<p>How would an MBA degree help one get involved with general management or hold a respected position within an NBA, MLB or NFL team.</p>
<p>or for that matter in the English premier league???</p>
<p>thanks</p>
<p>I am a first year MBA student pursuing sports marketing, and I am interning this summer at the McLean, VA office of Octagon Sports. I have no previous experience in sports, nor was I a college athlete. Getting a job in sports is really about who you know, and for me, I really don't know anyone. So what the MBA has done for me is to separate myself from a lot of the other people who are pursuing sports. I really stress my quantitative skills and talk about the other courses that I have taken in b-school that would be applicable to the position.</p>
<p>For my Octagon interview, I had to talk about an issue in sports and take a stand on it. After that, I had to explain how Octagon could benefit from this issue. Rather than do something easy and obvious (steroids, duke lacrosse scandal, paying college athletes, drafting athletes according to character), I decided to do something I knew NOTHING about. I investigated the possible return of a pro women's soccer league and whether or not it should be done.</p>
<p>The things I learned in my MBA program so far made it possible to do a really good assessment of the industry and the league. I did a complete business strategy analysis, and I also talked about how I could use a Bass Diffusion model to predict potential market size, and also how I could use a Logit model to most effectively market the team. I mentioned the benefit of doing a conjoint analysis and what that would produce.</p>
<p>Many people in the industry do not have advanced degrees, so I basically sold the MBA as the difference maker. It worked, since I got one of 12 spots that several hundred people were applying for.</p>
<p>Check them out at <a href="http://www.octagon.com%5B/url%5D">www.octagon.com</a>.</p>
<p>I am at UCLA, but if you are 100% certain that you want to do sports, then you should look at the Warsaw Sports Marketing Center (<a href="http://www.warsawcenter.com/%5B/url%5D">http://www.warsawcenter.com/</a>) at the University of Oregon. I think Arizona State also has a strong sports focus. The reason that I chose UCLA over Oregon over ASU was that I wanted to go to a higher-ranked school that still offered the opportunity to get into sports. In case I didn't go into sports, I wanted to make sure that I still had a top school on my resume (UCLA is #10, the other two I mentioned aren't in the top 30).</p>
<p>But you definitely have to network.</p>
<p>There is a difference between sports management and sports marketing. </p>
<p>Sports marketing is basically a specialty of general marketing, and top schools would have strong ties to both marketing and the entertainment/media industry. UCLA and USC have strong ties to the entertainment industry, and Kellogg, Wharton, and Harvard are powerhouses in general marketing.</p>
<p>However, if you mean sports management in the sense of actually figuring out things like draft-choice optimization, selection of players, and that sort of thing, then you want a heavily quant-oriented program. MIT Sloan immediately comes to mind. Perhaps the highest profile MBA graduate in this field is now Daryl Morey, who graduated from Sloan and is the designated future general manager of the Houston Rockets, basically in charge of determining who should be on the Rockets player roster. Morey is also a compatriot of guys like Billy Beane (General Manager of the Oakland A's) and Bill James (inventor of Sabermetrics) </p>
<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daryl_Morey%5B/url%5D">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daryl_Morey</a>
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabermetrics%5B/url%5D">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabermetrics</a>
<a href="http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2006/writers/marty_burns/04/25/morey.rockets/%5B/url%5D">http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2006/writers/marty_burns/04/25/morey.rockets/</a></p>
<p>Basically, what these guys do is create mathematical models to determine what player stats translate into wins and then weight them by the kind of salaries the players are getting. When you have a salary cap, like all NBA teams do, or you are working with a constrained budget, like the Oakland A's are, you have to bring in players that are not only good, but are also cheap. It then becomes quite a analytical job to determine what it really means to be 'good', which involves tremendous statistical analyses, which is Sloan's strong suit.</p>
<p>Other strong quant programs would be Carnegie-Mellon, Stanford, Wharton, Purdue, etc. But Sloan is probably the premier one. Depending on the coursework you select, you can basically graduate from Sloan as a "management scientist" who can apply all sorts of mathematical and statistical models to analyze anything.</p>
<p>That is very interesting, thank you. Anyone else that knows something about this feel free to comment.</p>
<p>Working for a premier league team would be insane!</p>
<p>thanks everyone...</p>
<p>y do u say so fjm? lol</p>
<p>how do I become a general manager of a baseball team? that would pretty much be my goal from day 1 in undergrad if I knew how to do it.</p>
<p>i want to be the GM of the Golden State Warriors, does anyone know how to even reach the GM position?</p>
