<p>I am a Jr. in High School right now and I plan on eventually working in a Sports Front Office. Would it be better to start by majoring in something like business related, than going to Graduate school in SA/SM or take SA/SM from the get go.</p>
<p>you plan on working in a sports front office? lol</p>
<p>Yeah…</p>
<p>You realize that your major for that is irrelevant. You have to have big time connections.</p>
<p>No thats not true.</p>
<p>That’s the the case if you want to be President or GM, but the Front Office includes marketing, sales, and other aspects of business.</p>
<p>Then major in whatever aspect of business you are interested in: accounting, finance, market, etc.</p>
<p>Sports (fill in the blank with a business discipline) majors are broad to the point of uselessness.</p>
<p>And FYI, you are a junior in high school, so I would probably avoid telling people on this board that something they say regarding your own question is false. I mean, the prerequisite for a question is not having knowledge of what you’re questioning, right?</p>
<p>I was clarifying something that I knew, not my question. Thanks anyways.</p>
<p>And your statement, that you claim is true, is not actually entirely true. Entering the sports industry, in any capacity, depends on experience and /or connections. To believe that sports “management” jobs, even in accounting, marketing, etc. exist for grads with no professional experience is incredibly naive. When I interviewed with a recruiter for a MLB internship, she asked me as one of the first questions, “You are not seriously pursuing the baseball industry as your immediate career path out of college, right?” She went on to say that this MLB team has a full-time staff of 150 for an entity worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Put in perspective, the team has a seasonal staff of over 2000.</p>
<p>So, no, sports management / FO jobs / whatever are extraordinarily limited thus requiring either substantial work experience prior to entering the industry or personal connections. There is always the lucky exceptions, but this is the prevailing reality.</p>
<p>I realize connections are important, but its also quite possible to gain these connections while attending college. Say you go to a good SM program at Baylor or Oregon there is a good chance you will meet some important people that could help you climb the ladder. Just curious what was your major?</p>
<p>Your best bet at breaking into the business is befriending blue chip high school athletes who have a high chance of getting drafted by the NBA, NFL, NHL, MLB, etc. Be their agent or manager. Once you’re their agent or manager you’ll be dealing with professional teams on a daily/weekly basis and it should be fairly easy to make the jump from agent/manager to front office executive at a professional team.</p>
<p>You might meet many fantastic sports managers at good programs like that. But, this still doesn’t change the fact that the supply of open sports management jobs is extraordinarily small. Thus, you may have befriended prominent sports managers, but they will be of little value to you as far as getting a job in the field. It’s more of being in the right place at the right time rather than being a strong SM student at a good SM program. A sports management degree forces you to either be one of the lucky ones or be without a job out of school because your degree was strictly focused to that narrow field. A focused business degree allows you to enter the business should you have the right timing by coincidence or be with a job in a different industry out of school. It really is as simple as that. Why limit yourself unnecessarily right off the bat, no pun intended.</p>
<p>Obviously connections are key but unless you play ball with some prominent D1 athletes, are related to a big-time D1 athlete or your relative is best friends with a big time athlete, thats not the way you are going to break into the business. </p>
<p>What you will need to do is get as much internship experience as possible. Most business majors have an internship requirement. </p>
<p>Sports teams and leagues have internships for college students all year long. Companies like Nike, Adidas, etc offer tons of internships as well. There are a lot of internships to be had if you look. </p>
<p>You are going to need to connect through internships, job fairs, and then start at the bottom floor of whatever department you want to be in and work your way up. </p>
<p>Also, a MBA will help more than a masters in SA/SM no matter what side of the team(non-team operations vs team operations) you want to work on.</p>