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F
oreword
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.
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. If you’re more comfortable
being by yourself, then you look at analysis, research,
perhaps the numbers side of scouting or recruiting. You
have to know yourself.
You also 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. Just like
the athletes we admire, though, you have to prepare, you
have to work hard, and you have to never, ever quit.