduate, I never touched the media relations budgets for my sports.

But, you’re not going to advance very far up the ladder if you don’t have a keen understanding of key business principles and management techniques, odds are (unless you have friends in high places) you’re not going to climb the ladder.

The second year (Master of Athletics Communications – MAC) will focus on classes central to the athletics communications profession. The courses I propose include: Communications Research Principles, Sport and Mass Media, Crisis Communications in Athletics, Social Media for the Athletics Communication, Gameday: How to Plan, Implement and Adapt, and Graphic and Web Design in Athletics Communications. There will also be a solid foundation of typical sport management type classes – Sport Finance, NCAA Compliance and Leadership in Sport and Society.

The gem of the academic program will consist of a Seminar / Topics in Athletics Communications each semester. The idea is for it to be taught by a visiting professor on a variety of special topics. Maybe it’s Bill Hancock spending a semester engaging students in how to run the media relations operation for the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament and having them mock up media relations operations for something similar. Maybe it’s Langston Rogers talking about promoting Margaret Wade and a Delta State women’s basketball program in a culture that hasn’t yet embraced the sport of women’s basketball to the national level it is today, and how we generate communications plans for the Olympic sports of today. Maybe it’s Indiana’s J.D. Campbell talking about running his SID operation during basketball season while the Kelvin Sampson situation unfolded. There’s many more topics that could comprise a semester-long seminar.

More importantly, the student will be encouraged and provided with contacts to volunteer with sports teams and programs in the area. The student should be engaged in active athletics communications activities the entire time they are in school. Even with my program proposal, there’s no better way to gain experience than doing it first-hand. A relationship with the school’s athletics communications department will be established to ensure quality first-hand professional experience.

Lastly, the students will be required to prepare and turn in a comprehensive portfolio demonstrating their expertise in athletics communications (and its various forms) and business. After reading through PRSAs requirements for its APR, it’s clear to me that we as athletics communicators don’t really do a good job of creating organizational campaigns in a way that demonstrates our abilities to future employers.

Sure, we do a great job of promoting our project and running campaigns. What’s a season of SID work – it may be one of the biggest PR campaigns of all time. It’s what we do and we excel at it. But, do we plan it out on paper, save our supporting materials and build a portfolio demonstrating our research, plan, supporting documents and evaluation? I know I don’t do a good enough job with that. Odds are, you don’t either. The graduates of this program will learn how to do this in a way that effectively promotes their most important brand – themselves.

I hope one day to be involved in the process of making this a reality.

MBA/MAC Graduate Program

First Year – MBA Program
In the first year of the program (Summer 1 through Spring 1), while volunteering in the school’s athletics communications office, students are enrolled in the school’s MBA program. This program will follow the exact curriculum of the school’s typical one-year MBA program.

Second Year – MAC Program

Second Year Summer (12 credit hours)
Introduction to Athletics Communications
Sport Finance
Communications Research Principles
Gameday: How to Plan, Implement and Adapt

Second Year Fall (15 credit hours)
Seminar / Topics in Athletics Communications 1
NCAA Compliance for the Athletics Communicator
Crisis Communications in Athletics
Sport and Mass Media
Practicum in Athletics Communications

Second Year Spring (15 credit hours)
Seminar / Topics in Athletics Communications 2
Social Media for the Athletics Communicator
Graphic and Web Design in Athletics Communications
Leadership in Sport and Society
Practicum in Athletics Communications
*Turn In Portfolio*