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Sport management programs continue to focus on developing innovative pedagogical strategies to prepare students to enter and successfully navigate the rapidly evolving, highly competitive sport industry. One effective tactic is to integrate experiential learning projects into the classroom. This paper describes a collaborative three-year partnership involving a sport management program, athletic department, and corporate sponsor. The relationship provided scholarships for the program, internship opportunities, research funding, and an experiential learning project. Specifically, the lead author applied the metadiscrete experiential learning model developed by Southall, Nagel, LeGrande, and Han (2003) to a client based sponsorship activation project for an upper-level sport marketing course. The paper offers a blueprint and specific recommendations for faculty who wish to develop a client-based collaborative effort that can provide a hands-on learning experience for students and generate programmatic resources, research possibilities, student scholarships, and funding opportunities for an academic program. Such projects can further prepare students as well as enhance the fit between sport management programs and the sport industry.

The NCAA Growth, Opportunities, Aspirations and Learning of Students in College data were used to explore the relationship between self-reported high levels of difficulties thinking or concentrating and grade point average (GPA) in college student-athletes. We specifically investigated the mediators of the relationship between self-reported high levels of difficulties thinking or concentrating and GPA. Results revealed there was a significant indirect effect between self-reporting the highest level of difficulties thinking or concentrating and service use through GPA, moderated by identity, full model: F(4, 14738) = 184.28, p < .001; R ² = .22. The athletic/academic identity variable acted as a moderator of the mediating effect of GPA on the relationship between self-reported high levels of difficulties thinking or concentrating and the use of academic resources on campus. If a student-athlete who is self-reporting high levels of difficulties thinking or concentrating identifies more as a student, GPA is likely to prompt academic service use. However, if the student-athlete identifies more as an athlete, GPA is less likely to lead to use of campus academic support resources.