M'ville takes the field with sports career program

Monday, August 14, 2006
Focus on Education

By ALEX PHILIPPIDIS

Manhattanville College will begin this month preparing students for careers in the sports world -- not as star athletes but as agents, or team general managers and other front-office executives.

Manhattanville’s School of Graduate and Professionals Studies has launched a new master’s degree program in sports business management set to convene its first classes Aug. 28. The program is intended to prepare students for both sports business specialties like advertising, licensing, product placement and sponsorships, as well as strategic management areas like events, facilities and entire college programs.

“It’s a growing field,” said Richard A. Berman, president of Manhattanville College. “There’s been great interest from our students, who are doing internships and companies requesting: ‘Do you have anybody who understands the world of business, the uniqueness of operations and marketing, dealing with talent and community affairs that’s involved in sports?’”

Nationwide, some 300 colleges and universities offer sports-management programs, according to the North American Society for Sports Management. Though the society does not track enrollment growth, its president Dr. Carol A. Barr said the programs have become more popular in recent years as sports grows in visibility, popularity and revenues.

Last year, the sports industry generated $213 billion, according to Street & Smith’s SportsBusiness Journal.

“There is a uniqueness to the sports-management industry that needs to be taught to prepare our students to succeed,” said Barr, associate dean for undergraduate programs in the University of Massachusetts’ Eisenberg School of Management. “You can go to a game or watch a game on TV and you never know what the outcome is, whereas if you’re going to buy a car and you never know what you’re going to get, that’s just never going to work.”

UMass has one of the nation’s largest sports-management programs nationwide with about 435 undergraduate sports-management majors, 35 master degrees and dual sports-management MBA majors and six doctoral candidates.

The head of an all-graduate sports-management program like the one Manhattanville is launching said even with jobs available, demand for them is high enough to weigh down starting salaries -- and draw students to graduate programs where they think they’ll have an edge in finding better-paying jobs.

“We’ve had about two kids a year come into our program and they already have an MBA but they want to get that sole focus on sports with all of their projects, with all of their networking opportunities,” said Dr. Janet Fink, associate professor and program coordinator with Ohio State University.

Ohio State draws 25 to 30 new students a year for its all-graduate sports- and exercise-management program. The two-year program serves between 50 and 60 students at any time.

“When students come in, I would say they’re almost split dead even on whether they want to go into professional sport or college athletics,” Fink added.

Ohio State is home of the Buckeyes football team -- rated number one by USA Today heading into this season following a 34-20 win against Notre Dame in the Fiesta Bowl on Jan. 2.

36-CREDIT PROGRAM

Manhattanville has created a 36-credit program that combines seven required courses -- an overview of the sports business world, followed by sports-related marketing, management, law and ethics, leadership, facility and event management -- with a required internship and electives such as entrepreneurship, strategic negotiations and leading change.

“We’re shooting for 30 students. I don’t think that will be a problem. Do we have to grow that? Obviously we do. We’re starting from the ground floor,” said Dave Torromeo, director of the new sports business management program. “Ohio State has a terrific program. UMass has a terrific program. But there’s nothing like it in this area.”

Torromeo, 45, heads DGT Consulting L.L.C., a sports consultancy in New Canaan, Conn. He joined Manhattanville in July following four years as vice president of operations with the National Football Foundation and College Hall of Fame, plus 15 years as a consultant and college athletics executive. He was the youngest front-office executive for the nine-team United States Basketball League, which in 1986 hired the first woman to play in a male league.

From 1988 to 1994, he served at Iona College in New Rochelle where he was assistant athletic director for communications and marketing, a background he’ll draw upon in the sports marketing class he will teach at Manhattanville.

Torromeo will be joined over time by instructors working in sports management, operations and marketing posts.

“We’ll cover all the bases from professional right down to youth sports,” said Torromeo, a Mets fan who grew up on Long Island. “My daughter plays youth soccer and I know that’s a business. We’re also going to look at all levels of college athletics and the business that it is.”

The program is Manhattanville’s latest foray into the sports world, where it has felt very comfortable under Berman.

During his 11 years at Manhattanville’s helm, Berman has boosted recruiting for the college’s various teams, sponsored pro-level tennis tournaments at the college’s Purchase campus and even came close to making Manhattanville the practice home of the New York Rangers. Next year, Manhattanville will be among venues for events within the Empire State Games set for Westchester.

Yet Berman said the sports focus was less a factor in launching the new management program than a desire to create graduate programs in fast-growing career fields.

“We’ve been identifying market niches where there really are jobs, where there really is interest. This was sort of the next natural evolution given the increasing market and given our emphasis,” Berman said.

Details of the program appear at www.manhattanville.edu/graduate/ms-sm.htm.