Sports fans have been known to say "Sports are my life," but how many actually follow through on that statement? You can if you pursue a career in sports, starting with a sports management degree program. In fact, an online degree program can let you have the best of both worlds, gaining experience through an internship or entry level job while pursuing the degree that could turn this into a true career.
Components of an Online Degree in Sports Management
You may already know a great deal about sports, but an online degree in sports management focuses on the business fundamentals that allow sports organizations to flourish. These fundamentals include:
- Promotion
- Customer service
- Sales
- Budgeting
- Recruiting & training
- Labor negotiations
With this focus on business fundamentals, you can emerge with a background that may have a particular sports emphasis, but could also be applied to any businesses environment where entrepreneurship and management skills are valued.
Career Possibilities
Most people tend to think of sports in terms of the major sports leagues in football, baseball, basketball, and hockey. From this perspective, career possibilities might seem somewhat limited in number and by geography, but this is only the tip of the iceberg in terms of sports organizations in this country.
Baseball in particular has a thriving minor league system, with 176 teams distributed among 15 different leagues. This greatly increases the number of job opportunities out there, and adds an element of geographic diversity as well. In all, over 43 million fans attended minor league baseball in 2008--meaning that even the minor leagues are big business.
This doesn't even touch on emerging sports such as soccer and lacrosse, or other sports careers like athlete representation. Combining a degree with some experience may be your best bet, so use online education to pursue your degree while you gain some grassroots work experience.