<p>You typically have to start out at a lower level job within an organization, do well, and have the owner/president want to give you a better position. You don't get hired out of school to be a GM. You get an internship out of school with a team, that leads to employment. Then you need to prove to the organization that you are deserving of the GM role, if it ever becomes avaliable.</p>
<p>Here's an example of a guy, Otis Smith, who just recently (today) was named the Magic GM. Here's what he did.</p>
<p>1986 - Graduated from Jacksonville University
1989-1992 - Player on Orlando Magic
2000-2002 - Director of Community Relations/Warriors Foundation
2002-2003 - Executive Director of Basketball Operations for Golden State
2003-2005 - Named Director of Player Development for Orlando Magic
2005-2006 - Promoted to Assistant GM
2006 - Promoted to GM</p>
<p>what happend between 1992 and 2000?</p>
<p>He retired from the league, made a brief comeback in 1996 in the Swedish league. He later became involved with the Boys and Girls Club of Central Florida, was appointed to VP, and that led him to his job with the Warriors. He also founded the Otis Smith Kids Foundation.</p>
<p>Basically, he got his entry-level job in the league based on his experience playing in the league, what he did when he got out of the league. He got his higher position within the organization by doing well and being noticed. </p>
<p>That's the route to be a GM, if that's your goal. You need to get that entry level job with an organization, work hard, earn the respect of the organization, and you could be promoted. Go to school, take advantages of your school's internship connections with sports teams, and that internship will likely lead you to employment.</p>
<p>Otis Smith was a sick dunker.</p>
<p>So is it safe to assume that for this sort of business, an MBA is not really necessary? Or would it be of some benefit since most people do not have MBA's in this industry</p>
<p>It's really not necessary. It's definitely a plus, it looks better on your resume, it could get you the higher job quicker (ex. You instantly become Executive Director of Operations rather than starting out lower and getting a less powerful job), but you can essentially just get your Bachelor's, get that internship junior or senior year, and go to the team. Heck, the team may even pay for your MBA at their local college.</p>
<p>The truth is, most GM's are former players or former coaches (or both). That's changing now, but only slowly, and generally only extends to those who graduated from elite schools. Theo Epstein, GM of the Red Sox, is a Yale graduate, and Theo's coteries include a lot of Ivy League grads. Daryl Morey, the future GM of the Houston Rockets, got his MBA at MIT. From what I have seen, you need something to make yourself credible with the sports community, as it's not enough to have good ideas. You also have to be able to convince others that your ideas are good. Having a strong playing or coaching background helps a lot. If you don't have that, then the next best thing is to have an elite educational pedigree.</p>
<p>so i assume sakky that to work for an EPL team one needs to obtain an MBA from Oxford or sumthing if he/she has not sporting experience(as in player or sumthong)</p>
<p>I think that i you were an american you would have a really hard time being taken seriously in the front offices of an EPL club.</p>
<p>in the new sabremetric era of baseball i think it is less of a requirement to be an ex player. a lot of people are being hired to do pure statistical analysis, guys who are geeks if you will. you are also seeing guys like theo epstein (yale, as sakky mentioned) and paul depodesta (ex GM of the dodgers, harvard undergrad) getting premiere FO jobs. </p>
<p>looking at the wikipedia entry for theo, it just says that he interned for the orioles, then took a job in the padres' PR department while simultaneously going to U of san diego law. then he went to the red sox and got a high ranking job prior to being the GM.</p>
<p>umm no im not american...but in the epl managers like mourinho,rafa benitez werent players at the top level...atleast mourinho-he was a translator and look how big he's made it...</p>
<p>as for americans-manchester utd is owned by americans...</p>
<p>Sandy Alderson, one of the most powerful men in baseball, I think went to Harvard Law School. The president of the San Francisco Giants went to Harvard Business School. Sports management is incredibly competitive. It will help a lot if you are a former athlete yourself. What will count the most will be your ability to network your way into internships and jobs. However, a lot of luck is involved. There are minor league gm's who have wasted away 20+ years to have a shot at a major league front office spot; then there are guys like David Forst and Theo Epstein who lucked into major management positions with relatively minimal experience in the field.</p>
<p>So, if you're looking into getting into sports management, get those internships as soon as you can- that will be your foot into the door. However, you're looking at a long, hard, and unfair road ahead. p.s. I realize there are a lot of young new quantative minds breaking into baseball the past 10 years- however, whatever anyone says, being a former baseball/football/jock player still plays a huge role into future openings and connections.</p>