Samford University’s Sports Industry Program will hold a ribbon-cutting on Friday, Oct. 2, to officially open the new Sports Industry Program Student Lounge on the third floor of Cooney Hall in the Brock School of Business.
“In the world of sports, the locker room is sacred,” said Dr. Darin White, the Margaret Gage Bush Distinguished Professor and founder of the Sports Industry Program. “It is where teams bond. It is where the hard conversations happen. It is where you celebrate together after a big win and where you pick each other up after a tough loss.
“I have lived that my entire life as a player and as a coach,” said White, a Hall of Fame college soccer coach at Union University, where his team won a National Christian College Athletic Association national championship. “That is what this space is for our students. It is their locker room. It is the place where they will build the relationships and the community that will carry them through their careers in the sports industry.”
Designer
The lounge was designed by Advent, the Nashville-based experience design firm that completed projects for some of the biggest sports organizations in the country, including the Dallas Cowboys, the Kansas City Chiefs, the PGA of America and the Oakland Athletics. The space was made possible through the generous support of program donors.
White founded the Sports Industry Program in 2011, making Samford the first AACSB-accredited business school in the South to offer a dedicated sports business program. In 2017, he followed that by launching the Center for Sports Analytics, the first of its kind in the nation. Today the program has grown to more than 200 students from 33 states, with four curriculum pathways: Sports Marketing, Sports Business Analytics and Strategy, Team Strategy and Player Performance (aka Moneyball), and a five-year Fast Track option that allows students to earn a bachelor’s degree and a Sports Business MBA.
Full story.
EDITOR’S NOTE — This story was written by Darin White and published by Samford University.
Share with others: