Learning Sports Management at Kellogg
I thought I’d drop a quick note here about a guest piece I wrote for MBA-social, a business school blog run by Kellogg 2010 alumna, Jenn Yee. It’s about MORS 941, the sports management class I’m taking with Northwestern University’s Athletic Director Dr. Jim Phillips.
Without further adieu: (removed link)
NOTE: MBA-social is no longer an active website, so instead, I’m republishing the article I wrote here. See below
In my last quarter at Kellogg, I’m enrolled in “MORS 941: Comprehensive Perspectives of Leading a Sports Entity.”
The class is taught by Northwestern University’s athletic director, Jim Phillips, and in the course of ten weeks he’s walking us through the issues faced by athletic directors, team presidents and general managers throughout the world of collegiate and professional sports.
On the field
Dr. Phillips’ class mixes practical opportunities to visit sports facilities with classroom lectures delivered from various leaders from the sports world. There aren’t too many people at Kellogg who can say they’ve taken a legitimate in-class field trip to Wrigley or US Cellular Field (sorry folks – Ferris Bueller’s Day Off was not an in-class field trip), but that’s exactly what we did on two Monday evenings.
On each occasion, we had the opportunity to meet various executives from each team and complete an in-stadium assignment where we observed various stadium operations. In our write-ups we actually made suggestions for ways to improve the fan experience at the ballpark. We also spent the rest of the evening enjoying a few innings of baseball.
A Chicago sports “who’s who”
When we’re not taking field trips we’re listening to an amazing line-up of guest speakers. So far we’ve heard from Rocky Wirtz (owner of the Chicago Blackhawks), John McDonough (President of the Chicago Blackhawks), Jim Hendry (General Manager of the Chicago Cubs), Morton Schapiro (President of Northwestern University), Jack Swarbrick (Athletic Director at Notre Dame) and Jim Delany (Commissioner of the Big Ten Conference) – just to name a few.
What’s really impressed me is the brutal openness and honesty that these speakers have shown. We’ve been able to ask questions about some of the most sensitive topics in sports and they’ve been willing to talk about them. Dr. Phillips set a policy of complete confidentiality about classroom discussions and our speakers have responded by giving us incredible insight into how they’ve handled some very delicate situations.
Tough management decisions
One of my favorite examples of this (and one I can actually talk about) was during the sports media panel Dr. Phillips held during one class. This came on the heels of the announcement of the football series between Northwestern and Notre Dame, where the two schools agreed to play a home-and-home series against each other.
Dr. Phillips told us how he toyed with the idea of how to announce the agreement and ultimately decided to go on the Mike and Mike show on ESPN radio. Mike and Mike is a nationally syndicated morning show, and the two hosts happen to be Notre Dame and Northwestern alumni, so the fit was natural. However Dr. Phillips also told us that it still created an uncomfortable situation for him, as he had to alienate the local reporters who cover (and therefore help promote) his sports programs on a daily basis.
Ultimately, I’m fairly sure that despite my love of sports, I won’t be working in those areas anytime soon – at least not until I make it big and have to buy my beloved Washington Redskins and Baltimore Orioles to return them to glory.
But I’m also a strong believer that the lessons I’ve learned in MORS 941 about building an organization can be applied almost anywhere. Sports are a unique area where success and failure are clearly defined and very apparent, unlike business where they can, at times, look deceptively similar. Many qualities you’ll find in one winning organization carry over into other winning organizations, and in sports, winning organizations are very easy to identify.
In short, MORS 941 has been an excellent capstone to my two years at Kellogg, and hopefully, I can apply the lessons I’ve learned outside the world of sports.