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34 JAN | FEB 2017 THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE 34 NOV | DEC 2016 THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE Suiting Up

Over the years, Penn has contributed an impressive number of alumni who have left their mark on the many-sided business of sports. And they all have stories to tell.

oe Cohen W’68 WG’70 was trying to to secure a pay-TV signal from piracy while he J come up with an idea for his Wharton was CEO of HTN in the late 1970s; served as MBA thesis when his advisor told him: chair of the LA Kings from 1993 to 1995; and “Just find something you would have fun doing.” oversaw MSG Network operations when it At the time, Cohen had begun to follow the absorbed in 1989. These Philadelphia Flyers, who in the fall of 1969 days he serves as president of sports at The were just starting their third season in the Switch, which provides customer-controlled NHL. Curious to learn how the city’s winter pro By Robert Strauss video switching services in major media markets teams, the Flyers and the 76ers, might compete in North America and the UK. for fans, he decided to ask the owners of both Cohen is something of a poster boy for Penn teams to give him $500 apiece to do the research for his the- alumni in the sports business—though he’s hardly the first. There sis. In return, he would give them the results. “That was before was Hall of Famer Walter O’Malley C’26, visionary hero or villain, anybody called it sports marketing,” recalls Cohen. depending on your age and allegiance to the Brooklyn Dodgers, Whatever it was called, his idea worked. Ed Snider, the late which he bought in 1950, uprooted to Los Angeles in 1958, and owner of the Flyers, was impressed enough with Cohen’s research owned until 1979 [“Alumni Profiles,” Sep|Oct 2008]—then turned that he gave him a job, which involved cold-calling prospects over the reins to his son, Peter O’Malley W’60, who owned the for Flyers season tickets “and a whole lot of other things.” team until 1998 [“Alumni Profiles,” July|Aug 2015]. There was (“When you worked for Ed Snider,” he adds, “you worked hard, Irving Felt W’29, who got his finance degree at age 19, and a but it was all worthwhile.”) decade later became president of and From there, Cohen’s career took off in a big way. Last month, the eponymous Felt Forum. Michael Burke W’39 went from being almost half a century after starting that thesis research, he was a Penn halfback to president of the , the New inducted into the Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame for his York Rangers, and Madison Square Garden. Carroll Rosenbloom seminal role in developing the broadcasting end of the business. C’30, another Penn halfback, owned the Baltimore Colts and the Some highlights: He served as president of MSG Network and Los Angeles Rams at different times. David Montgomery C’68 drove the creation of an HD service; co-founded the USA Network, WG’70 worked his way up through the Philadelphia Phillies Sports Channel LA, and Ohio; developed a means organization to become its chair, president, and minority owner

