5 Full-Time Sports Jobs for College Grads

By Christy Flom on June 26, 2015

No matter what your official major is in school, there are many opportunities to land a job in the field of sports. While certain majors such as sports management, and kinesiology certainly help to an extent, the field of sports consists of a broad spectrum of jobs.

From sports photography to physical therapists, working with sports in the media or with actual teams can be a great and exciting career. After graduating college, this field can seem daunting at first. College athletes take up a large chunk of the broadcasting and coaching jobs, but there are still opportunities for other graduates to find their own career.

Aside from coaching, there are a slew of other full time job opportunities that college grads should take a look at throughout their job search.

Sport Psychologist

When someone says they are majoring in psychology, sports are usually not the first job listings that come to mind for what that person would like to do with their life. However, sport psychology is a dominant career in sports.

With unimaginable pressures placed on professional and amateur athletes these days, players are driven to unthinkable means to be the best, fastest, and strongest at whatever the cost. In sport psychology, a main component is helping athletes work through these pressures, whether personal or game related to not only ease one’s mind while playing but to also practice a healthy living style.

The American Psychological Association says in an article online that athletes can consult a sport psychologist for more than issues concerning pressure. A sport psychologist can help with performance enhancement through mental strategies to help players overcome obstacles. These psychologists can also help an athlete recover from injuries by helping them adjust to a new physical therapy routine or less playing time.

Two last reasons that the website lists are that they can help athletes keep up an exercise program by increasing their motivation, and they can help athletes relearn to enjoy the sport by promoting healthy self-esteem in participants. This field of psychology is a great way to be paid to be more than a fan by working one-on-one with athletes of all different sports.

General Manager

As the General Manager of a professional sports team, you are essentially running a business within the team. The GM must ensure that all levels of the team are running smoothly from administrative undertakings to public relations and even promotions.

A business background is usually expected or at least suggested for applicants of this job. This is not a job you can merely jump right into immediately after college. Years of experience in both business and professional sports organizations are necessary to be qualified for a GM position. However, once you secure this job, the salary will be well worth waiting for in the end.

Photojournalist

Imagine going to all the games in the front row and getting press passes to the top championship games. As a photojournalist, you get to do this on the job. Using photography to relay the story or main facets of an event, photojournalists are utilized at every professional and many collegiate athletic events.

Usually, the photojournalist gets to sit down by the court at basketball games or run the sidelines of football games, in order to get that one amazing shot to give viewers an image summary of what happened.

Communication majors, digital studies majors, photography, and journalism majors are all top candidates for this type of job. If you are good with a camera and know what to look for in a sport, photojournalism can be an enduring career.

Image via flickr.com by Marques Stewart.

Agent

If pitching big dreams and possibilities to people and being persuasive is your specialty, you need to be directed towards becoming a sports agent. It is common for agents to have a degree in law while still being strong advertisers and marketers. Known for its extreme difficulty of breaking into this specific field, sports agents work one-on-one with athletes to maximize their offers, salaries, and careers, while taking a certain percentage of the makings.

Once you become an established agent, the money can be more than you can dream of, but getting to that point is cutthroat competition. With it becoming almost a requirement of athletes to have an agent represent them, each agent desires the best of the best to create a stronger and stacked agency as a whole. Talking to athletes and gaining their attention is the easy part — keeping their attention away from other agents is the difficult part.

Publicist

A publicist is similar to an agent in the manner that both want athletes to put their best foot forward. A publicist for an entire team, however, wants all athletes and coaches to have their best foot forward, all at the same time. The media is everywhere nowadays and one bad incident can ruin the image of a team forever. So, publicists try to promote the good angles of a team and spin the bad angles.

As a publicist you would get to know the inside gossip and details of critical public incidents and figure out how to maintain a golden reputation for the team. Communication studies and journalism majors along with marketing and advertising majors are good fits for this job, but any wordsmith can become a great publicist.

These are only a small portion of the job possibilities available for people interested in continuing to work with sports. While it is always fun to be a fan, working with athletes is an interesting way to become even more involved with your favorite teams while learning about a multitude of other teams.

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