Paul Swangard sits in his fourth-floor office at the Lillis Business Complex. On a wall is a signed Pavel Bure jersey from his days with the Vancouver Canucks. Outside are copies of Sports Illustrated and Sports Weekly, spread out on a desk where students from the James H. Warsaw Sports Marketing Center relax in between classes.
Swangard is the managing director of the center, which has been called the best in the nation by Sports Illustrated and is considered by many as a successful breeding ground for sports executives.
The catch: Just last year, the center’s executive director, Rick Burton, left to serve as the commissioner of Australia’s National Basketball League.
Last year, the center celebrated its 10th anniversary. And starting in the fall, its official identification will be SBUS (Sports Business), replacing the familiar MKTG (Marketing).
How do you go forward through all that?
Enforce what you’ve been doing. Build on it. Add to the foundation that has allowed the center to cultivate relationships with companies such as Nike, Adidas and Safeco Insurance — the namesake for Safeco Field in Seattle.
“We were able to build something uniquely special here,” Swangard said, making sure to give credit to Burton. “Rick represented such a huge cheerleader, not only in the class, but externally. Rick was the perfect leader at the perfect time for the center where we were trying to make everyone aware we existed.
“The true success for any program in an academic context is sustainable knowledge creation and human capital creation. Our placement records stand for themselves and those continue to go well.”
The change to SBUS will help the 40 to 50 students who go through the M.B.A. program better adapt to the changing world of sports business. It has grown to a multi-billion dollar industry, and Swangard cites someone like Professor Dennis Howard, who is a “finance and economics major,” for the knowledge needed in today’s sports market.
“This is like any other industry,” Swangard said. “It needs accountants, it needs managers, it needs finance people, it needs marketers, it needs (public relations) people and it needs designers. It’s a broad cross-section of not only people who are in traditional marketing but other disciplines as well.”
Swangard said he doesn’t expect to increase the number of students who can get into the highly competitive center. No, he said, that’s not necessarily how to further the improvement of a program.
Instead, he wants to keep offering real world experiences for the students who pass through Warsaw’s doors. That includes a trip to New York for second-year students to meet with NBA Commissioner David Stern and NFL executives. It includes trips to San Francisco and Los Angeles, where the
students met with former Major League Baseball Commissioner Peter Ueberroth.
Swangard also hopes to start a sort of “executive-in-residence” program, where industry professionals can visit for lengthy periods of time.
“We’ve always said our two major outputs are knowledge capital and human capital,” Swangard said. “I think we’ve done the human capital piece well. I think we’ve got a lot of students in the industry doing amazing things. The knowledge capital piece has been a little bit tougher.”
For Burton, it was a highlight to see those students get out of the classroom and into professional situations. He has missed that since going to the NBL.
“I’m cautious about being prideful, but really, what the center has achieved is wonderful,” Burton said via e-mail. “… I hope all of us who made a commitment to the Warsaw Center and (the Charles H. Lundquist College of Business) can continue to invest in it. The best result is not rankings or pride but knowing that we helped students and made the industry stronger.”
Burton is trying to do just that as the head man in Australia. According to NBL Communications Manager Marc Howard, Burton, who graduated from Syracuse University, has instituted an all-star game and made the league more fan-friendly.
“Rick’s a terrific leader and has a strong vision of where he wants the league to be 10 years from now,” Howard said. “He is incredibly supportive of his staff but is always challenging you to find a better way to do things.”
For now, Burton is confident in Swangard and a faculty of five other professors and instructors in the center to bring the world of sports marketing into the classroom and provide future graduates with a strong foundation of knowledge.