MBAs Score TDs And Home Runs
Comments:
Business school MBA programs for off-field management jobs in sports have popped up almost as quickly as basketball scores in recent years. The trend includes quite a “who’s who” list. MIT’s Sloan School of Management kicked off an “Analytical Sport Management” course using its highly respected analytics to do things like forecast player value by integrating scouting and decision-making in 2004, and hosts a wildly popular sell-out annual sports biz conference
San Diego State was one of the first to offer an 18-month MBA degree specifically in sports management, opening in 2005. By the middle of 2008, there were more than 80 undergraduate and/or Master’s programs in sport management.
Even the venerated granddaddy of business schools, the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, has jumped in. While it doesn’t offer a degree specifically in sports management, it has some of the cream of the crop faculty teaching an array of sports business classes that students may choose as part of their BA or MBA studies.
Obviously, sports management is a wildly popular career, and the competition is just as stiff as the drafts for pro sports.
Sports teams say they want biz grads who can walk in well-versed in their game, so that’s something else students need to keep in mind. They need to choose a sport at least as early as they choose a major, and immerse themselves in it. And the best choice of school is usually one in a city with a pro team in their sport of choice, or with other close ties to pro teams.
Take a look at one of baseball’s most savvy general managers, Theo Epstein, who needed just two years to take the Boston Red Sox from “always the bridesmaid” status to its first World Series victory in 86 years in 2004, when he was just 30 years old. He did it again in 2007.
Epstein was raised in Brookline, a Boston suburb just a few miles from Fenway Park. He played baseball through high school, and dreamed of taking the field as a Red Sox player.
He graduated from Yale, where he interned with the Baltimore Orioles and served as sports editor of the school’s daily newspaper. Graduating in 1995 with an American Studies degree, he continued his baseball dream and soon worked in the PR department for the San Diego Padres. While he didn’t earn an MBA, he graduated from law school.
Hired as the Bosox GM in 2002, Epstein and his boss, Larry Lucchino were off and running. With team owner approval, they implemented a system the Red Sox have used since called sabermetrics, analyzing baseball through objective evidence and analytic methods. By the end of 2002, they hired the father of sabermetrics, Bill James, to be a special advisor to the team, and statistical analysts to help extract the data they want.