SAM 6310: Seminar in Sport Administration Fall 2013 Dr. Baker In Seminar for Sport Administration, I was provided with opportunities to learn about sport in a broad context and also developed familiarity with career opportunities in the sports industry. The class explored positions in every area of sport, to name a few, marketing, event management, community relations, finance and ticket sales. Not only were we provided with opportunities to learn about the career opportunities, but the course also explored current issues in intercollegiate athletics, high school athletics, professional sports and private industry segments.
As part of the course, I obtained a subscription to SportsBusiness Journal which provides information on current issues and hot topics in sport and serves as a resource for learning, especially for the future decision makers in the industry. Since the course, I have kept up with my subscription and receive daily e-mails to stay on top of the sports business news. As part of this assignment, each student in the class presented on a topic. During this course, I began my internship with Venue Solutions Group, a venue management consulting firm which required quite a bit of research into best practices in the industry and reading the SBJ allowed me to see examples of their work in action.
Another objective of the course was to build contacts with sports professionals in the industry as well as learn about pros and cons of their positions to explore multiple career options. Coming into the program, my experience was in event management and I reached out to contacts in marketing and events to develop a better understanding of how these apply to different sport settings. From these conversations, I was able to gain a better understanding of how professionals have worked their way into the positions they currently hold and gained a bit of insight into the day to day in the private and professional sports worlds. Not only was building these contacts beneficial to learning about the industry, but it also gave me the opportunity to build my network within the Nashville area.
Along with building contacts, I had the opportunity to volunteer for some smaller marathons around town and finally the Country Music Marathon and see a large scale event in which people travel from all parts of the country for. Having developed a contact with Malain McCormick, an event director for the company that puts on the marathon, helped me see the event from start to finish. When I met with Malain she was working on obtaining sponsors and partners, and when I saw her on the day of the race she was performing administrative duties.
Another area that this class focused on was developing us as upcoming leaders in sport. We read books including Great By Choice, The Difference Maker and Developing the Leader Within You. Although all of the books take a different approach to leadership, each one allowed me to reflect on my experiences and evaluate what type of leader I will be moving forward.
SAM 6060.01: Research Methods in Sport Fall 2013 Dr. Shin Research Methods in Sport examined the strategies, techniques, materials and principles for effective research within the sport industry. Not only did this course equip me with the tools involved in the research process in the sport industry but also allowed me the opportunity to think critically about the issues that are facing sport managers.
For this course, we were required to create a research proposal and present our research to the class. Myself and my partner, Hannah Johnson decided that we were interested in examining issues in collegiate athletics, most specifically issues with alcohol in college athletics. At the beginning of the research process, we needed to create an introduction to our research topics. We first had to identify the problem, research questions and hypotheses, identify the significance of the study, define terms, and understand and state the limitations of our study. This created the background knowledge we needed in order to conduct successful, scholarly research. Once this part of the research was completed, we moved onto completing the literature review. Throughout the literature review, we would look into the brief history of our topic and then reviewed other literature that had been conducted on our topic. The first part of the research process was the most important because it identifies what research needs to be done.
Our research explored the growing trend of selling alcohol in college stadiums and university concerns of curbing excessive drinking. This research will also expanded upon information already published on universities already selling alcohol in their football stadiums and those who do not. This information is intended to help universities determine if selling alcohol in their football stadiums is beneficial for their program. During our literature review, we found a study completed at the University of Florida which utilized the Game Day Survey to better understand student drinking patterns on game day. Survey Monkey was used to collect the survey data and to analysis it. Each question on the survey was given a coded number to help simplify the data collected and to arranged it into graphs and charts. Descriptive statistics were taken to portray the sample survey and to gage the heavy drinking and Extreme Ritualistic Alcohol Consumption.
I believe that this is a hot button issue for facility managers and university athletic programs to determine how they would like to proceed with implementing rules and regulations regarding alcohol consumption. There is a clear opportunity to increase revenue, but does it also jeopardize the safety of the patrons at the game? I believe this will be a topic we see much more of in the future.
I have had to do quite a bit of research for public assembly facilities in the industry with my internship and although the actual research is not quite as academic, it is still a means of measuring what others have done and benchmarking it with best practices policies. This is something to think about in the future no matter what career we find ourselves in.