Illustrations by Chris Gash THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE JAN | FEB 2017 35 [“Squeeze Play,” July|Aug 1999]. And, of companies looking for athletes to endorse ment, and that is what started the USA course, there are plenty in the business their products and stadiums charging Network,” Cohen recalls. “It was a different who have stayed outside the owners box, millions of dollars for naming rights. time. The numbers were a whole lot smaller.” such as Jeff Luhnow W’89 EAS’89, gen- “Every Fortune 500 company wants to The network then bought the rights for eral manager of the Houston Astros have sports sponsorships and every team about 60 NBA games that it aired nation- [“Alumni Profiles,” Mar|Apr 2013], and wants to attract them,” says Jim Kahler, ally for about $6,000 a game—less than Stephen Karasik C’95 and Tyler Hale C’96, executive director of Ohio University’s $500,000 a year. Compare that with the who shaped the coverage of CBS Sports AECOM Center for Sports Administration. nine-year, $24 billion deal the NBA signed [“Alumni Profiles,” Mar|Apr 2015]. “There are jobs in sports marketing agen- in 2014 with Turner Broadcasting System All in all, a pretty distinguished list for cies and analytics and sales and social and and the Walt Disney Co., which works out a university that doesn’t have a formal digital media that just didn’t exist before.” to $2.67 billion a year and laid the founda- degree-granting sports program or center. “Everything around sports has increased,” tion for a live-streaming online service. But good luck trying to find a linkage says Janet Fink, chair of the Mark H. McCor- Cohen soon became one of the go-to guys between a Penn—predominantly Wharton— mack Department of Sport Management of sports . He and an inves- education and its alumni presence in at the University of Massachusetts. “Spon- tor group started the Hughes Sports sports business. sorship dollars and advertising, and there Network, then bought the Los Angeles area “I don’t know that there is anything spe- are always more and more sports, like, say, Channel Z in the late 1980s with the idea cial,” says Kenneth Shropshire, the David W. Hauck Professor at Wharton, professor of legal studies and business ethics, and faculty director of the Wharton Sports Business Initiative (WSBI, which is essen- “My job that day was to make sure Ali tially a sports business think tank, assist- ing on major research, giving seminars had everything he wanted. He wanted to and conferences, and consulting for major sports organizations and unions). “One play checkers and watch television.” key, ironically, is the absence of a sports- specific major. Students have to seek it out. Similarly, few sports employers come to Penn to recruit—students have to seek UFC [Ultimate Fighting Championship]. of turning it into an all-encompassing LA them out and really want to work in sports. There are just more jobs and it is more com- sports cable channel. In the early 1990s he That may be a key distinction from institu- plicated than it used to be.” reconnected with Snider, who had rolled his tions that do have sports-focused degrees.” Asked to name the most important fac- sports, arena, and television holdings into Over the years, as revenues have explod- tor driving these changes, Shropshire a company called Spectacor. Snider gave ed, the business side of sports has become responds: “Technology, by far. The great- Cohen the go-ahead to start Spectacor West, increasingly complex. When the elder est success in sports business comes by which bid successfully for most Southern O’Malley ran the Brooklyn Dodgers, for being a step ahead in technology—and California sports broadcasting rights. instance, he was involved in every decision, knowing how to monetize it.” Over the years the Brooklyn-born Cohen right down to player contracts. Now there bought and sold the Los Angeles Kings, was are assistant general managers whose sole 1975, Cohen had the responsibil- president of the MSG (Madison Square responsibility is handling contract nego- In ity for getting events at Madison Garden) Network, did his own sports broad- tiations. In the last 50 years, front-office Square Garden broadcast on a new com- casting deals, and acted as a consultant on staffs have gone from a couple of dozen to munications medium known as cable tele- others. But his most treasured memory is hundreds. There are myriad statistical and vision. By the end of the decade, he and his of March 8, 1971, during the hours leading analytical jobs—for evaluating players as partners had founded the USA Network, up to the “Fight of the Century” between well as determining who will buy tickets and he took the lead in finding sports pro- Muhammed Ali and Joe Frazier (promoted and concessions and what the price thresh- gramming for the nascent cable network. by Irving Felt), when Cohen was still a low- olds should be—as well as positions in “We had about 85 Knicks and Rangers level employee at the Garden. marketing, community outreach, even home games and a million-dollar invest- “My job that day was to make sure Ali had horticultural departments to care for the everything he wanted,” he recalls. “What he trees and flowers around stadiums. wanted to do was play checkers and watch That doesn’t even start to count the jobs television. So there I was, a young employ- that intersect with the teams. Agents, ee, and my job was to play checkers with the unheard of 50 years ago, have acquired heavyweight champ, perhaps the most enough power to become the stuff of famous person in the world.” blockbuster movies (see Maguire, Jerry). Cohen attributes much of his success to There has been a massive increase in personal relationships. He and NBA com-

