The 5th annual Sports Business Journal reader survey was published in a recent issue of the publication.  The results were recorded from a pool over over 2,300 participants (comprised primarily of sports business executives).  As always, the study was intriguing and produced some interesting results, ultimately providing some great potential for sparking a lively classroom discussion.  Today’s post will feature a brief recap of some of the results, along with some ideas for introducing some of the material in class.

A SAMPLING OF SURVEY RESULTS

* 37% of readers felt the economy’s impact on corporate spending on sports was the biggest sports…

This edition of SCC’s blog features content provided by guest blogger Andre Jensen of Trusted Sports, Inc. The focus this week is on inspiration.  Inspiration can come from anywhere, yet sometimes it is easier to find when someone tells you where to look!  Today’s post features an excellent source for stories of inspiration, hopefully in an arena that really resonates with you and your students.  The information presented in today’s blog also features an incredible opportunity for those of you who are lucky enough to have home grown inspiration playing for your local high school football team.  Read on to…

In this installment of the new “guest blog” format, we are excited to feature one of my favorite people, Mr. Howard “H” White.   “H” is a seasoned industry vet with an amazing track record of success at Nike, Inc. and Jordan Brand.  In addition to all his accomplishments in business and in life, “H” has mentored and inspired many people over the years (myself included).  To hear more of his stories (and he has a lot of them), I highly recommend picking up a copy of his book, “Believe to Achieve:  See the Invisible, Do the Impossible”. Click here to read…

There has been an awful lot of banter in the sports talk world of shifting the post-season model in college football from a series of bowl games (all 34 of them) to some type of playoff format.  Personally, I can see the arguments for both scenarios, but I think we all know a major factor in any decision that will be made will relate to dollars.

As many of you will inevitably be dissecting this argument in class, I thought I’d try to provide some resources to help fuel the discussion.  With that, I present to you in this week’s blog…

Inspiration can come in many forms.  President Elect Barack Obama made that very evident with his decisive win on Election Day, urging Americans in his victory speech to adopt the mantra of “yes we can.”

Our mission at Sports Career Consulting is to provide resources and opportunities in and out of the classroom that provide education, guidance and inspiration as students try to find themselves and ideas for a career path.  Sometimes, along the way, I’ve found that I personally can be just as influenced and inspired as those who attend our events.  In fact, in just the past few weeks, I have…

In our last post, we examined Virginia football’s marketing campaign and effort to build tradition which got me to thinking, what are some traditions that are already ingrained in the fan culture on campuses across the country?  And what, if any, impact does tradition have on the loyalty of each respective fan base?  In reality, this is more of a “fun” post than educational, but there are some relevant lessons.  So, without further ado, here are my top five notable college football traditions:

5) Penn State’s “White Out”

This is as simple a tradition as it gets, but the tradition’s rich history and…

I received an email from Dan Migala (a highly respected sports business author, practitioner and educator) letting me know the highly anticipated book Dugout Wisdom: Life Lessons From Baseball is now available for purchase through amazon.com.  You don’t have to be a baseball lover to enjoy the book; the underlying theme connects life lessons through the concept of sport.  The book is sure to be a GREAT summer read and will make an excellent collection to your library of resources at school. 

Here is a quick summary of the book:  Dugout Wisdom: Life Lessons From Baseball and the secrets it contains are sure to make…

Here’s a great book idea for all the teachers out there for next Fall (is it too early to be thinking about next year already?).  A great new industry book on PR entitled “Sports Publicity” was written by a highly respected industry exec (Joe Favorito) and was published last August by Reed Elsevier. 

I have shared a number of conversations and email exchanges with Joe and think his book would be a tremendous addition to your class library.  Joe has over 22 years of strategic communications/marketing, business development and public relations expertise in sports, entertainment, brand building, media training, television, athletic administration and…

So this week’s post has a little different, well, flavor than our typical post.  A story I heard on ESPN Radio driving to work a few days ago on Colin Cowherd’s radio show caught my attention.  Apparently, there are a number of Major League Baseball stadiums around the country that aren’t exactly up to par with health codes.  The story, published in Conde Naste magazine, leads with the following sub-title:  “In some stadiums, the rats and flies have pretty good seats”…probably not what baseball’s ticket buying consumers were hoping to hear.  

Readers of this blog probably know I often listen to Colin Cowherd’s show on ESPN radio during my a.m. commute.  Earlier this week I was tuned in when he reeled off some pretty intriguing numbers, courtesy of a survey the fine folks at ESPN take each year to gauge levels of “fandom” in an attempt to capture some valuable consumer information.  In the sports and entertainment business world, we call this market research.