A growing and exciting field in Public Relations is coming forth and taking the field over with a storm—Sports PR. For die-hard sports fans in the journalism field, there couldn’t be a better match for a career opportunity. There are many different positions one could choose in the field, the most glamorous and prestigious being the Sports Information Director, or SID for short.
An SID can work for college or professional sports teams. He or she is basically the liaison between the team’s program and the mass media, just like any PR practitioner is between their company and its publics. Their position includes a wide range of job tasks: holding and organizing media conferences, dealing with all of the team’s publicity, writing press releases and newspaper stories, campaigning, publications (media guides, promotional vehicles), game management and supervision, handling crisis situations and compiling statistics and sports data.
Colleges and universities all over the nation are starting to recognize the growing interest in the field of Sports PR. Journalism and Mass Communication departments are starting to offer courses dealing with the specifics of being an SID. One of those colleges is the University of Oklahoma, where SID Kenny Mossman teaches an exciting course where students learn hands-on the duties and responsibilities of Sports PR practitioners.
The sixteen-week JMC course at OU teaches students the ins and outs of the Sports PR world, with a focus on intercollegiate athletics—right from the horse’s mouth, so-to-speak. Mossman explains all of the aspects of his job as the SID at OU, and is able to give in-depth insight to the duties he performs on a daily basis. Students get the chance to visit the football stadium’s media rooms to see where all of the hectic action occurs on game days. Their midterm assignment is to creatively compile a campaign for a college sports athlete. There is even a mock crisis management situation and press conference where students test their PR knowledge and skills in a real-life setting.
The business of Sports PR is difficult to get into at first, as most professionals start out as graduate assistants or interns. Experience is required in writing, research, publications (and publications programs such as Adobe InDesign and PhotoShop) and campaigning. Sports Information Directors have a difficult job, many working 7 days a week and traveling a substantial amount, but for a true sports fanatic, it is absolutely the definition of a dream job.
For information on job openings, visit the NCAA website at http://ncaa.thetask.com/market/jobs/sports_information/index.php.
Links:
http://iml.jou.ufl.edu/projects/fall01/latimer/ -- Sports PR
http://www.jobprofiles.org/eduunisports.htm -- Sports Information Director
http://www.hr.niu.edu/employment/specs/spec1047.pdf -- job tasks
http://soonersports.com/genrel/mossman_kenny00.html -- Kenny Mossman
http://www.cmiatl.com/news_article43.html -- crisis management
http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/pressroom/pressreleases/pdfs/200101/20010108idsnprof.pdf -- Adobe InDesign
2 comments:
nice work, holly! thanks for the info. - rachel
Im taking this course next semester and this post made me even more excited! Great information!
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