Throughout the late 1970s and well into the mid-1990s, New York City had its Boss. He was not a politician or a leader of organized crime. No, he had an office in the Bronx and wore strange turtlenecks and windbreakers and favored shaded eyewear in the style of the ABC police television drama Toma and liked to hire ballplayers like Reggie Jackson and Dave Winfield. But enough about George Steinbrenner. There is a new Boss in town. And it is the Business of Sports School, a new high school opening this fall in Midtown, part of the city administration’s effort to update its vocational and trade schools. As we will have to wait and see if the school eventually produces the next Mark Cuban, Scott Boras, Marge Schott, Phil Knight or even yet another Steinbrenner, we did not have to wait to talk to the Business of Sports School principal. His name is Josh Solomon, and the day New York Family Sports interviewed him over the phone, the Financial Times newspaper ran this above-the-fold headline: Fistful of dollars: The world’s most violent sport has become big business.
Yes, the Brit paper had unleashed not one—but two—reporters for a detailed analysis of the rise of Ultimate Fighting as a successful business. To quote Russell Crowe’s character in the film The Gladiator: “Are you not entertained?”
So take it away, (King) Josh Solomon, builder of the first temple of sports business for our sports-obsessed city’s youth.
Tell us about your background and how you came to your current position. I’d been in business—finance, actually—in my 20s, and around age 30 I became a teacher and an administrator. I helped start a couple of schools and had the idea for a real business-focused school. I was looking for what type of career-oriented schools would appeal to city students and what type of opportunities were available, and sports marketing and management seemed like a very logical and exciting choice. I come to it from both a business and education background. I definitely wanted to start a school that combined both those interests. The school grew out of the mayor’s task force on career and technical education that thought there should be more career-focused schools that would give the students extra credentials. I don’t know how much you know about the school system, but there’s obviously a fairly large drop out rate. This is a school that will appeal to students of all levels who are interested in finding more about careers behind the scenes in sports. We’ll focus on the media business, operations, management, everything that goes on behind the scenes—writing. The skills that you learn from this school are transferable to whatever career you are going to go into. Should I tell you our three values?
OK, yes, please do. Communication—being able to speak professionally and present and write professionally. Critical Thinking—so they’ll be able to tackle open-ended problems; and Collaboration, which is working in teams, which is basically every job and every career path. I don’t think all of our students will go into sports management programs, although some will, and I don’t even think in the end they’ll all go into business programs. But whatever they decide to do for college and their careers, they’ll have a good academic and professional background.
What about the applicants—who was typical—did you get a huge response? You have a full house? We have a full house. We are over-subscribed right now. The Department of Education actually held a lottery for us so that we did not select based upon criteria and performance. We just left it open to everybody.
How many students will you have this fall? We are planning to take 108. We have 125 right now registered. So we are a little over-enrolled. We had between 400 and 500 applicants and we’re still taking a waiting list. We had a very short applicant period because the school was announced in February and applications were due in April, so we had a little more than a month to get the word out. It was very rushed. We were happy to get 400 to 500 in just six weeks. We have a good first class that is heavily boys right now—we’re trying to make a bigger effort with girls. We’re working with the New York Liberty and the Girl Scouts.
As the leader of this innovative school, if you had to compare yourself to a coach or great manager in sports, who would it be? That’s a very interesting question, no one has asked me that. You know, I try to embody the values of the school by being collaborative and getting everyone working together. I think if I had to make an analogy it would be to a Joe Torre type who has a lot of really star-type teachers and staff around him, like he has some of the great players, but he makes sure everyone is focused on the end goal, which for him is winning the World Series. That is kind of my role, to make sure we’re all focused on educating the students, giving them the best experience possible, with a great staff that really works together.
What about your partnership with this newspaper? I think that the partnership with your newspaper will really create an authentic learning experience for the students because they are actually producing material that could and will get published. That is the goal of the school—to work with as many partners as possible in the sports industry and the business industry around New York. That makes the students’ work authentic and real and is the same as what people do in the real world on their jobs. We are a problem-based learning school, everything we do is real problems and real cases. Even though we cover the regular curriculum, we do it in a problem-based learning structure.
What is the extent of ESPN’s involvement in the school? ESPN is giving advice on developing curriculum. I think some of the articles that came out way overstated their involvement. Some of their employees on a voluntary basis are advising on curriculum development.
What are some of your signature courses going to be at your school? There’s a class called business communications that integrates both business requirements, business technology requirements and English requirements, so students will get a credit in both business and English. It will include “writing for business.” Another one is the business analysis class, which combines math—the algebra class—with business technology, such as using Excel. So students will be looking at how products are priced, and for that we are working with an apparel company called Crons to design apparel for the school store that the students will run and through the business communication class they’ll create taglines for the sports apparel.
Does this type of school fuel kids who are obsessed with sports? My view is that certainly the school is not for everyone that is interested in sports, particularly those interested in playing sports because it’s not like we have great athletics programs. It is more about learning about behind the scenes and all the careers that are possible in the sports industry. I see it as really engaging the students. From meeting the students who will be coming to the school, I’ve found some are excited about the sports aspects and some are excited about the business aspect. High school for many kids is not a very engaging time, so you have to grab their interests and make sure they are learning the science, history, math, English, etc., and make it seem real to them because otherwise they are not going to learn it. I think it is exciting that we are kind of fueling their interest in sports, and I think they’ll be much more interested in school because of it.
Are you going to have sports teams? We’re going to develop them over time. The building we are in is the High School of Graphic Communication Arts, and they’ve been nice enough to open up their teams so our kids can try out. It’s going to take us time to develop teams of our own. We’re going to have after-school sports and I hope we will develop a good sports program.
Do you consider super-agent Scott Boras to be a role model for your students? I don’t know that he’s a role model. He has a law background, right? He’s become successful with some of his moves maybe pushing the envelope a bit. I think part of teaching kids about business is teaching them how to act responsibly in society. I went to business school myself, and would think that me and my classmates act in a way that is furthering society as a whole rather than trying to get our own piece of the pie all the time. I know not everyone is like that all the time, but I think part of wrestling with real issues is thinking about how far would you go, or the consequences of maximizing your own profits at the expense of others.
What about Joe Six-Pack cynicism? The guys who point out that Alex Rodriguez makes more in one season than most school teachers could earn in a whole career. How do you address that with the young people? I think you do have to talk about issues of equity and fairness and how they want to conduct themselves. I actually think because we are using the problem-based method students will graduate from our program with a greater sense of community because they’ve had to work together, they’ve had to work in teams. It’s not something where you can go in and study hard for your tests and pass on your own. That’s not what real life is about. There are very few jobs that you can do absolutely on your own. I think we can develop that moral compass. I think whether you are looking at sports business or you’re in the school of education or the school of medicine and health careers—I think every profession wrestles with ethical issues. We’re not preparing kids to be Alex Rodriguez. You have to remember that 99.9 percent of the people employed in the business of sports make perfectly regular salaries.
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For more info:
Business of Sports School
439 W 49th Street, NYC 10019
718.935.3478
www.nycBoss.org
