The Myth of Work-Life Balance in Sports
I find that a high percentage of college students today are ranking work-life balance as an important consideration when entering the job market. For those who want to work in sports, I recommend forgetting about work-life balance for at least the first few years of your career, because you will not last long in the sport industry or advance in your career if your priority is having weekends, evenings and holidays free.
During the six years I spent on the New York Yankees Player Development staff, I worked between 350-355 days annually. That means I spent virtually every weekend and holiday in the office with the exception of a few days here and there in November and December each year. And most of those days stretched into the evening, meaning I returned home with just enough time to eat dinner and go to bed so I could start again the next day before 8:00 a.m.
My work habits at the Yankees were essential for my advancement and were also the norm in the organization. It was not as if the Vice President that I reported to was leaving the office at 5:00 every day and calling from a yacht on the weekends to check in – we were all working all the time. The main reason I left the organization after six years was because that lifestyle was never going to change, and I was in search of a more personally satisfying work-life balance, which I found working at the NCAA.
Ask most people in sports and they can tell you about crazy work schedules. The sport industry requires irregular hours and work weeks because:
Games are played when most people are off work, therefore sport industry employees find themselves at the “office” working many evenings and weekends.
There are hundreds of people who want to work in sports, so employers can place extreme demands on you with the confidence that there will always be a steady supply of qualified replacements if you decide you have had enough.
The sport industry is competitive. Whether you are selling tickets or sponsorships, developing a marketing campaign, or trying to sign the best available free agent, there are always other teams and other forms of entertainment competing for the same scarce resources. On top of that there is competition from your peers who are striving for the same promotions you want. Often you simply have to outwork your competition.
If you are willing to accept the unbalanced lifestyle in sports, my advice is:
Be prepared to work longer hours and weeks than your peers, especially early in your career as you establish yourself. Beginning with your first day on the job, supervisors will evaluate you based on work ethic. Be the first to arrive, the last to leave, and the one who comes in on the weekends when there is work to be done. Create a personal brand built on your willingness to outwork everyone else.
If you are successful at outworking the competition and you excel at your job, you will most likely have opportunities to advance. You will also probably figure out more efficient ways to work as you become more skilled at your job, which may help reduce some of the time it takes you to accomplish things.
After a year or two of establishing yourself as the hardest worker on the staff, and possibly receiving a promotion or two, you will probably find more opportunities to take a day off, leave the office early, or come into the office a little later on a game day. This is not to say that your schedule will ever be “normal” compared to your neighbor who is an electrician or your old fraternity buddy who is a loan officer at the bank. But no one gets into a sport career because they want a “normal” life, right? If you want to be part of the action and not just a fan, there will need to be sacrifices.
If you move to a new job or organization, the process of establishing yourself and your work ethic should start all over again. You have to prove yourself to a new set of peers and supervisors – they will not care that you were a workaholic at your previous job.
There are some segments of the sport industry that will never provide much life outside of work no matter how long you are there. Jobs in player personnel in any sport are among those – the higher up the ladder one goes, the more one’s life in player personnel jobs tends to be dominated by work.
If a work-life balance is important to you, seek it in your second or third job when you are well established in the industry and can better pick and choose your job moves. When breaking into the industry, most people need to take the first available job. After a few years of developing a professional network of contacts and building your reputation, you can be more selective and make career moves that provide things such as a more desirable work-life balance, if that is important to you.
This is not intended to discourage anyone from pursuing a career in the sport industry. There are perks that come with working in sport, and there are exhilarating experiences that make all the hard work worth it. Despite the long hours and consecutive days of work that dictated my life for many years, I still woke up every day excited about the challenges ahead of me, and I have several cherished professional highlights and relationships from those years that I would not trade for anything.