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Sport management was acknowledged early in its formative years as an academic area with great potential for success in the academy. Due largely to the efforts of members of the North American Society for Sport Management (NASSM), sport management quickly became entrenched in academe and is starting to be recognized as an academic area of merit. It is important to manage our overall program excellence as we move from “potential” to “merit” if sport management is to thrive as an academic discipline and profession. It is particularly important to mange our merit since our transition phase occurs amidst many changes and challenges (e.g., the student as consumer; under-representation of National Association for Sport and Physical Education/NASSM Approved Programs; under-recognition of sport management teaching excellence, and diminishing service roles and interests within industry and academe). The purpose of this essay is to posit approaches through which sport management’s educational programs might maintain their well-earned meritorious reputations amid shifting academic and social cultures. This essay is the text of the 2003 Dr. Earle F. Zeigler Lecture presented on May 30 at the 18th Annual Meeting of NASSM in Ithaca, New York.

The purpose of this research was to design a curriculum for graduate-level preparation of National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I and II athletic directors. A survey instrument, consisting of a composite of 41 courses and based on R. Hay's model, Proposed Sports Management Curriculum and Related Strategies, was mailed to the full population of NCAA Division I and II athletic directors (N=569). A total of 307 completed surveys were returned from directors of men's, women's and merged athletic departments. Respondents rated each course using a 5-point Likert scale ranging from not important (1) to essential (5). There were 17 courses that were rated very important according to the acceptance criterion of a mean of 3.5 or greater. Results of a 2 × 3 (Division × Program type) factorial ANOVA, with alpha adjusted from .05 to .001 by Bonferroni's contrasting procedure, indicated that there were no differences in determined levels of course importance. It was concluded that a graduate curriculum to prepare a collegiate director of athletics should be implemented through the collaborative effort of an interdisciplinary faculty and that the program should culminate with a doctoral degree.

Sports, Inc., a popular 1980s-era sport business weekly, addressed eight elements of sports business/management in a January 2,1989 issue entitled “Sports in the 90's: The Spiral Goes On.” The Sports, Inc. issue provided selected writers a forum in which to disseminate their practical forecasts for 1990s sport enterprise. This special issue of the Journal of Sport Management provides established and/or rising scholars with a forum to reflect on several of Sports, Inc.'s predictions and share their own scholarly assessments of sport's past and current business and managerial status.

Research addressing women’s portrayals in sport-products advertising has focused on typical mass media, largely ignoring point-of-purchase advertising. Yet, point-of-purchase ads have the potential to be more powerfully reinforced which adds urgency to the need to examine such messages. The purpose of this study was to describe gender characteristics in, and consumers’ reactions to, sports product point-of-purchase ads (f=161) at 24 stores in nine geographic regions and to assess consumers’ (N=351) feelings of involvement in the ads. Based upon the results both female and male consumers perceived the ads with various levels of relevance and meaning and each gender preferred ads that related directly to themselves and their needs. Such results have direct implications for manufacturers/marketers of sports-related products because (a) women shopped for, and purchased, sports-related products more frequently than men, and (b) consumers noticed and were able to identify/recall activities featured in sports-related advertising. Therefore, manufacturers’ wishing to amass and maintain the women’s market need to target women directly and feature women performing meaningful activities in their advertising.

In the September, 1995 issue of the Journal of Sport Management, W. James Weese suggested that NASSM should develop a more practical focus and philosophy in order to better serve sport management practitioners. He made several recommendations regarding future directions for NASSM and the Journal of Sport Management (JSM) designed to pursue that goal. We respectfully challenge Weese's position, arguing that the primary goal of NASSM and JSM should be to support and fortify the scholarship produced by the sport management professoriate, with the concomitant goal of having an impact on the way sport is managed. We suggest that NASSM and JSM have naturally evolved to protect and enhance sport management education. In the process, they have become eminent providers of continuing education and currently useful research to the sport management professoriate, student-scholars, and practitioners who seek a symbiotic relationship with the academy.

Gender portrayals in sport-related advertising generally reinforce institutionalized sexism and culturally defined sex-role behaviors. Gender-defining messages in advertising photographs may have an especially profound impact on children because children understand meanings in pictures before they understand meanings in text. The purpose of this study was to analyze gender portrayals contained in advertisements appearing in Sports Illustrated for Kids (SIK) over a 6-year period. Advertisements were coded to determine (a) the total number of advertisements featuring females and males, (b) genders represented as prominent or supporting in advertising portrayals, and (c) gender portrayals in advertisement activities and product types. Content analysis revealed that girls and women were drastically underrepresented as models in SIK advertising and that distinct gender roles were sustained by depicting males in nearly all types of activities and products. Conventional stereotypical relationships between sport and gender were represented in the majority of SIK advertisements.

This study assessed gender effect in rating/selection of undergraduate sport management interns. Abridged resumés of six fictitious interns were mailed to persons who interview/select students for internships within major league baseball, professional basketball, and football (TV = 52; 64%). A 1 = weak to 7 = strong continuum was used to collect ratings to determine if gender biases disfavoring females existed in rating/selection. Respondents also selected one potential intern from the pool. Chi-square indicated no significant gender differences in selection. Repeated measures ANOVA showed a significant gender/status effect related to lower qualified intern candidates. Conclusions were that candidates' qualifications and experiences may overshadow discriminatory tendencies, but when females and males are equally qualified, gender biases may favor males' credentials.

Internships permit sport management students to link classroom learning to the professional environment. Since internships provide students with opportunities to learn on-the-job and test their skills in the marketplace, the experiences should be uniformly beneficial to all students regardless of gender. This study was conducted to describe internship work conditions (i.e., opportunities to perform in essential marketplace functions) for male and female sport management interns assigned to ‘Big Four’ professional sport organizations. Participants were 74 sport industry professionals who supervised a total of 103 interns over a one-year period. A X² Test of Independence found that male and female interns working in professional sport had comparable opportunities to perform and learn on the job. Differences in opportunity, hiring practices, and on-the-job benefits emerged primarily as a function of job specialization (e.g., operations, marketing, venue management), league/association, or gender of the internship supervisor rather than gender of the interns.

Internships are essential parts of quality sport management education, enabling students to link the classroom - professional environments through observation, exploration, and participation. Given the significance of the internship experience, it is important to determine if all students have the same opportunities for learning. The purpose of this study was to describe working (i.e., learning conditions) for female and male sport management interns working in college sport. Participants were collegiate athletics administrators (N = 257) who provided information on seven aspects of students’ (N = 379) internship experiences. A Chi Square model found differences (p = <.05) favoring males in intern selection, employment status, and salary, as well as job assignments in sports information, corporate sales, and compliance. In addition, female interns performed more clerical duties than males. Supervisor gender was a significant factor in some cases. It was concluded that biases favoring males exist in many facets of collegiate internships.