The Sports Info Business

The first step in making things better is admitting you have a problem.

So, here goes.

Hello, my name is Charles Harris and I have a problem.

“Hello Charles”

I, am a news junkie.  That’s right, I need to know what is going on in the world.  From Gilbert Arenas getting suspended for the rest of the NBA season to President Obama’s State of the Union Address last night, I digest this and much more.  Every day.

I started thinking how much media I consume in any given day.   I started to make a list.  The list includes printed newspapers I still receive to my home this day (let’s see if I but the new Apple iPad here eventually), news online, TV related news, magazines and more.

In no particular order….

Los Angeles Times

Wall St. Journal

Orange County Register

Sports Illustrated

NBC Nightly News

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

New York Times

Yahoo News

No, I do not feel like I am going to get asked important questions by clients at any moment nor am I preparing to appear on the game show Jeopardy. There are several reasons I guess. The top reason is just plain knowledge.  Learning and knowing what is going on in our world.  Another is sharing.  With the advent of all of this new media, I like sharing and finding people that find value in information they do not know about.  I post it to one of my two Twitter Accounts, Twitter.com/sportsinfo or Twitter.com/Coast2CoastExp and if it is event related I am probably adding it to a master calendar called SportsCalendarPro.com I absolutely include items in my free, monthly business newsletter to interested folks.

I tried going the way of most people, by dumping my subscriptions for the printed version of newspapers for the online version and in some cases it has worked.  My wife was happy for a while since she hates the newsprint in the home and secretly dumps it herself whenever I am not looking.  But it is back in a few different forms.  The process starts when I am eating breakfast.  I must read something when I eat breakfast.  Again, a habit I blame on my father but not a bad habit.

But there are so many more types of media I am not even mentioning.  I read links to what people post on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. I look for news that I feel my clients can benefit from and pass this on to them.  At the end of the day, I am not a site aggregator myself but a knowledge base.  For me, for my family and for the people I interact with on a daily basis.  If that is a problem, I guess it is one of those good problems to have in life.

Have I made things better?  You tell me.

It may be November, but 2010 is just around the corner.  Where does the time go this year?

My guess is, part of your energy has gone into finalizing schedules, planning budgets, checking on event availability and things like this.  Even if you do not work in the sports industry and are planning an event for next year, you need to know what may conflict with your own agenda.  Ever plan a fundraiser and it lands on….. a March Madness game? the World Series?  Your home team’s biggest event of the year?

For that reason, I have developed a 2010 master calendar.  The main focus is on sporting events things like College football bowl games, the Super Bowl, Wimbledon but also includes events like published sports conferences from a variety of groups.  Additionally, there are a handful of non-sports events like  The Sundance Festival, CES (technology trade show) the Academy Awards as well as general U.S. holidays.  In all, there are more than 50 events so far and I am adding more as they are listed.

Here is the question of the day.  It is simple and is one question only.  I would sincerely welcome your feedback.  Please take a moment to participate!

This week, we had our monthly board meeting at the Orange County Youth Sports Foundation (OCYSF).  I have been apart of this 501c-3, non-profit group since my time with the (then) Mighty Ducks and I am proud to say the group has had a positive impact on on the lives of many.

First, some brief history…..OCYSF is a non-profit organization based in Southern California.  The board is comprised of businessmen who are devoted to athletics and our county’s youth.  The Foundation distributes scholarships and grants to young athletes in Orange County and provides assistance to tax-exempt, sports related organizations.  The Foundation also assists individuals who have medical needs related to or associated with athletics.

It is a great group of folks that have fun and make an impact in the local community.  Some of the members include former USC star and NFLer Mike Salmon, gold medal Olympic Swimmers Janet Evans and Brian Goodell, basketball coach Danny Rogers, former Major Leaguer and Angel Tom Murphy and of course one of the organization’s founders Paul Salata (USC , San Francisco 49ers but also well known for Irrelevant Week)

There are three areas where the group concentrates its time.

1) Youth Scholarships — Each year, we hand out scholarships to worthy high school student athletes that have excelled on and off the field.  The awards include a scholarship dinner with parents and a check that helps, in a small way, to pay the growing expenses of college education.

