New free agent Chicago-area sports MBAs in tight market

Like Devin Hester on a punt return, sports business jobs are hard to catch.

Every year, top fleet students graduate from Northwestern University’s law and business schools, and its master’s in sports administration program. Many enter high-paying positions in corporate America. But for students pursuing careers in the sports industry, jobs aren’t nearly as ubiquitous.

“I call it sexy; it’s something that’s highly desirable,” said Scott Andresen, founder of Andresen & Associates PC, a Chicago-based law firm that works with sports franchises. “Anytime you have a situation like that, which everybody wants, it’s going to be difficult to get through the process.”

Despite the challenges, interest in the field has been mounting. For the first time, the Kellogg School of Management began offering classes in sports business during the 2007-08 academic year. Forty students took the course, said Richard P. Honack, an assistant dean at the school.

What’s more, in April, for the second consecutive year, Kellogg’s Sports Business Club hosted the Sports Events Marketing Experience, a two-day national conference that brought together industry insiders from around the Midwest.

“The interest started gaining some traction in 2005,” said Terence Patterson, a graduate of Northwestern’s JD-MBA program who started his own sports agency firm while in school.

In 2005, students at Northwestern’s law school founded the Sports Law Society, which hosts conferences and helps provide networking opportunities to students hoping to work in sports firms, said Justin Johnson, president of the club.

And Northwestern’s school of continuing studies in 2005 launched its master of arts in sports administration program aimed at addressing the growing interest in the field, said Joel Shapiro, assistant dean of graduation programs. Since its inception applications to the program have approximately doubled from about 40 to more than 80 each year, he added.

DePaul University’s Kellstadt Graduate School of Business also offers a sports management concentration. And there are student groups dedicated to sports law at Loyola University’s School of Law, Chicago-Kent College of Law, East-West University, The John Marshall Law School and The University of Chicago Law School.

Sports business degrees are “becoming a necessity,” said Annette Parker, a MSA student board member at Northwestern. “You just can’t be a fan to get in this industry — that’s almost to your disadvantage. You want to be able to look at it from a critical component and intellectual component that will add value to whoever you are working for.”

But increasingly, the supply of graduates interested in the field seems to be outstripping demand as fewer companies are hiring applicants — qualified though they may be.

Much of the trouble that currently pervades the economy has seeped into the sports business industry, explained Chicago-based lawyer Donald R. Simon, who has taught sports management classes at East-West University.

“There are not many jobs available,” Mark Pieper, managing partner at Northbrook-based SFX Baseball Group LLC, wrote in an e-mail. “We are considered a relatively large baseball agency and have only 25 employees. A large law firm in Chicago could have 500 attorneys, for example.”

What also complicates matters for students is that unlike major corporations, the sports business industry does not have a traditional “hiring season,” wrote Justin Dantonio, a basketball operations representative with Chicago-based Mark Bartelstein & Associates Inc., in an e-mail.

Michael Markovich, a graduating MBA student who co-chaired Kellogg’s Sports Business Club, aspires to work in the sports business industry in the future. But he said he sought other opportunities due to the industry’s lack of a traditional hiring season. Markovich was hired by the Boston consulting firm Bain and Co. Inc.

Another Kellogg student, Ann Elizabeth Deming, said she went through a five-month interview process before she landed a marketing internship with the PGA tour. “I went through more informational interviews than I can remember,” she said. “But I also learned so much and found where I can be a good fit within the industry.”

Those who work in the sports business field concede that nepotism and networks often mean as much as one’s know-how. “I didn’t [find it difficult] but that’s only because I played basketball overseas,” said Scott Hettermann, an agent’s assistant at Octagon Basketball who played professionally in Ireland. “It’s an industry all about connections, so it’s hard to break into if you don’t have any.”

Honack, Kellogg’s assistant dean, added that the industry poses challenges to students because “many of the organizations are owned by families and they’re very insular.”

But even for those students who manage to secure sports business jobs directly out of school, the financial prospects are glum when compared with the salaries of their peers. “My first salary coming out of law school, when I got a position with the Arena Football League, was drastically lower than comparable salaries in law firms,” Andresen said.

While the salaries for many Northwestern law and business graduates are upwards of $130,000 annually, according to the law school’s career center and U.S. News & World Report, wages for entry-level employees at sports agencies range between $30,000 and $50,000, Hettermann said.

“To a certain extent you’re almost looking at [a starting job] like a low-paying internship,” said Roy Kessel, the MSA program director who is also the president of Chicago-based SportsLoop Management LLC. “You’re getting the opportunity, and then you’re leveraging that to get in a better position.”

But despite the high barriers to entry, there is a cohort of students who believe that with enough persistence, the sports business industry could open its arms to capable graduates.

Said Johnson: “It’s definitely difficult, but depending upon how driven you are, I think it’s doable.”