36 JAN | FEB 2017 THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE to do both medium and long-term planning sports world’s social-impact movement. these days, and that is where I think I can She started working with both non-prof- help most,” says Rosner, who now co-hosts its and for-profit programs and leagues, with Shropshire the weekly Wharton Sports helping make sports a part of their “inclu- Business Show on SiriusXM Business sion” initiatives. Since 2010 she has been Radio. He and Shropshire co-wrote The a senior advisor for the Business of Sports, now in its second edi- Agency for International Development tion. (“The academy lacked a comprehensive (US AID), helping to set up youth leader- casebook focused on the business,” says ship programs (mostly centered around missioner David Stern, for example, went Shropshire, who has 11 more sports-related sports) in developing countries. to summer camp together in the Catskills. books to his credit.) “It was a way to have an impact with pub- “Everything is based on relationships,” Rosner is also the academic director of lic health as well,” she said. “Sports got kids he says, “and I have been lucky to know the Wharton Sports Business Academy, motivated to do something positive, and it and keep in touch with many of the best which for the past six years has served certainly had an effect on their health.” people in the business.” as a summer camp for about a hundred high-school students from around the ven after Scott Rosner L’97 earned a world who stay in the Quad and learn “the Emaster’s degree in sports manage- same stuff that undergraduates learn” ment at the University of Massachusetts about sports and business. “We want to to supplement his experience helping out have diversity on the professional level,” with the 1994 World Cup, he kept hearing he says, “so we try to bring in that same from people whose opinions he trusted sort of diversity—in income and back- that the sports business was getting more ground—to the program.” complex and that it would behoove him to get a law degree as well. That fall he entered a girl who had fled from the Penn Law School, and soon became a As revolution in Iran with her research assistant for Shropshire. After parents and came to America at age seven, getting his law degree, he did some legal Mori Taheripour WG’03 didn’t play sports An example is her consulting work with consulting with the NFL. when she was young. Her traditional fam- the NBA for its first sustained program in On the academic side, he started the ily wasn’t quite ready for that. But just Africa, based in Senegal. She helped match sports-management program at Cazenovia outside her window was a beckoning the league and its players with local College, taught sports law and sports man- world where sports reigned supreme. schools, building and maintaining courts agement at Seton Hall University, then came “Our apartment where we lived in and getting coaches to work with students. to Wharton as a lecturer in 2002. He has overlooked Fenway Park, and it was the “It was not just basketball drills I wanted since become a practice associate professor heyday of the [Larry Bird-led] Boston Celtics to have, but teaching the values that sports of legal studies and business ethics, and when I was growing up,” says Teheripour. embrace, from teamwork to resilience,” she has been the faculty associate director of “I was supposed to be academic, which I explains. “Sports were the carrot and the the WSBI since its inception in 2004. In was, and become a doctor, which I didn’t. platform, but leadership was the goal.” addition to his teaching, he has done legal “When the lights were on at Fenway Park, Taheripour has also consulted with Peace and strategy consulting with teams and it was magic,” she adds. “It was something Players International in such volatile areas leagues and been an expert witness for that brought people and dreams together. as Cyprus, Israel, and Palestine, using bas- various clients. (He was, for instance, an There was this optimistic energy in sports ketball for conflict mitigation. Noting that expert witness for Northwestern University and it stayed with me.” the NBA bought into it “because they have in the suit by its scholarship athletes, who Today Taheripour, a lecturer in legal a worldwide view of their sport,” she says had hoped to unionize and perhaps get studies and business ethics who co-found- it is “one of the best programs I have dealt salaries for playing university sports.) ed the WSBI and serves as one of its fac- with—it was business, but it was a program “Teams and universities and leagues need ulty advisors, is one of the leaders in the that really worked.”

“The greatest success in sports business,” says Ken Shropshire, “comes by being a step ahead in technology—and knowing how to monetize it.”

THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE JAN | FEB 2017 37 Taheripour used the same idea when Anchorage’s expense. (That acquisition “He said, ‘Let’s just write him a letter she helped in one also prompted him to change the name of and say we are from Yale and Penn and of its biggest foreign markets, the Domin- the league to the Continental Basketball would like to get to know him,’” Kauffman ican Republic. Her work in creating and Association.) Soon a few of the better play- recalls of their pitch to Darling. “I thought sustaining education programs there ers asked him to be their agent. that was crazy. How could that work?” supports the key premise: the more MLB “Jerry Baskerville, Charlie Criss, they Somehow, it did. Darling was getting so invests in those local communities, the were wonderful guys,” says Kauffman. many hard sells that the soft letter sold more players there can thrive. “Sometimes, being in the right place and not him. They met once, at a barbecue at Several years ago, she worked with NFL letting a chance go by changes your life.” Kauffman’s house, and Darling signed on. players to do public service announce- ments about famine in Africa, again for US AID. Instead of being a burden for them, she recalls, it was something they For Rosner, the greatest risk for anyone were glad to do. “They know inclusion is part of the game now—that everyone should benefit from sports.” working in sports business “is that we

