If you’re applying for jobs in marketing, it’s kind of a flex to mention the Super Bowl on your resume. It’s an even bigger flex if you can do it while you’re still in college.
Some students at schools around the country, including Ithaca College, Baldwin Wallace University, Nichols College, and Gannon University, have earned those bragging rights. Each year, cohorts of students from those colleges travel to work at the Super Bowl and other major sporting events like the College Football Playoff National Championship, Final Four games, and the MLB All-Star Game.
Their gigs, which primarily focus on the hospitality aspects of the sports industry, like security, setup and teardown, VIP services, and assisting other fans with directions, may help applicants stand out in the job market, students, alumni, professors, and marketers told Marketing Brew.
“The reason [students go to college] is so that they can make themselves more marketable,” said Christopher Streeter, an assistant professor of sport management at Nichols College who took 16 students to this year’s game. “This Super Bowl trip was incredibly valuable in terms of marketability for the students.”
Get the ball rolling
There’s no one right way to land a job at the Super Bowl.
Charles Campisi, an associate professor of sport management and chair of the marketing and sport management department at Baldwin Wallace University, said he leveraged his and other faculty members’ professional connections to help secure the first Super Bowl trip for the student-led sport management club. His students have now worked at 11 Super Bowls over the years. Eric Brownlee, chair of the department of marketing, entrepreneurship, and sport business at Gannon, said he also used professional contacts to help students land jobs.
GMR, an experiential marketing agency, works directly with the NFL on its Teammates Program to place college students in open roles during the game, Krista Hansen, group executive creative director and EVP of experience design, told Marketing Brew. The agency, which typically brings in about 30 students and assigns them to paid roles, has worked with Ithaca and Gannon University students many times.
“When we bring these individuals in from colleges, they learn so much,” Hansen said. “They’re so eager and excited to be part of something that is so powerful and big in the sports world.”
Kamaria Montgomery, a Baldwin Wallace junior majoring in sport management and minoring in graphic design and marketing, has worked at two Super Bowls and volunteered at the NFL Draft. Those experiences helped her home in on a more specific career path—and it didn’t hurt to mention them during internship interviews, either, she said.
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“I came in just wanting to go into coaching, just because it was the only thing I really knew of,” said Montgomery, who has since interned with ESPN Cleveland, the Cleveland Guardians, and the Hall of Fame Village. “Throughout those opportunities and my different internships, that allowed me to solidify what I want to do in the sports industry.”
In the end zone
Some Super Bowl gigs are paid positions. Other schools, like Nichols College, run Super Bowl trips for credit. At Gannon, trips aren’t linked to coursework, and students across majors are invited to apply for positions that are “usually” paid, Brownlee said.
Baldwin Wallace’s trips are run through a club and not a class, and not all of Campisi’s sports marketing students attend the Super Bowl. Those who do, though, complete a written evaluation of “the marketing presence and activation of NFL sponsors,” he said.
Cole Horan, who graduated from Baldwin Wallace in 2017 with a major in sport management and minors in business and marketing, said that even though he didn’t do marketing-specific jobs when he worked the Super Bowl, he was able to see first-hand how the NFL worked in messaging from its corporate sponsors at the game. Having that understanding “was definitely a good jumping off point in interviews,” said Horan, who now works as a group and hospitality sales manager for the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Professors we spoke to who help place students in Super Bowl jobs emphasized professional development and networking opportunities and said they advise students on how to explain the work on their resumes. Ryan Gorman, a Baldwin Wallace sophomore sport management major and entrepreneurship minor who’s worked two Super Bowls as well as two College Football Playoff National Championships, said networking is one of his main focuses.
“The people you meet at these events are the most crucial because they lay the foundation for your next five to 10 years,” he said.
Rachael Montanari, who graduated from Baldwin Wallace with a sport management major in 2020 and now works for the Cleveland Guardians, told us she “flooded her resume” with her experiences at three Super Bowls and four College Football National Championships.
“This is not going to be the be-all, end-all of why you get the job…but it definitely helped get my name out there,” Montanari said.