2) Grants — OCYSF also provides dollars to local youth sports related organizations.  For example, a Santa Ana Little League had no funds to replace threadbare uniforms and was seeing its dispirited participants prepare to disband. The struggling league was left out of the Southern California-wide disbursement of the surplus funds of the 1984 Olympic Games, funds earmarked to aid youth sports. Consequently, the league was losing its battle to remain self-sufficient.  OCYSF stepped in to help bridge the gap.

3) Annual Banquet – This is where it all started.  The history of the group began with an annual banquet in 1971 by honoring race car driver Dan Gurney.  In those days no one was raising money, just having lots of fun.  Today, it is all about making an impact for children.  The list of past honorees is impressive:  Peter Ueberroth, Tommy Lasorda, Jim Nance, Pete Carroll, Carson Palmer…. It goes on and on.  The event is a smash hit which roasts the honoree.  The banquet draws 500 during a tough economy and as many as 800 when times are good.

I got involved with this group because I always believed that senior sports management professionals needed to be attached to their community.  With the Anaheim (then Mighty) Ducks, I always encouraged each leader to adopt one organization and sit on its board, serve as an honorary chairman or some sort of involvement that matched with our overall business and community goals.

I try and reserve personal stories for the weekend, but since I had already posted them, I will add this one to the blog today.  Sometimes, the personal stories are the best ones.  You tell me. On Sunday, I attended the afternoon get away day game between the Los Angeles Angels and the Oakland A’s.  My buddy called me and asked if I wanted to attend and four of us enjoyed a warm afternoon game at Angels stadium

Here is a shot from our seats.  John Lackey was going for his 100th career victory while the A’s, at this point, were playing for pride.  I have to admit, I always watch the scoreboard the beginning of any game and root for the pitcher who keeps his no-hitter going the longest.

Oakland starter Brett Anderson lost his no hit bid in the fourth inning and while Lackey did not start off strong, he got better as the game progressed.

The reason why I think the game deserves a blog entry is due to a young man in our group.  I have written quite a bit about my baseballl life, both as an executive for the Los Angeles Dodgers, a little bit about my internship experiences with the Angels and not much working as the baseball SID at UC Irvine.

This also includes a cross country trip after college where I saw baseball stadiums and professional games  for a summer. If I dared to count, the total number of games I have seen over the years is well into three figures.  How many hundreds of games I have seen I could not tell you.  More than a thousand?  Certainly possible.

Now, I don’t ever write about my family, but when my son walked away with two game used baseball today, I hope it is a game he will never forget.  That wasn’t a typo.  Two game used baseballs.  Here is how it went down.  In the bottom of the first inning, he walked down a row Mark Ellis, who had caught the final out of the inning was running towards the dugout when my son screamed out, “great catch!”  Ellis then kindly tossed the ball near the rail and my son had his first ever baseball from a Major League Baseball Game.

Ryan Sweeney was then heading towards the A’s dugout, the same path that Ellis had taken the previous inning, when my son jumped tot he same spot and called out to Sweeney.  Ker-plunk.  There was his second ball and in the same game!  ”

That kid has two baseballs!,” someone shouted from behind us.

One of the guys with us, the pitcher on our softball team and a sports industry executive didn’t miss a beat.

“Now, what would be really impressive, is if you caught four baseballs and gave each of us one as well,” he joked.  From what we saw that was not going to happen.

It wasn’t like there was a crowd of 11,000 in the ballpark either.  The scoreboard showed a paid crowd of more than 38,000.

From the next inning on, the kids around us finally caught on and crowded around the same spot for the rest of the game.  No one else in that section went home with a ball.  Somehow, my son managed to take home two souvenirs and a baseball memory that will last a long time.

“I will never forget this game for as long as I live,” he told me later.  ”That was the best.”

And I have a great memory and a picture to prove it.

For regular readers of this blog, you may have noticed a new widget I placed on each blog entry.  It is a retweet widget related to the social networking site, Twitter.  It easily allows you, if you like an article, to click on it and to resend it through your network on Twitter.

It looks like this and is not located to the right of each entry.  What you may have noticed is that the numbers are low of the RT’s.  This is because it was just installed.

If you like the article, it is a fast and easy way to spread the word.  There are two other widgets which you should know about as well.  If you are  not signed up for

Twitter, you can go here and create an account.