teve Kauffman L’73, founder and see how the sausage is made.” S president of the Malibu-based Kauffman Sports Management Group, has been an agent for four now. For many His recent shift from players to coach- “I learned that I only had to be myself,” years he represented players, mainly es and front-office executives fits the Kauffman says. “If I lost someone because basketball but also baseball (including flow of his own life span, he says. As he I wasn’t, then it wasn’t meant to be.” Mets pitcher and broadcaster Ron moved into middle age, he discovered he Among his clients now are former NBA Darling) and a few pro football players, would rather be hanging out with people star , an assistant coach for including Chicago Bears All-Star line- closer to his age and mindset, primarily the Charlotte Hornets; Steve Clifford, the backer Brian Urlacher. These days he in his favorite sport, basketball. Hornets head coach; Lionel Hollins, the head represents coaches and executives. But “I know people talk about the low odds coach of the ; Paul Westphal, his path was a circuitous one. of becoming an NBA player, but think the former head coach of the Kings, Suns, Shortly after graduating from Penn Law about how those odds are even slimmer and Supersonics; and Jeff Hornacek, the new in 1973, having just embarked on a prom- for coaches,” says Kauffman. “There are coach of the . ising career as a tax attorney, Kauffman only 30 of them at any one time. Those “I had learned a lot about both sides sat down to lunch with Stan Novak, a friend coaches are really smart—among the smart- of the business,” he says, “and was able of his father-in-law. Novak was then coach- est people I have ever known. So right now, to convince them that I could do for them ing the Allentown Jets in the Eastern that is a great group to be with. I am always what I had done for players.” Basketball Association, the home of many learning something. Don’t get me wrong, wannabe and used-to-be NBA players. representing players was fun at the time, “My father-in-law would always brag but this is like a new world as I get older.” The business side of sports is not always about me, so I owed him the favor,” says Kauffman says that all agents have the most romantic. For Rosner, the great- Kauffman, who told Novak during the their own styles and, to an extent, gim- est risk for anyone working in it “is that lunch that he would be happy to do some micks to attract clients. Early on, he did we see how the sausage is made”—which volunteering in the league, just to do play the Ivy League card. His agency is “not always the best thing,” he acknowl- something in sports. “About three-quar- partner had gone to Yale—as had Ron edges. “I have tried not to get jaded by that.” ters of the way in, Stan says, ‘Would you Darling, a prize for any agent. It helps that he now gets to see sports like to be commissioner?’” through the eyes of his 10-year-old Kauffman thought Novak was kidding. daughter and seven-year-old son. He wasn’t. Someone had to run the nuts- “My daughter is more of a recreational and-bolts of the league—scheduling, adver- athlete, and my son, well, anything with a tising, and the like—and Novak didn’t want ball or an element of competition, from table to do it himself. So for a whopping $3,000 hockey to a ninja warrior game, that is what a year, Kauffman began spending week- he is about,” Rosner says. “I get to relive that ends in places like Allentown, Wilkes- thrill through them, and they get to reap Barre, Scranton, and Syracuse. When the benefits of a dad who has a cool job.” ◆ investors from Anchorage, Alaska, decided Robert Strauss is the author of Worst. President. they wanted a minor-league basketball Ever.: James Buchanan, the POTUS Rating Game, team, he brought them in—sending teams and the Legacy of the Least of the Lesser to Alaska for the longest of road trips, at Presidents (Lyons Press, 2016).

38 JAN | FEB 2017 THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE