Jim Beattie, former NY Yankee and Seattle Mariner pitcher, and MLB General Manager / Vice President, has joined the Board of Advisors for Diamond Sports. Jim is currently serving as Vice President, Financial Advisor at Bernstein Global Wealth Management. Jim brings a wealth of experience to our Board, in professional sports career development. Jim earned his MBA after he retired as a pitcher with the Seattle Mariners. We welcome his senior executive insight, expertise, and experience – on and off the field.

View the complete list of Board of Advisors

How To Get A Job In Pro Sports from Forbes.com
Tom Van Riper, 07.29.08, 6:00 PM ET
Can’t throw a 95-mile an hour fastball or dunk over a 7-foot center, but want to work in sports? There’s still hope. Here’s a look at 10 jobs to get you in the door.

Want to work in professional sports? Get in line. Larger staffs these days mean openings are more plentiful than they used to be, but the competition is intense, even if you’re not a first-round NFL draft pick. Even people with advanced degrees agree to take internships to get a foot in the door.

Still, for college students or recent grads determined to pursue a career in sports management, some entry-level jobs are more valuable than others. Working in the box office, for instance, isn’t likely to get you anywhere. But proving you’ve got sales skills–that’s another story.

In Depth: The 10 Best Entry-Level Jobs In Pro Sports
Without connections through family or friends, showing a sports organization that you can sell to groups, organize events or put together media guides goes a long way toward reaching that corner office with a view of the field.

“The kids don’t want sales, but that’s where the jobs are,” says Bernie Mullin, former president of Atlanta Spirit, which owns the NBA Hawks and NHL Thrashers. Starting at $10 an hour plus commission may not appeal to a newly minted college grad, but few things draw more notice from senior management than showing you can get paying customers to the game. Sponsors, after all, pay by the eyeball.

“They need to understand it’s all about butts in seats,” says Mullin, who now runs the Aspire Group, an industry consultant. Those who jump into the group-sales game be warned: The competition is as fierce as it is among players on the field. For most, it’s up or out within a year. To qualify, some sort of sales track record, even selling sneakers in a sporting goods store, is a big help.

Those who succeed in group sales generally rake in $100,000 annually before age 30, before advancing into the even more lucrative role of corporate sponsorship sales.

But if sales just isn’t your thing, there are other avenues. Most clubs and leagues offer entry-level slots in public relations. Writing press releases and putting together media guides is often a path to bigger things. Legendary NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle went that route, starting out in public relations for the Los Angeles Rams. The pros’ advice to undergrads: Get down to your school’s Sports Information Department right away and start doing it for free. Almost anyone you’ll be competing with for a PR spot already is.

Another popular choice: customer service. Helping to put together special events, like pregame stadium entertainment or off-site shindigs for sponsors, is a way to demonstrate the organization skills and attention to detail that management loves.

For finance and accounting types, the best bet is to forget sports right out of college. Most teams hire those folks from their outside auditors rather than at the entry level. Likewise, boutique investment banks specializing sports (generally team acquisition and stadium financing) tend to be small shops with few openings.

While a specialized degree in sports management carries a lot of importance–especially for those without connections–teams are more interested in seeing experience through internships and college athletic department work. Most clubs are also partial to athletes, at least those who lettered in high school if not college. Sales in particular requires mental toughness and an ability to overcome obstacles, qualities often associated with jocks.

“They want to see that you won’t wilt like a flower,” says Buffy Filippell, president of TeamWork Consulting and a former agent with sports and entertainment heavyweight IMG. Also important to know going in, she says, is that sports management is not a nine-to-five job. Between travel and various starting times for games, the hours can be crazy. For the closest comparison, think of the 24/7 hotel business.

The good news is that even through a bumpy economy, the sports industry continues to thrive. Filippell says that most teams and outside agencies are hiring even as other sectors of the economy cut back.

“There are plenty of jobs for entry-level grads or college students,” she says. “The challenging part is the entry-level salary.” Not to mention the cutthroat competition. If you can’t hit a jump shot or throw a spiral 50 yards, bone up on those sales skills.

By Candice Choi, The Associated Press, August 2, 2009

The price for course materials has long been a sore point for families, with students spending an average of $1,000 a year on books and supplies, according to The College Board. The marketplace has responded enthusiastically, with startups and publishers now offering to rent books or providing electronic versions at a fraction of the cost. Lawmakers have also taken note, and next summer a federal law goes into effect that will require colleges to list the cost of required materials in online course schedules. Publishers will also need to disclose book prices in marketing sent to professors who may not realize the costs. The move is expected to help ease the cost of college, with tuition, fees, and room and board now at an average of $14,300 a year at public universities and $34,100 at private schools. Until the new law goes into effect, here are a few ways to keep book costs down.

Try renting

A relatively new option in the textbook industry is renting. Textbooks are typically leased for a semester or longer, and costs vary depending on factors including the book’s popularity. Chegg.com, named after the old riddle about the chicken and the egg, is one of the major players in the market and says its rentals can save students 65 percent to 85 percent of the cost of buying books new. As an example, renting “Introductory Chemistry” for a semester costs $44. The book has a list price of $140. The Santa Clara, Calif.-based company tries to track down any requested book that isn’t in its catalog of 2.4 million titles. Books are expected to be returned in similar condition, but co-founder Aayush Phumbhra said Chegg isn’t out to nickel-and-dime students for minor scratches. “Our goal isn’t to gouge customers,” he said. Students pay to have books shipped to them, but the orders come with prepaid envelopes to make returning books easy.

BookRenter.com, which generally works the same way, sends students e-mail or text message alerts when due dates are approaching. It also gives students the option to buy a book at the end of the rental period.
If a student decides to drop a class, refunds can be issued within 30 days at Chegg.com and within 10 days at BookRenter.com.

Think digital

Before weighing the pros and cons of electronic textbooks, a little background. E-textbooks can generally be accessed online or downloaded onto laptops. For copyright protection, companies usually require you to download a free application if you want to read the books on your computer without using an Internet connection. One popular place is CourseSmart.com, which works with 12 of the largest higher-education publishers to offer about 7,000 titles. The company says its e-textbooks on average cost about half the price of new print copies. One perk is that texts are searchable by keywords or phrases. Students can also copy and paste up to one page to create notes and print up to 10 pages at a time.
Publisher Cengage Learning also makes its titles available electronically at iChapters.com for half the price of print editions.
One catch with CourseSmart and iChapters is that students have access only for a certain time, usually a semester or however long the book is intended to be used. So, students wouldn’t be able to refer back to certain passages later in their schooling.

Buy used

The benefit of buying a print textbook, of course, is that students can mark up the pages and keep or resell the books. But new textbooks are expensive, and the prices for used copies at campus bookstores often aren’t much cheaper. Beating those prices should be easy if you go online. Vendors on sites like Barnes & Noble, Borders and Amazon also list the condition of used books and often give detailed descriptions about any marks. You can also see reliability ratings for the sellers by other customers. The details vary, but major sites generally have return policies if you’re not satisfied with a used book. Bookstore chains also often offer online coupons or announce special sales via e-mail newsletters, which can add up to significant savings on major purchases. The result is that used books are often cheaper than even rentals or electronic books, said Nicole Allen, campaign director of Make Textbooks Affordable, a project of the Student Public Interest Research Group.

Another strategy when buying used books is ordering as early as possible, said Steve Loyola, president of BestBookBuys, one of several sites that aggregates prices on new and used books from across the Web. “There aren’t warehouses and warehouses of used books. It comes down to a certain supply,” he said.