In all my interaction over the years with students, whether it was during my time with the Portland Trail Blazers or events hosted by Sports Career Consulting, the question I get asked most frequently is focused on what steps are necessary for pursuing a career in sports.  It is a great question to be sure, and obviously one that many students would like to see answered.  It is not, however, one that is answered easily, nor is it one with any ”correct” answer or a magical solution.  The good news is that there are several key pieces of advice anyone interested in a career in…

In the days (sometimes hours) immediately following the Super Bowl, a host of experts from throughout business and marketing world will attempt to assess the effectiveness of commercials aired during the telecast of the big game.  After all, that’s a large part of the fun and hype that surrounds the Super Bowl.  If you think about it, that buzz generated after the game is one of the factors that helped drive the price for a thirty second commercial upwards of $3 million for Super Bowl XLIII.  This year, we decided to jump into the fray and partake in the evaluation process and opted…

It is that time of year again…Super Bowl season!  For educators who teach business and marketing, this is a time of year where you can have a lot of fun in the classroom, all while conveying some powerful messages that support valuable business/marketing lessons.  After all, what better way to validate all your time teaching students about advertising than to point out that companies like Pepsi, CareerBuilder.com, Audi and Bridgestone just invested $3 million each for a 30 second spot during this year’s big game.

Among the topic areas that are relevant in the classroom (many relating specifically to our non-traditional…

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…

I haven’t offered many posts that relate specifically to advertising so this particular post is probably long overdue.  With websites like YouTube, Veoh, MetaCafe and Hulu, video related content has become much more accessible.  That means finding examples of television commercials to share with your students becomes much easier. 

This week’s blog post features a list of some of my personal favorite sports commercials.  A link to each commercial is provided if you’d like to view them.  Hopefully this will inspire a fun activity for your classroom!

So, without further delay, here is my list of the top ten best sports commercials…

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…

Watching the telecast of Major League Baseball’s National League Championship Series in which the Philadelphia Phillies clinched a World Series birth offered a little inspiration for this latest blog post.  Late in the fifth inning, Phillies’ outfielder Shane Victorino went crashing into the outfield wall to chase down a long fly ball.  As he crashed into the wall, he bounced into an outfield sign advertising the electronics store Best Buy.

Shortly after the play, the announcer who was calling the game made a comment about the play, making a not-so-subtle reference to the company’s advertisement on the outfield fence.  The reference was to “how…

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…

I’d like to again recommend another idea for an addition to your school library.  It is a great new industry book on PR entitled “Sports Publicity” was written by well respected sports industry veteran Joe Favorito (Mr. Favorito is the former head of Communications for the New York Knicks, Philadelphia 76ers, USTA, SportsChannel and others). 

About Joe Favorito and the book “Sports Publicity”

Joe Favorito is a consultant, author, lecturer and speaker whose book “Sports Publicity” is the most comprehensive text on the professional sports communications industry.  The book was published in August 2007 by Reed Elsevier and is available through the publisher or on…

There should be a whale image here to the left.