Better for me than Harvard?

College Majors Business Major
1

<p>I'm currently a sophomore here in England, and I am being recruited to play college AMERICAN football. After college, I want to try and work in football, either as a coach or a scout, with the eventual aim of becoming a Head Coach or General Manager. If these careers don't work out, I want to either go into the marketing/management side of sports, either working at a college, hoping to eventually get to be Athletic Director, or for any company, such as the NFL, any NCAA conference etc. in the business/management side, or in marketing. </p>

<p>So as you can see, after my dream jobs directly within football, I still want to try and work within it in someway, but in more of a business role with a sports background. Obviously, if I get to 40 something and nothing is going anywhere, I want to have a backup plan, which will probably be to work in management/marketing at any other company.</p>

<p>I have a 3.95GPA and attend one of the top academically selective schools in the UK.</p>

<p>So bascially, I want to play football at the highest level I can, while also getting a good degree. I've basically got 4 sets of options here. </p>

<p>1) harvard, Yale etc. These colleges dont offer any sort of business degree, so I would have to major in something else, probably Maths. Also, it is only D1-AA football, as well as being Ivy meaning limited big games, thus limited exposure as a student athlete, but the bottom line is, I get a Harvard/Yale degree.</p>

<p>2) Go to a D1-A football school, that also doesnt offer business, but is still a top ranked school, pretty much just Stanford. Better football/exposure, not quite as good degree.</p>

<p>3) Go to a top Business school, e.g UMich, Notre Dame, Penn Wharton. Mix of D1-A and D1-AA football schools, and not quite as prestigious as Haravrd etc. but give me the business degree that I want/need for my career path.</p>

<p>4) Go to a top sports management school e.g Oregon, Miami, Ohio State, UMass. D1-A football schools, but possibly even less prestigious that group 3, and although sports manegement is what I want to do later, it may be too narrow of a degree in case things dont work out?</p>

<p>So yeah, if you think about this hypothetically as if I could play anywhere, which of these would be the best fit for me in your opinions? Please feel free to add more colleges that fit in to these groups/that I should look at.</p>

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<p>Which schools are actually recruiting you to play football? Those schools will be your options. I wouldn’t waste too much time contemplating the others.</p>

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<p>Just to clarify, the reason top colleges like Harvard, Yale, etc. don’t offer a business degree is because they don’t need to. An Econ/other liberal arts degree at one of those colleges is going to be better respected than a Business degree at most other schools (the exception is the Wharton School in Penn which is basically at the same level as Harvard/Princeton). There is the expectation you’ll get an MBA eventually anyway. Also, I’m not sure if you know this, but Penn is an Ivy League school.</p>

<p>Stanford also offers an Management Science & Engineering degree, which is basically their business degree. I don’t know where you get this idea that Stanford has not quite as good a degree. The common acronym for the top colleges in the US is “HYPSM”, which stands for Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, MIT. Stanford has a stronger sports tradition than all the other top schools you are considering.</p>

<p>IMO, a sports management degree is too limited. Realize that the chances of you actually working in sports management is very low. There are very very few positions, so it is very important to have a strong backup.</p>

<p>Also, what schools are actually going to recruit you? That chances of Stanford recruiting you are much lower than Harvard recruiting you, just as an example, since Stanford has a much stronger American football program.</p>