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students to enter the high-stakes field of sports with a better understanding of ROI than RBIs. Most of the current sports management and marketing programs have been developed in the past decade as sports became big business. Before the b-schools co-opted them, many sports degree programs tended to be housed in physi- cal education or sports education departments and turned out graduates who might be interested in careers overseeing college athletics. But changes in the industry itself have prompted business schools to enter the ring with their own contenders. "Industry data suggests that almost $200 billion dollars a strong niche program gives a business school a hook to pull in both students and corporate recruiters. One of the newer entrants in a broad field of specialty programming is sports management. Offered at only a handful of schools in relatively small pro- grams, sports management degrees equip ciated with teams and players. "Look at the amount of money that IBM, Coca-Cola, and Budweiser spend on their sponsorship activities and how important sponsorships tradi- tionally have been in their marketing efforts," Mokwa says. "Yet, many of these organizations have not spent the same amount of time planning and evaluating those decisions as they have in other major areas of their businesses." Commercial sponsors also pay out big money to be asso- Player Lineup Enter the business student with a head for numbers and a love of sports. Both traits are key, stress program administrators. "Everybody thinks they'd like to work in sports," says Burton. "Somebody thinks he's qualified because he really loves golf and he knows how many home runs Barry Bonds hit last year. But at the graduate level, this is a very demanding program. It requires a significant involvement from students." Mokwa agrees. "We use the tag line, 'A passion for sports year is spent annually in sport-related businesses," says Rick Burton, executive director of the James Warsaw Center for Sports Marketing at the University of Oregon's Lundquist Col lege of Business in Eugene, Oregon. "That would make it one of the ten largest sectors of the American economy. If Nike is an $8 billion company, if the National Football League has a $17 billion contract with broadcast networks, if Alex Rodriguez is being paid $22 million a year to play baseball, there's a sig- nificant economic support infrastructure behind the sport. If it's one of the largest sectors of America's economy, it's critical that people be trained to understand how it works." "A number of different groups deal with sports and enter- tainment performance," says Michael Mokwa, professor of marketing and director of the sports business program at Arizona State University's College of Business in Tempe, Arizona. "The arenas themselves have become dominant players. Consultants and specialized markets abound. Who makes the chairs in the stadium? Who builds the basketball court? Who develops all the electronics that are used in sta- diums today? Then there's representation of athletes. We're not just talking about single agents. We're talking about large organizations like IMG who not only represent Tiger Woods, but try to develop products around him." 44 BizEd JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2003 and a mind for business.' If you don't have the mind for and motivation in business, go work for someone else and just buy tickets to the game." The students who are accepted into sports management GAME programs, not surprisingly, are often male—though usually not in any higher proportions than the general population of SPORTS HAVE BECOME BIG BUSINESS— AND BUSINESS SCHOOLS HAVE PICKED UP THE BALL, DESIGNING SPECIALTY PROGRAMS THAT TRAIN STUDENTS TO EXCEL IN THE MAJOR LEAGUES. by Sharon Shinn