Beyond the Gates-An IDS Student's Review of MGT 514: Behind Chicago Sports Organizations Conclusion

Brandon Bowens

I know I have been posting a ton recently and I promise, this post will be the last one for some time. Frankly, I want this to be the last one.

I'll admit, I thought doing my class journal as blog posts was a good way to kill two birds with one stone: I could add more content for the website and complete my class requirements all the same.

In reality, attempting to cataloging five days of college work as a creative work is a hard, challenging task. I highly doubt I achieved the former, and I spent hours and hours in an attempt said pieces to make it very concise, yet entertaining.

But I want to make this because I wanted to put a nice bow on my experience. After all, its an experience that means giving up a week of your winter break in exchange for "x" number for credits. Was it worth it? Should you do it next year? What happens to your dear old Program Director?

Honestly, I don't think this class is for everyone. This class is best fitted for student who:

A. Already know that they want to work in some capacity in sports

B. Are on the fence about if they want do work in sports

C. Know they aren't going to working in sports, but would like some connections to make their paths into whatever business related field (business, finance, marketing, etc.) they are in easier

It's not like the class is hard, because it's really simple, nor was the course work unbearable, because it was very easy. It's also not to besmirch the class itself, the Sport Business Department, or College of Business, or anything DePaul offers. It's just that, to me, you want the most bang for your buck when taking graduate level classes, especially when your program works on an a-la-carte style. For someone who only was talking the class mainly because of aviophobia and needed a class that fit their course plan, if I had the opportunity to re-do everything I probably would've choose a different class to fit. There was a certain TV critique class I considered doing instead, and I kind of wish I did that instead.

HOWEVER, if you were to ask me "Did you take nothing away from this class?", my answer would be absolutely not.

I learned how the sport industry really works. It's a highly aggressive, highly competitive, and fast paced industry. You have to extreme patience, the strong mental fortitude, and just a bit of luck to survive and advance in the workforce.

But the people in the field really love what they do. They love coming in everyday and seeing the sport industry grow, to see people get excited over things that cost $2, to see the field and the game growing and growing as the sports industry is growing and changing.

I also learned that I don't need to have a ton of business classes to get into the field. Yes, this might change as school open up more sports business programs and yes, not being ins a business related field hurts your chances. But its not impossible.

It's a very quick, cheap, easy way to make connections. Being an introvert means that its difficult for me to go an talk with people, but you never know where you will end up, and having said connections in your back pocket could be get you many opportunities you wouldn't have normally.

Most importantly, as I will be transitioning from student to full-time employee, I learned tips to make me a more impressive candidate when it comes to the workforce. That is probably way more important than anything the over 60 speaker told us, because it applies to just about everyone regardless of their background.

I listed my reasons for not taking the class earlier, but if you want a general guide to being just a better person overall, I would highly recommend this class. Again, I want to thank Andy Clark for allowing some random arts student to take his this awesome class. Even though I felt out of my element most of the time, I still really appreciate the experience.

For now thought, I am going to get some long overdue rest. Then I'll work on improving my LinkedIn profile and apply to some sales jobs (After all, I took the class, and they were encouraging us to apply, why not?), and then I'm going to go and work my butt off to make this station a better station than it ever was.

I will leave off with one last thing for you to remember: “Nyaruko would love a nap. With a knyaitted blanket and a the NYAaaA/C on.”