Choosing a Sports Management Program

I wrote about how the sports job market is expected to grow in my previous post and it should because the sports industry in the United States is a $200 billion one. But, I am finding it difficult to get a ranking of the top sports management programs and I have resigned to the fate that there probably just isn’t one.

So how to go about picking a sports management program? I guess it’s a lot about location more than anything else from the advice that I have gotten think New York, Boston and Dallas. That would mean the Tisch Center for Hospitality, Tourism and Sports Management at NYU should be a pretty solid fit. The other schools that have been highly touted for sports management are the University of Massachusetts – Amherst, Ithaca College and George Washington University.

Why is location important? For the simple reason that it’s all about internships and jobs in this industry. Fresh graduates should be warned that they would have to start at the bottom as competition is fierce for high-profile jobs. But never fret about making just $15000 annually starting because the rewards come later on unlike your athletic counterparts who sign the million dollar contracts straight out of college.

From the information that I have been gathering, a solid understanding of business is a necessity with an education about management and how it relates to the sports industry. However, an undergraduate or even a graduate degree in sports management is not going to be enough to make you the GM of a major league team. I wanted to get into sports, but the reason why I didn’t do a sports degree was because I was concerned about flexibility.