The RSS feed allows for each of my blog posts to come directly to you.  So you don’t have to come to this web site each time.  When a new post is made, the RSS feed pushes it directly to you.  Just make sure you have an RSS feeder set up.  It is terrific for people on the go, but don’t forget to come back to the site.  Why?  I put up a lot of useful links on the right hand rail.  Recruiters, conferences, jobs, sports management programs, they are all listed with live links.

Finally, there is the share button.  It is a lot like the like the retweet for Twitter button, but if you click on it, it allows you to share it with others on a much larger scale.  I believe there are about 50 different social media platforms where you can forward any one of these blogs.  The goal on this blog and for all of social media is to be able to share information easily.

Moving forward, this blog will stay mainly with sports themed topics.  You can find more of business topics on a new blog on my business site:  Coast 2 Coast Experts — www.coast2coastexperts.com or just click on the link.  There is a new blog site up and running.

One of the reasons why I initially started this blog was to provide current Sports Management students with additional industry resources.  Since then, it has grown to much more than that.  People now visit from around the world, current sports executives, sports marketers looking to reach new audiences as well as those interested in working in this business.

Tonight, I return to teach another class at Long Beach State in the Sports Management Program there.  I have been doing this for a few years and it never gets old.  When I begin class tonight, I will be bringing with me, a supplement to the Sports Business Journal (SBJ). This weekly magazine, often looked at as the bible for the industry, came out with a special issue this week and takes a closer look at Sports Management Programs.

The title is a bit frightening if you are currently enrolled:  ”A Degree of Uncertainty.” — Under neath that the subtitle reads — “More colleges with sports management programs combined with fewer industry jobs means challenges for both schools and their students.”

In today’s world, this is an understatement.  First of all, consider the number of colleges and universities that are offering a degree in this business today.  The SBJ breaks down the number of schools PER STATE that offer some sort of degree’d program (undergrad, graduate etc).  Consider this:  Florida and Pennsylvania have 23 schools in each state that have a program, followed by North Carolina with 22 and  Illinois with 20.  California has but 11 and I only found two states that did not even offer a program, Utah and Wyoming.

The bottom line?  Sports management programs have become very popular.  Think about the number of students in each program and now you have thousands of new graduates entering the work force and the competition for jobs is stronger than ever.  A degree in a sports management program does not guarantee you a job in this field.

So remember these few things

1) Differentiate yourself.  Figure out how you are going to stand out  not only from your classmates, but from other graduates.

2) Get the Experience.  One of the most valuable components of a degree’d program is experience.  Internships allow you to gain experience and exposure within a sports organization.  Choose your internships wisely and then work like a dog to stand out.

3)  Network, network, network.  It never ends, not even after you have the job.

My old friend Derrick Hall, now president/CEO of the Arizona Diamondbacks, whom I helped take over my position with the Dodgers when I began a different journey, said it very well in the same issue of the Sports Business Journal.

“The number of students now enrolled and competing for entry into the sports world is overwhelming.  My advice for students is to be realistic and do all they can to get a foot in the door.  Though they may have aspirations of becoming a team president or general manager, it will take time and patience.  They just need the opportunity to prove themselves at any level.  They need to understand that the pay is low and the hours are long staritng out, but if they are seeking this career path for the right reasons, these will not be hurdles.”

There is something special about day baseball games.  As a kid, I grew up on Chicago Cubs baseball and back then there were no night games at Wrigley Field.  It was the only kind of baseball games I knew about.  So on Wednesday, when a friend of mine called and asked if I wanted to attend the Los Angeles Angels day baseball game vs. the Cleveland Indians, I jumped at the opportunity.

It was my first opportunity to see an American League game this season and, in addition to spending time with a pal, I got to experience a major league baseball day game.   To change things up a bit, I decided to take my camera and post a few photos of the experience.  It started with a somber moment as a Nick Adenhart memorial by fans greeted me as I approached the stadium. Once inside however, my mind turned to the game as we took our seats just as the first pitch by John Lackey was being thrown.

Entrance to Angels Stadium

Main gate

Part of the Nick Memorial

A view from the seats

Angels on their way to a win

A quick look at Angels sponsor signage

What do Kobe Bryant, Nike Sneakers sand Bryce Haprer have in common?  My Sunday morning sports blog entry of course.

