Sophomore football player Thiago Texeiram had no idea what went on behind the scenes to coordinate the marketing for a college football game until he saw the schedule of the sports marketing team at the University of Utah.

“They had a schedule, done by the minute—and seconds, too—and it was just like when they’ll put up the ads [on the screen], and what ads to put up, and what type of music they’ll put on—it was just these instructions,”
he said.

Texeiram and his classmates took an eye-opening field trip to Rice-Eccles Stadium to see the real-world applications of what they’re learning in their Sports and Recreation Marketing class at Riverton High School.

Their teacher, Joe Gorman, wanted his students to experience the day-to-day details working in the world of sports management. Students met the people responsible for marketing the University of Utah football team, managing their sponsorships, handling the logistics of visiting teams and creating the visuals and sounds audiences experience during games.

“Going to the Rice-Eccles Field, I was able to understand that there are way more jobs in sports marketing than I thought, and really interesting and something I might want to do,” senior Caysen Harward said.

Bodey Blake, a senior said, “I learned just how much work they put into the games, and how much behind the scenes work they had to do to just get all the times set up for their events at the game, and the screen, the sound—they have to have perfect timing or else the game will feel off and won’t be as pleasing to the fans, so I thought that was pretty cool.”

Gorman said he knew his students were interested and engaged because they were asking good questions.

“As a teacher, I love when kids ask questions,” he said. “They asked so many really, really good questions.”

As the professionals talked about how they got into their careers, it helped the high school students begin to think about how to gain skills and develop connections to get to where they want to be.

“Pretty much every single professional we met with got their start as an intern in college,” Gorman said. “So the kids now know that the path to get into a career with sports marketing is going to college and finding an unpaid internship and just kind of going to the trenches and then working their way up from there.”

Students were invited to return individually to job shadow for one of the university’s other sports teams’ game days.

“They could watch someone that runs the camera, watch someone that hands out T-shirts or takes tickets or stuff like that, so definitely a good foot-in-the-door opportunity for some of them,” Gorman said.

On the field trip, students went in the press box, onto the field and into the locker room. They were excited to snap pictures of each other on the field and take selfies in front of players’ lockers, because the majority of them are athletes.

Christian Kuf, a senior, said the class and the field trip have definitely influenced his thoughts about his career options.

“I am always looking forward to what we’re doing in class, what we’re learning about next in sports marketing,” he said. “I had no idea what sports marketing would be like and it actually sounds like a really fun job to be at a college or a professional sports team. It’d be really cool to market online and get people to be interested.”

“I took the class because I’m really interested in sports,” sophomore Caden Herrscher said. “I wasn’t really aware of the different jobs that you could do to get involved with sports instead of, like, playing. So if playing football in college doesn’t work out, I could rely on maybe doing a job in the field of sports marketing.”

Harward said it’s a good alternative career plan for an athlete.

“It’s, like, really hard to be a pro athlete,” he said. “Everybody wants to be one but not everybody makes it, so being able to market a pro team still sounds fun.”

Gorman’s class next semester will take a field trip to the Huntsman Center to see the behind-the-scenes of marketing the U of U basketball team. λ