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Series consultant
Al Ferrer founded
the sports
management
program at the
University of
California, Santa
Barbara, after an
award-winning
career as a
Division I baseball
coach. Along with
his work as a
professor, Ferrer is
an advisor to pro
and college teams,
athletes, and
sports businesses.
And that leads to my third point: Know yourself.
Look carefully at your interests and skills. You need to
understand what you’re good at and how you like to work.
If you get energy from being around people, then you
don’t want to be in a room with a computer because you’ll
go nuts. You want to be in the action around people, so
you might look at sales or marketing or media relations
or being an agent. But if you’re more comfortable being
by yourself, then you look at analysis, research, perhaps
the numbers side of scouting or recruiting. So you have
to know yourself.
And you have to manage your expectations. There
is a lot of money in sports but unless you are a star athlete,
you probably won’t be making much in your early years.
I’m not trying to be negative, but I want to be
realistic. I’ve loved every minute of my life in sports.
If you have a passion for sports and you can bring
professionalism and quality work—and you understand
your expectations—you can have a great career. But just
like the athletes we admire, you have to prepare, you
have to work hard, and you have to never, ever quit.
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