On the cover of Sports Illustrated was this week was Bryce Harper, a 16 year old phenom who has been touted by SI as “The Most Exciting Prodigy Since LeBron James.”  Let me ask the obvious question.  At what age is it okay for media to begin profiling and promoting teenagers who can barely drive a car?  Okay, the kid throws 96, certainly something unusual and has hit a ton of home runs. But he’s 16.  Should we go down to the 13 year old who lights up a little league all star tournament with two perfect games?  A 12 year old who can do amazing things with a soccer ball?  Where do we draw the line?  Is there a line to draw?  For every Tiger Woods and Lebron James  there are many more Todd Marinovich’s  Click on the photo and you can read Tom Verducci’s the story.

Kobe Bryant made news earlier this week when it was announced he would wear special shoes for games one and two of the NBA Finals.  Via his web site, two photos were posted of the Nike Purple sneakers.  Here is a quick shot of one of them.

Will there by another release for games three and four?  Stay tuned.  I know it will not make the same headlines, but I am changing shirts for my Sunday slow pitch softball game this morning.  Today I will be wearing this shirt, only for today. I wonder if my friend’s wife, probably the only one in the stands will notice?

 It is not unusual for Nike or any other company to capitalize on a major event like the NBA finals to promote productd and to create buzz.  The NBA 2K10 a video game aimed at basketball fans promoted its new game since Kobe’s photo  will be displayed on the cover.  The twist on this announcement is that the company created four different versions of the cover and the company wants the fans to choose the best picture for the cover.  You can cast your vote by clicking on the photo.

Looks like Roger Federer is going to win his first French Open singles finals.  As I write this, he is beating Robin Soderling 6-1, 7-6, 2-1 at Rolland Garros.  Another strange lapse in tennis security happened in the fourth game of the second set when a man attempted to wrap a red flag around the Swiss star’s head. 

I am grateful that the University of Massachusetts at Amherst thinks enough of my blog to list it as a reference in their Job Search Toolkit.

Last piece of Tiger Stadium to come down.  Yet another Stadium I visited during my whirlwind summer tour after college is now just a memory.   More about that trip another time.

Here are a few of my random thoughts while I finish up a business trip to New York City.

* The Bulldog Reporter Media Relations Summit in New York City, which was the main reason why I was in town, was a business trip to help connect with others in the industry and to all visit with other colleagues in the city.

*I was amazed, how many people were checking their iphones and Blackberrys during the presentations.  I could not figure out if they were: 1) working while at the conference 2) posting Tweets on what the presenters were saying or 3) bored with the presentations and were trying to keep busy.

* Did not see of meet one sports executive at this conference.  I question where the sports industry really is when it comes to the development of Social Media game plans.

* I love to walk the streets of New York between meetings.  The city is alive with people, noise and action.  It made me think however, that in a world were today social media reins and we desperately are trying to connect and reconnect with friends relatives and new contacts, the people often times seems lonely as they make their way around the city.

* A buzz has come back to the city streets here, something that was missing the last time I was in town a few months ago.  The restaurants were half empty then, now they seem more full in the mornings and in the evenings.  As the Dow is up 50 points and the Wall Street is on a nice little run of late, are better days ahead for us all?

* I was contacted by a woman who helps produce events and was asked to cover the June 1-2 program in San Francisco for this blog.  We will see what happens in the next few days.

*  Social media like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Digg and others are here to stay.  It was the buzz of the Bulldog conference, though many of traditional means of the communication industry were pushed to the door for the 2 1/2 days.  I truly think effective marketing and PR campaigns are a combination of the two.

* Words of wisdom by several speakers.  Before jumping into any social media programs with your brand, take the time to actively listen before you begin a dialogue and finally engage.

* Be flexible when scheduling meetings with leading executives of large firms.  I was able to hold quite a few meetings while others had last minute  issues was forced to juggle my schedule.

* Anytime you have a business trip to New York City, take time out to spend time walking through Central park.  Since I arrived on a Sunday, I had time that afternoon and it was well worth the walk.  Might post a few photos of it later here and on flickr.

* One last meeting before heading home.  Going to catch up with Scott Carmichael, the Founder and President of Prodigy Sports.  Scott is an executive recruiter for the sports industry.