NACOGDOCHES, Texas –– Stephen F. Austin State University’s Homecoming brings alumni and current students together to celebrate the Lumberjack spirit. It also offers an opportunity for sports business students in SFA’s Nelson Rusche College of Business to gain the valuable sales experience they need before launching their careers.
Students in the “Sports Promotion” course taught by Dr. Derek Walton, assistant professor of sports business in the Department of Entrepreneurship and Applied Business, spent two weeks selling tickets to SFA’s Oct. 24 Homecoming football game by making more than 1,100 calls to prospective customers. During their sales pitches, they highlighted the activities and experiences fans could enjoy at SFA throughout Homecoming weekend from a call center established in the Rusche College of Business’ new Business Communications Hub.
“This partnership with SFA Athletics is a win-win because athletics gains additional support to drive ticket sales for Homecoming weekend, while our students gain hands-on sales experience and concrete examples of their skills to share in job interviews,” Walton said. “Since the establishment of our call center program by Rusche College of Business Dean Dr. Jason Reese in 2017, students have gone on to sales roles with sport organizations across Texas, including the Texas Rangers, Houston Astros, Houston Rockets, Houston Dynamo FC and Professional Bull Riders. Nationally, they’ve landed jobs with Formula 1 in Las Vegas, the Memphis Grizzlies, FC Cincinnati and more. These careers show students where the skills they are developing at SFA’s Business Communications Hub can take them.”
The program has also informed research on preparing students for careers in sport sales. In a 2024 study published in the Journal of Hospitality, Leisure, Sport & Tourism Education, Walton and Reese examined how former students working in professional sport sales viewed their call center experience at SFA. Their findings offer guidance for educators on developing students’ sales skills, professional confidence and career readiness.
“Our goal is to prepare students for the opportunities ahead of them while also helping advance how sport sales is taught,” Walton said. “By hearing from former students who are now working sales roles in the sport industry, we can better understand what made a difference in their preparation and share those lessons with other educators.”
Kyle Sinopoli, a senior marketing major from Ennis taking the course, said he was “not super thrilled” about the Homecoming call center project at first.
“The idea of calling random people to try to sell them something made me imagine myself as a salesman no one wanted to hear from,” Sinopoli said. “I was afraid I would be bothering people. Admittedly, I was wrong.”
After working on the project for a week, Sinopoli said his confidence had improved greatly from the experience.
“After the first few calls, I was starting to get excited about dialing another number with the hope that they would pick up so I could try to make that next sale,” he said. “I learned to trust myself and to treat the person I'm calling as if I'd known them for years.”
Sinopoli’s career goal is to work in marketing for a company, and he knows he needs to display confidence either on the phone or in person to be successful in that role.
“If I can influence someone to buy tickets to a game over the phone, it tells me what I'm doing is right for me,” he said.
Matthew Morgan ’24, group sales account executive for Houston Dynamo FC, participated in the call center project while earning his Bachelor of Business Administration in marketing with a minor in sports business at SFA.
“That was my first real experience doing outbound sales on the phones, so I felt some precall anxiety for my first couple of calls,” Morgan said. “Afterward, I loved it! It was so fun to connect with recent alumni, families from out of town and other members of the community to talk about the Homecoming game, traditions and everything in between.”
Most new sales representatives in the industry struggle to stay confident and find the right time to ask for the sale during a call, but this project gave Morgan “a good feel for that” before he graduated and started his career.
“Without a doubt, I use the skills I learned in this project every day on the phones,” Morgan said. “From the tenacity training of calling down a list of single-game buyers to learning how to do a little bit of research before each call to help it feel more like a warm lead, I use these skills every day.”
Not all sports business students have the opportunity to gain this experience during their college years, Morgan added.
“This project makes SFA special,” he said. “Very few schools offer anything like this, or they only let seniors do it. For this to be an entire class is such a blessing for SFA students. There is a big difference between wanting to work in sports and being about working in sports. This class helps you be about it.”
For more information on SFA’s Department of Entrepreneurship and Applied Business, visit sfasu.edu/enab.
